Japanese Monkeys’ Abnormal Blood Linked To Fukushima Radioactive Disaster

Wild monkeys in the Fukushima region of Japan have blood abnormalities linked to the radioactive fall-out from the 2011 nuclear power plant disaster, according to a new scientific study that may help increase the understanding of radiation on human health.

The Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata) were found to have low white and red blood cell levels and low haemoglobin, which the researchers say could make them more prone to infectious diseases.

But critics of the study say the link between the abnormal blood tests and the radiation exposure of the monkeys remains unproven and that the radiation doses may have been too small to cause the effect.

The scientists compared 61 monkeys living 70km (44 miles) from the the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant with 31 monkeys from the Shimokita Penisula, over 400km (249 miles) from Fukushima. The Fukushima monkeys had low blood counts and radioactive caesium in their bodies, related to caesium levels in the soils where they lived. No caesium was detected in the Shimokita troop.

Professor Shin-ichi Hayama, at the Nippon Veterinary and Life Science University in Tokyo, told the Guardian that during Japan’s snowy winters the monkeys feed on tree buds and bark, where caesium has been shown to accumulate at high concentrations.

“This first data from non-human primates — the closest taxonomic relatives of humans — should make a notable contribution to future research on the health effects of radiation exposure in humans,” he said. The work, which ruled out disease or malnutrition as a cause of the low blood counts, is published in the peer-reviewed journal Scientific Reports.

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Large raptors in Africa used for bushmeat, study indicates

Bushmeat, the use of native animal species for food or commercial food sale, has been heavily documented to be a significant factor in the decline of many species of primates and other mammals. However, a new study indicates that more than half of the species being consumed are birds, particularly large birds like raptors and hornbills.

“By surveying not only the meat made available for sale but the meat that is being eaten inside the forest by hunters and brought to villages for consumption, we noted a significant percentage attributed to bird species,” said Bethan Morgan, head of the Central African Program for the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research. “The significant use of large birds like eagles, vultures and hornbills as bushmeat poses a new side to this conservation challenge.”

The study indicates that more than half of meat surveyed was of avian origin, with the larger species like birds of prey forming a significant portion of the whole. Documenting the effects of bushmeat use and trade on endangered species in Africa is part of the work being done in the proposed Ebo Forest National Park under the auspices of San Diego Zoo Global. The bushmeat trade is not only a conservation challenge, as species are eradicated through consumption, but has also been highlighted as a significant human health concern linked to several zoonotic disease outbreaks globally.

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Humans share fairness concerns with other species

Humans aren’t the only species to react strongly to actions they consider unfair. A similar drive for fairness in monkeys and some dogs may offer insight into people’s desire for equity, according to experts presenting at the American Psychological Association’s 122nd Annual Convention.

Psychologists will talk about how studies of other species help explain how humans came to care so much about fairness and why they invest so strongly in actions that benefit others, rather than just themselves. Additionally, studies of preschool children may explain why adults want things to be fair but also admire those who have more. The session is scheduled for Aug. 7.

Areas of discussion and presenters:

Fair is Fine, but More is Better: Limits to Inequity Aversion in the Domestic Dog

Domestic dogs are more concerned with the quantity of treats doled out by a trainer than whether the trainer distributes them fairly, according to Alexandra Horowitz, PhD, of Barnard College. She will discuss an experiment in which dogs had to select a “fair” or “unfair” trainer. Older dogs were more responsive to fair trainers than their younger counterparts, which suggest that a longer human-dog relationship may affect a dog’s sense of fairness. She will discuss these results in light of the human sense of fairness.

Responses to Inequity in Non-human Primates

Sarah Brosnan, PhD, of Georgia State University, will talk about how research involving chimpanzees, monkeys, gorillas and other non-human primates has shown that other species respond to unfairness and it appears to help in cooperation. For example, chimpanzees and capuchin monkeys will refuse a reward for a task completed with a partner if the partner receives a better reward, according to one of Brosnan’s experiments. Brosnan will talk about how these results help us to better understand the evolution of humans’ own sense of fairness.

The Ontogeny of Fairness

Kristina Olson, PhD, of the University of Washington, will talk about how psychologists have explored whether, when and why children are concerned with fairness. She will reveal research findings that suggest preschoolers will favor someone who has more than others, even after an unfair distribution of resources, but only if they have forgotten how those resources were distributed.

