Creativity and experience in nonhuman primate communication

Abstract

The word creativity, coined undoubtedly for human achievement, has perhaps never been applied to the behaviour of nonhuman species. Whether this was simply to avoid the threat of anthropomorphism or whether there are qualitative differences between the innovative behaviours of nonhuman and human animals that would preclude the former from being included in the category of creative beings remains an open question. There has, however, been a growing interest in creative behaviours in nonhuman species since Lloyd Morgan (1912). Morgan observed that the behavioural repertoire of every animal consisted of two kinds of behaviour, some repetitive and a small proportion of novel behaviours, which were distinctly different from the former regular behaviours. It is this second kind of behaviour that interests us here