Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
249
result(s) for
"Boesch, Christophe"
Sort by:
Wild cultures : a comparison between chimpanzee and human cultures
\"How do chimpanzees say, 'I want to have sex with you?' By clipping a leaf or knocking on a tree trunk? How do they eat live aggressive ants? By using a short stick with one hand or long stick with both? Ivorian and Tanzanian chimpanzees answer these questions differently, as would humans from France and China if asked how they eat rice. Christophe Boesch takes readers into the lives of chimpanzees from different African regions, highlighting the debate about culture. His ethnography reveals how simple techniques have evolved into complex ones, how teaching styles differ, how material culture widens access to new food sources and how youngsters learn culture. This journey reveals many parallels between humans and chimpanzees and points to striking differences. Written in a vivid and accessible style, Wild Cultures places the reader in social and ecological contexts that shed light on our twin cultures\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Percussive tool use by Taï Western chimpanzees and Fazenda Boa Vista bearded capuchin monkeys: a comparison
Percussive tool use holds special interest for scientists concerned with human origins. We summarize the findings from two field sites, Taï and Fazenda Boa Vista, where percussive tool use by chimpanzees and bearded capuchins, respectively, has been extensively investigated. We describe the ecological settings in which nut-cracking occurs and focus on four aspects of nut-cracking that have important cognitive implications, namely selection of tools, tool transport, tool modification and modulation of actions to reach the goal of cracking the nut. We comment on similarities and differences in behaviour and consider whether the observed differences reflect ecological, morphological, social and/or cognitive factors. Both species are sensitive to physical properties of tools, adjust their selection of hammers conditionally to the resistance of the nuts and to transport distance, and modulate the energy of their strikes under some conditions. However, chimpanzees transport hammers more frequently and for longer distances, take into account a higher number of combinations of variables and occasionally intentionally modify tools. A parsimonious interpretation of our findings is that morphological, ecological and social factors account for the observed differences. Confirmation of plausible cognitive differences in nut-cracking requires data not yet available.
Journal Article
Learning curves and teaching when acquiring nut-cracking in humans and chimpanzees
Humans are considered superior to other species in their tool using skills. However, most of our knowledge about animals comes from observations in artificial conditions with individuals removed from their natural environment. We present a first comparison of humans and chimpanzees spontaneously acquiring the same technique as they forage in their natural environment. We compared the acquisition of the
Panda
nut-cracking technique between Mbendjele foragers from the Republic of Congo and the Taï chimpanzees from Côte d’Ivoire. Both species initially acquire the technique slowly with similar kinds of mistakes, with years of practice required for the apprentice to become expert. Chimpanzees more rapidly acquired the technique when an apprentice, and reached adult efficiency earlier than humans. Adult efficiencies in both species did not differ significantly. Expert-apprentice interactions showed many similar instances of teaching in both species, with more variability in humans due, in part to their more complex technique. While in humans, teaching occurred both vertically and obliquely, only the former existed in chimpanzees. This comparison of the acquisition of a natural technique clarifies how the two species differed in their technical intelligence. Furthermore, our observations support the idea of teaching in both species being more frequent for difficult skills.
Journal Article
Wild chimpanzees plan their breakfast time, type, and location
Not all tropical fruits are equally desired by rainforest foragers and some fruit trees get depleted more quickly and carry fruit for shorter periods than others. We investigated whether a ripe-fruit specialist the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus). arrived earlier at breakfast sites with very ephemeral and highly sought-after fruit, like figs, than sites with less ephemeral fruit that can be more predictably obtained throughout the entire day. We recorded when and where five adult female chimpanzees spent the night and acquired food for a total of 275 full days during three fruit-scarce periods in a West African tropical rainforest. We found that chimpanzees left their sleeping nests earlier (often before sunrise when the forest is still dark) when breakfasting on very ephemeral fruits, especially when they were farther away. Moreover, the females positioned their sleeping nests more in the direction of the next day's breakfast sites with ephemeral fruit compared with breakfast sites with other fruit. By analyzing departure times and nest positioning as a function of fruit type and location, while controlling for more parsimonious explanations, such as temperature, we found evidence that wild chimpanzees flexibly plan their breakfast time, type, and location after weighing multiple disparate pieces of information. Our study reveals a cognitive mechanism by which largebrained primates can buffer the effects of seasonal declines in food availability and increased interspecific competition to facilitate first access to nutritious food. We discuss the implications for theories on hominoid brain-size evolution.
Journal Article
Altruism in Forest Chimpanzees: The Case of Adoption
In recent years, extended altruism towards unrelated group members has been proposed to be a unique characteristic of human societies. Support for this proposal seemingly came from experimental studies on captive chimpanzees that showed that individuals were limited in the ways they shared or cooperated with others. This dichotomy between humans and chimpanzees was proposed to indicate an important difference between the two species, and one study concluded that \"chimpanzees are indifferent to the welfare of unrelated group members\". In strong contrast with these captive studies, consistent observations of potentially altruistic behaviors in different populations of wild chimpanzees have been reported in such different domains as food sharing, regular use of coalitions, cooperative hunting and border patrolling. This begs the question of what socio-ecological factors favor the evolution of altruism. Here we report 18 cases of adoption, a highly costly behavior, of orphaned youngsters by group members in Taï forest chimpanzees. Half of the adoptions were done by males and remarkably only one of these proved to be the father. Such adoptions by adults can last for years and thus imply extensive care towards the orphans. These observations reveal that, under the appropriate socio-ecologic conditions, chimpanzees do care for the welfare of other unrelated group members and that altruism is more extensive in wild populations than was suggested by captive studies.
Journal Article
Wild Chimpanzees Exchange Meat for Sex on a Long-Term Basis
Humans and chimpanzees are unusual among primates in that they frequently perform group hunts of mammalian prey and share meat with conspecifics. Especially interesting are cases in which males give meat to unrelated females. The meat-for-sex hypothesis aims at explaining these cases by proposing that males and females exchange meat for sex, which would result in males increasing their mating success and females increasing their caloric intake without suffering the energetic costs and potential risk of injury related to hunting. Although chimpanzees have been shown to share meat extensively with females, there has not been much direct evidence in this species to support the meat-for-sex hypothesis. Here we show that female wild chimpanzees copulate more frequently with those males who, over a period of 22 months, share meat with them. We excluded other alternative hypotheses to exchanging meat for sex, by statistically controlling for rank of the male, age, rank and gregariousness of the female, association patterns of each male-female dyad and meat begging frequency of each female. Although males were more likely to share meat with estrous than anestrous females given their proportional representation in hunting parties, the relationship between mating success and sharing meat remained significant after excluding from the analysis sharing episodes with estrous females. These results strongly suggest that wild chimpanzees exchange meat for sex, and do so on a long-term basis. Similar studies on humans will determine if the direct nutritional benefits that women receive from hunters in foraging societies could also be driving the relationship between reproductive success and good hunting skills.
Journal Article