An Economic Perspective on Fairness

Kevin McCabe, PhD, of George Mason University, will present research from economics experiments suggesting that people’s sense of fairness depends on whether they consider the behavior acceptable. He will then examine brain imaging research that suggests people’s desire to act fairly and to respond to fair and unfair behavior has evolved over time. One study talks about how trusting a person to share returns equitably on a financial investment is more likely to stimulate reward-related areas of the brain if that person has a reputation for acting fairly.

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Nearly 50 years of lemur, other primates data now available online

A 48-year archive of life history data for the world’s largest and most diverse collection of endangered primates is now digital and available online.The Duke Lemur Center database allows visitors to view and download data for more than 3600 animals representing 27 species of lemurs, lorises and galagos — distant primate cousins who predate monkeys and apes — with more data to be uploaded in the future.

Staff at the center observe and record virtually every aspect of an animal’s life from cradle to grave. For each animal they know when it was born, who its parents were, how fast it grew, what it ate, which animals it mated with, how many offspring it had, and when and why it died.

Blue-eyed black lemurs represent one of the 25 most endangered primates in the world. This infant and his mom are among 27 species of endangered primates at the Duke Lemur Center whose lifelong records are now digitized and available online. Researchers hope the data will help the last blue-eyed black lemurs left in the wild — now fewer than 7000 — hold on. Photo by David Haring.

Hiddleston is one of them. Hiddleston is a blue-eyed black lemur, which makes him one of the 25 most endangered primates in the world. Since he was born in March 2013, staff at the Duke Lemur Center have catalogued minute details of his life in their daily logbooks. They know how big he was at birth and when he tried his first solid foods. They monitor his weight and note how he interacts. They even tracked his first attempts to climb a tree.

Hiddleston isn’t alone. When primatologist Sarah Zehr first arrived at the Duke Lemur Center in 2007, she found a treasure trove of data about the lives, health and habits and of more than 4000 animals, dating from the center’s beginnings in 1966.

Many of the Duke Lemur Center’s animal records were locked up in handwritten notebooks and typed paper records until now.

The fact that lemurs are at risk of dying out makes it unlikely that a collection of similar size will ever be recreated, Zehr said. “Many of these species are critically endangered in the wild, so they’re unlikely to be held in captivity again. This means that the data are irreproducible.”

Getting at this one-of-a-kind data, however, was a difficult task. Much of the data were locked up in handwritten notebooks or typed paper records. “The downside of the paper records is they’re vulnerable, they’re not digitized, and we only have a single copy — so they’re impossible to analyze,” Zehr said.

The center migrated to electronic records in the 1990s, but that still left much of the data buried in odd computer files or hard-to-use databases.

That began to change in 2012, when Zehr and software developers Freda Cameron and the late Richard Roach, formerly of SAS, started working on a project to assemble the information from the various source files and convert it into a single, easily searchable format.

Software developers Freda Cameron (left) and the late Richard Roach (center) volunteered to convert the Duke Lemur Center’s aging inaccessible animal data files to a modern format.

It took them three years to compile and digitize the data and put it online. Visitors to the new database will find birth and death dates for each animal, IDs and ages for its parents, any litter mates or siblings, lifelong weight records, breeding season, gestation length and number of offspring — much of which would be difficult if not impossible to collect at a similar level of detail for lemurs living in the wild.

Users can also find out whether any biological samples are available for an animal. The bank of biological samples at the Duke Lemur Center contains nearly 10,000 samples for more than 1000 individuals. It’s a modern ark of things like blood, serum, DNA, urine, and small pieces of skin, organs and other tissues — many taken during routine veterinary procedures for diagnostic tests or when an animal dies of natural causes — all preserved in freezers for the future.

A baby aye-aye gets weighed at the Duke Lemur Center. The center’s new database contains over 65,000 weight measurements for more than 2100 animals (27 species), taken over each animal’s lifespan.

Thanks to the center’s captive breeding program the data continue to come in. In the next year they plan to add additional records, such as health and reproductive status, causes of death, behavior, and group size and composition for each animal over time.

The hope is that the data will help institutions better care for lemurs in captivity, and help scientists understand these animals in order to better protect them in the wild.

