ArticleScientific reports2015
Chimpanzees and bonobos differ in intrinsic motivation for tool use.
Article in Scientific reports, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers.
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Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed, 127 citations in OpenAlex.
- Article
- The flexible, the stereotyped and the in-between: putting together the combinatory tool use origins hypothesis.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- Great Ape Childhoods: Social and Spatial Pathways to Independence in Bonobo and Chimpanzee Infants.Developmental science · 2026Article
- Habitat Use and the Demographics of Object Manipulation by Wild Chacma Baboons.American journal of biological anthropology · 2025Article
- Object play in Tsimane children: implications for sex-specific division of labour.Evolutionary human sciences · 2025Article
- Young sanctuary-living chimpanzees produce more communicative expressions with artificial objects than with natural objects.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Water scooping: tool use by a wild bonobo (Pan paniscus) at LuiKotale, a case report.Primates; journal of primatology · 2024Article
- Play Behavior Varies with Age, Sex, and Socioecological Context in Wild, Immature Orangutans (International journal of primatology · 2024Article
- Hierarchical object combination and tool use in the great apes and human children.Primates; journal of primatology · 2022Article
- Experimental investigation of orangutans' lithic percussive and sharp stone tool behaviours.PloS one · 2022Article
- Article
- Do wild raccoons (Procyon lotor) use tools?Animal cognition · 2021Article
- The ontogeny of exploratory object manipulation behaviour in wild orangutans.Evolutionary human sciences · 2021Article
- A cross-cultural investigation of young children's spontaneous invention of tool use behaviours.Royal Society open science · 2020Article
- Chimpanzees' (PeerJ · 2020Article
- What can associative learning do for planning?Royal Society open science · 2018Article
- Bonobos voluntarily hand food to others but not toys or tools.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2018Article
- Primate social attention: Species differences and effects of individual experience in humans, great apes, and macaques.PloS one · 2018Article
- Function and flexibility of object exploration in kea and New Caledonian crows.Royal Society open science · 2017Article
- Spontaneous reoccurrence of "scooping", a wild tool-use behaviour, in naïve chimpanzees.PeerJ · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Tool use in nonhuman apes can help identify the conditions that drove the extraordinary expansion of hominin technology. Chimpanzees and bonobos are our closest living relatives. Whereas chimpanzees are renowned for their tool use, bonobos use few tools and none in foraging. We investigated whether extrinsic (ecological and social opportunities) or intrinsic (predispositions) differences explain this contrast by comparing chimpanzees at Kalinzu (Uganda) and bonobos at Wamba (DRC). We assessed ecological opportunities based on availability of resources requiring tool use. We examined potential opportunities for social learning in immature apes. Lastly, we investigated predispositions by measuring object manipulation and object play. Extrinsic opportunities did not explain the tool use difference, whereas intrinsic predispositions did. Chimpanzees manipulated and played more with objects than bonobos, despite similar levels of solitary and social play. Selection for increased intrinsic motivation to manipulate objects likely also played an important role in the evolution of hominin tool use.
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