The database will also allow generations of future researchers to tackle a wide range of questions. Researchers studying aging and longevity, for example, will be able to compare maximum lifespans in captivity for different primate species, and pinpoint cellular and molecular traits that distinguish long-lived primates from short-lived ones.

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Marmoset sequence sheds new light on primate biology and evolution

A team of scientists from around the world led by Baylor College of Medicine and Washington University in St. Louis has completed the genome sequence of the common marmoset — the first sequence of a New World Monkey — providing new information about the marmoset’s unique rapid reproductive system, physiology and growth, shedding new light on primate biology and evolution.

The team published the work today in the journal Nature Genetics.

“We study primate genomes to get a better understanding of the biology of the species that are most closely related to humans,” said Dr. Jeffrey Rogers, associate professor in the Human Genome Sequencing Center at Baylor and a lead author on the report. “The previous sequences of the great apes and macaques, which are very closely related to humans on the primate evolutionary tree, have provided remarkable new information about the evolutionary origins of the human genome and the processes involved.”

With the sequence of the marmoset, the team revealed for the first time the genome of a non-human primate in the New World monkeys, which represents a separate branch in the primate evolutionary tree that is more distant from humans than those whose genomes have been studied in detail before. The sequence allows researchers to broaden their ability to study the human genome and its history as revealed by comparison with other primates.

The sequencing was conducted jointly by Baylor and Washington University and led by Dr. Kim Worley, professor in the Human Genome Sequencing Center, and Rogers at Baylor, and Drs. Richard K. Wilson, director, and Wesley Warren of The Genome Institute at Washington University, in collaboration with Dr. Suzette Tardif of The University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio and the Southwest National Primate Research Center.

“Each new non-human primate genome adds to a deeper understanding of human biology,” said Dr. Richard Gibbs, director of the Human Genome Sequencing Center at Baylor and a principal investigator of the study.

Twinning

The study revealed unique genetic characteristics observed in the marmoset, including several genes that are likely responsible for their ability to consistently reproduce multiple births.

“Unlike humans, marmosets consistently give birth to twins without the association of any medical issues,” said Worley. “So why is it OK in marmosets but not in humans where it is considered high risk and associated with more complications?”

It turns out the marmoset gene WFIKKN1 exhibits changes associated with twinning in marmosets.

“From our analysis it appears that the gene may act as some kind of critical switch between multiples and singleton pregnancies, though it is not the only gene involved,” said Rogers, who added the finding could apply to studies of multiple pregnancies in humans.

The team was also looked for genetic changes associated with a unique trait found in marmosets and their close relatives, but not described in any other mammal. The dizygotic (or fraternal) twins in marmosets exchange blood stem cells called hematopoietic stem cells in utero, which leads to chimerism, a single organism composed of genetically distinct cells.

“This is very unusual. The twins are full siblings, but if you draw a blood sample from one animal, between 10 and 50 percent of the cells will carry the sibling’s DNA,” said Rogers. “Normally, fraternal twins do not share the same DNA in this way, and in other animals, this chimerism can cause medical problems but not in marmosets. It is very unique.”

“The translational implications of this work to pregnancy and reproductive medicine are significant. We have shown that there are several genes in the marmoset which likely enable (twinning. However, it is not just a question of why they have such a high rate of twinning, but how do they manage to rear and raise these twins so successfully,” said Dr. Kjersti Aagaard, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology — maternal fetal medicine at Baylor and a co-author on the study. “Given the relatively high rate of complications of twins we see, ranging from preterm birth to unique complications such as Twin Twin Transfusion Syndrome (seen only amongst identical or monochorionic twins), it is crucial to understand the underlying adaptive biology of the marmoset which enables them to avoid these complications.”

Alloparenting

Marmosets have a unique social system in which the dominant male and female serve as the primary breeders for a family, while their relatives also care for the offspring. They pick them up, carry them for long periods, and basically provide all the support allowing the breeders to reproduce again quickly. Interestingly the relatives who provide the care are reproductively suppressed, said Worley.

“This species is clearly adapted to rapid reproduction and to the potential for rapid population expansion,” said Rogers. “Their ecological system connects with that as they are able to thrive in disturbed areas of forests. So one possibility is that they have evolved a feeding and dietary regimen that allows them to live in these type of conditions where they can reproduce quickly. This would be advantageous as any adults that move into a newly disturbed area would establish their offspring as the early initial residents of the newly available area.”

Small body size

Marmosets also have a very small body size. The genome sequence showed this may be the result of positive selection in five growth hormone/insulin-like growth factor axis genes (GH-IGF) with potential roles in producing small body size.

Additionally, the team identified a cluster of genes that affect metabolic rates and body temperatures, adaptations associated with challenges of small body size.

MicroRNAs

The study also provides new information about microRNAs, small non-coding RNA molecules that function to regulate gene expression.

“There has not been much research conducted on microRNAs in nonhuman primates, so we found this particularly important,” said Worley.

A team led by Dr. Preethi Gunaratne, an associate professor of biology and biochemistry at the University of Houston and of pathology and a member of the Human Genome Sequencing Center at Baylor, and Dr. R. Alan Harris, an assistant professor of molecular and human genetics at Baylor, found marmosets exhibit a significant number of differences in microRNAs and their gene targets compared with humans, with two large clusters potentially involved in reproduction.

The sequence lays the foundation for further biomedical research using marmosets, said Rogers. “Researchers may have been more reluctant to study the marmoset due to lack of basic information, but this genome sequence opens new avenues for future research relevant to various aspects of human health and disease.”

Dr. Suzette Tardiff, professor of cellular and structural biology at the Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, a core scientist at the Southwest National Primate Research Center and an expert in marmoset biology and co-author on the paper, provided critical information regarding the biology of marmosets, and helped obtain samples for the sequence.

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Humans walking on all fours is not backward evolution

Contradicting earlier claims, “The Family That Walks on All Fours,” a group of quadrupedal humans made famous by a 2006 BBC documentary, have simply adapted to their inability to walk upright and do not represent an example of backward evolution, according to new research by Liza Shapiro, an anthropologist at The University of Texas at Austin.

Five siblings in the family, who live in a remote corner of Turkey, walk exclusively on their hands and feet. Since they were discovered in 2005, scientists have debated the nature of their disability, with speculation they represent a backward stage of evolution.

Shapiro’s study, published online this month in PLOS One, shows that contrary to previous claims, people with the family members’ condition, called Uner Tan Syndrome (UTS), do not walk in the diagonal pattern characteristic of nonhuman primates such as apes and monkeys.

According to a theory developed by Uner Tan of Cukurova University in Turkey, people with UTS are a human model for reverse evolution, or “devolution,” offering new insights into the human transition from four-legged to two-legged walking.

Previous research countering this view has proposed that the quadrupedalism associated with UTS is simply an adaptive response to the impaired ability to walk bipedally in individuals with a genetic mutation, but this is the first study that disproves claims that this form of walking resembles that of nonhuman primates.

The study’s co-authors are Jesse Young of Northeast Ohio Medical University; David Raichlen of the University of Arizona; and Whitney Cole, Scott Robinson and Karen Adolph of New York University.

As part of the study, the researchers analyzed 518 quadrupedal walking strides from several videos of people with various forms of UTS, including footage from the BBC2 documentary of the five Turkish siblings, “The Family That Walks on All Fours.” They compared these walking strides to previous studies of the walking patterns of healthy adults who were asked to move around a laboratory on all fours.

According to the findings, nearly all human subjects (in 98 percent of the total strides) walked in lateral sequences, meaning they placed a foot down and then a hand on the same side and then moved in the same sequence on the other side. Apes and other nonhuman primates, however, walk in a diagonal sequence, in which they put down a foot on one side and then a hand on the other side, continuing that pattern as they move along.

“Although it’s unusual that humans with UTS habitually walk on four limbs, this form of quadrupedalism resembles that of healthy adults and is thus not at all unexpected,” Shapiro says. “As we have shown, quadrupedalism in healthy adults or those with a physical disability can be explained using biomechanical principles rather than evolutionary assumptions.”

The study also shows that Tan and his colleagues appeared to have misidentified the walking patterns among people with UTS as primate-like by confusing diagonal sequence with diagonal couplets. Sequence refers to the order in which the limbs touch the ground, while couplets (independent of sequence) indicate the timing of movement between pairs of limbs.

People with UTS more frequently use diagonal couplets than lateral couplets, but the sequence associated with the couplets is almost exclusively lateral.

“Each type of couplet has biomechanical advantages, with lateral couplets serving to avoid limb interference, and diagonal couplets providing stability,” Shapiro says. “The use of diagonal couplets in adult humans walking quadrupedally can thus be explained on the basis of biomechanical considerations, not reverse evolution.”

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Odor communication in wild gorillas: Wild gorillas signal using odor

Silverback gorillas appear to use odor as a form of communication to other gorillas, according to a study published July 9, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Michelle Klailova from University of Stirling, UK, and colleagues.

Mammals communicate socially through visual, auditory, and chemical signals. The chemical sense is in fact the oldest sense, shared by all organisms including bacteria, and mounting evidence suggests that humans also participate in social chemical signaling. However, not much is known about this type of signaling in closely related hominoids, like wild apes. To better understand chemical -communication in apes, scientists in this study analyzed odor strength in relation to arousal levels in a wild group of western lowland gorillas in the Central African Republic, specifically focusing on the male silverback, or the mature leader of the group.

Scientists determined the factors that predicted extreme levels of odor emission from the silverback. They hypothesized that if gorilla scent were being used as a social signal, instead of only a sign of arousal or stress, odor emission would depend on social context and would vary depending on the gorilla’s relationship to other gorillas.

According to the results, the male silverback may use odor as a modifiable form of social communication, where context-specific chemical-signals may moderate the social behaviors of other gorillas. The authors predicted extreme silverback odor, where the odor was the only element that could be smelled in the surrounding air, by the presence and intensity of interactions between different gorilla groups such as silverback anger, distress and long-calling auditory rates, and the absence of close proximity between the silverback and the mother of the youngest infant. The authors suggest that odor communication between apes may be especially useful in Central African forests, where limited visibility may necessitate increased reliance on other senses.

Michelle Klailova added, “No study has yet investigated the presence and extent to which chemo-communication may moderate behaviour in non-human great apes. We provide crucial ancestral links to human chemo-signaling, bridge the gap between Old World monkey and human chemo-communication, and offer compelling evidence that olfactory communication in hominoids is much more important than traditionally thought.”

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High-protein weight loss diets can work, scientists show

Scientists have shown that instead of counting calories for weight loss, we would do better to boost the protein content of our diet.

Nutritional values of foods are typically given in kilojoules or kilocalories, standard units of energy. However, new research on apes and monkeys suggests that this is too simplistic as different macronutrients — carbohydrates, fats and proteins- interact to regulate appetite and energy intake. In these animals, overall energy intake seems to be less important than achieving the correct nutritional balance.

Professor David Raubenheimer (University of Sydney), a nutritional ecologist, says “Foods are complex mixtures of nutrients and these do not act independently but interact with one another. The appetite systems for different nutrients compete in their influence on feeding.”

When foods are nutritionally balanced, there is no competition between these appetite systems, and when one nutrient requirement is satisfied, so too are the others. Many foods however, are unbalanced and have a higher or lower proportion of protein to carbohydrate than the animal requires. Therefore, to obtain the right amount of protein the animal may have to over- or under-eat fats and carbohydrates.

The researchers studied baboons that live on the edge of human settlements. Despite eating different combinations of foods each day, they achieved a consistent balance where 20% of their energy needs came from protein. However, their overall energy intake varied significantly, over a 5-fold range. According to Professor Raubenheimer: “This suggests that the baboon values getting the right balance of nutrients over energy intake per se.” Other studies found that spider monkeys and orang-utans , too, foraged for a balanced diet. But when seasonal availability of some foods prevented them from getting a balanced diet, they prioritised getting the right amount of protein even if this meant eating too much or too little fats and carbs. Surprisingly, the opposite response is seen in gorillas, who often significantly over-eat protein in order to reach their target carbohydrate level. “This shows that there is diversity even among closely related primates,” says Professor Raubenheimer. “It also demonstrates that an energy-only approach is not adequate to understand primate foraging or for making conservation decisions.”

Like spider monkeys and orang-utans, humans prioritise protein over carbohydrates and fat. This means that if we have a diet with low protein, we will over-eat fats, carbs and energy to get the target level of protein. This may explain why human obesity cases in the Western World have soared over the past 60 years whilst the proportion of protein in our diet has dropped during this time. Professor Raubenheimer says: “We can use this information to help manage and prevent obesity, through ensuring that the diets we eat have a sufficient level of protein to satisfy our appetite.” This may explain why high-protein regimes, such as the Atkins Diet, can aid weight loss. However, Professor Raubenheimer cautioned that “We also need to get the balance of fats:carbs right…high protein diets might help us to lose weight, but if they involve other imbalances then other health problems will be introduced.” The researchers are currently investigating how the balance of carbohydrates and fats affects the health of laboratory mice.

Professor Raubenheimer concluded with his own advice for dietary health: “A simple rule for healthy eating is to avoid processed foods — the closer to real foods the better. Whilst it is clear that humans are generalist feeders, no human population has until recently encountered “ultra-processed foods” — made from industrially extracted sugars, starches and salt. Our bodies and appetites are not adapted to biscuits, cakes, pizzas & sugary drinks and we eat too much of them at our peril.”

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Researchers Create Glossary Of Gestures Used By Wild Chimpanzees

For the first time, scientists from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland have decoded the meaning behind the various gestures that chimpanzees use to communicate with one another, observing more than 80 wild Ugandan primates in order to compile a glossary of their hand and body movements.

Writing in the July 2 edition of the journal Current Biology, St. Andrews primatologists Dr. Catherine Hobaiter and Professor Richard Byrne explained that they monitored wild chimpanzees in the rainforests of the African nation and discovered that the creatures use a total of 66 gestures to intentionally communicate 19 different and unique meanings.

According to Tom Brooks-Pollock of The Telegraph, among the gestures detected by Hobaiter and Byrne included tapping another chimp in order to ask them to stop doing something, flirting by nibbling on a leaf, making a flinging motion with the hand to ask another chimp to move away, and raising an arm in order to ask for an object.

The study authors said their findings confirm the long-held notion that the creatures most closely related to humans biologically truly do have a purpose when they communicate with each other. While experts had known that they used gestures to communicate, this is the first study to successfully figure out what they are saying.

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‘Grass-in-the-ear’ technique sets new trend in chimp etiquette: Chimpanzees spontaneously copy arbitrary behavior

Chimpanzees are copycats and, in the process, they form new traditions that are often particular to only one specific group of these primates. Such are the findings of an international group of scientists, who waded through over 700 hours of video footage to understand how it came about that one chimpanzee stuck a piece of grass in her ear and started a new trend, and others soon followed suit. The findings of the study, led by Edwin van Leeuwen of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in The Netherlands, are published in Springer’s journal Animal Cognition.

In 2010, van Leeuwen first noticed how a female chimp named Julie repeatedly put a stiff, strawlike blade of grass for no apparent reason in one or both of her ears. She left it there even when she was grooming, playing or resting in Zambia’s Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage Trust sanctuary. On subsequent visits, van Leeuwen saw that other chimpanzees in her group had started to do the same.

This aroused his interest to find out if they copied what Julie did by watching and learning from her through so-called social learning. The research team, including Zambians who monitor the chimpanzees daily, collected and analyzed 740 hours of footage that had been shot during the course of a year of 94 chimpanzees living in four different social groups in the sanctuary. Only two of these groups could see one another.

The research team found that only one of the four groups regularly performed this so-called “grass-in-the-ear” behavior. In one other group one chimpanzee once did the same. Eight of the twelve chimpanzees in Julie’s group repeatedly did so. The first to copy her was her son, Jack, followed by Kathy, Miracle and Val with whom she regularly interacted. Generally at least two of the chimps put grass in their ear at the same time. Interestingly, the chimpanzees Kathy and Val kept up the custom even after Julie, the original inventor of this behavior, died.

The observations show that there’s nothing random about individual chimpanzees sticking grass into their ears. They spontaneously copied the arbitrary behavior from a group member. Chimpanzees have a tendency to learn from one another — clearly a case of “monkey see, monkey do” in fact. Van Leeuwen suggests that those animals that find a specific behavior somehow rewarding will continue to do so on their own, even if the chimpanzee they have learned it from is no longer around.

“This reflects chimpanzees’ proclivity to actively investigate and learn from group members’ behaviors in order to obtain biologically relevant information,” says van Leeuwen. “The fact that these behaviors can be arbitrary and outlast the originator speaks to the cultural potential of chimpanzees.”

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