ArticlePloS one2016
Behavioral Variation in Gorillas: Evidence of Potential Cultural Traits.
Article in PloS one, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
33 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Chimpanzees demonstrate individual differences in social information use.Animal cognition · 2018Pooled it
- Rank and payoff biases influence subject choices in a foraging task among sanctuary chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).Animal cognition · 2026Article
- Brokering peace in the ape (culture) wars.Evolutionary human sciences · 2026Article
- The gestural repertoire of Bwindi mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei): gesture form and frequency of use.Animal cognition · 2025Article
- Mapping nonhuman cultures with the Animal Culture Database.Scientific data · 2025Article
- Animal culture: conservation in a changing world.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Integrating culture into primate conservation.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- The development of social attention in orangutans: Comparing peering behavior in wild and zoo-housed individuals.iScience · 2025Article
- What we know and don't know about great ape cultural communication in the wild.American journal of primatology · 2025Review
- The extent of western lowland gorilla social relationships within and between groups.PloS one · 2025Article
- Article
- Long-term observations in the Ndoki forest resolve enduring questions about truffle foraging by western lowland gorillas.Primates; journal of primatology · 2024Article
- Ecological, social, and intrinsic factors affecting wild orangutans' curiosity, assessed using a field experiment.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Reflections on connections.Primates; journal of primatology · 2023Article
- Association patterns of female gorillas.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- The method of exclusion (still) cannot identify specific mechanisms of cultural inheritance.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Sociality predicts orangutan vocal phenotype.Nature ecology & evolution · 2022Article
- The origins of human cumulative culture: from the foraging niche to collective intelligence.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- A socio-ecological perspective on the gestural communication of great ape species, individuals, and social units.Ethology, ecology & evolution · 2022Review
- Article
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Authors and funding
13 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The question of whether any species except humans exhibits culture has generated much debate, partially due to the difficulty of providing conclusive evidence from observational studies in the wild. A starting point for demonstrating the existence of culture that has been used for many species including chimpanzees and orangutans is to show that there is geographic variation in the occurrence of particular behavioral traits inferred to be a result of social learning and not ecological or genetic influences. Gorillas live in a wide variety of habitats across Africa and they exhibit flexibility in diet, behavior, and social structure. Here we apply the 'method of exclusion' to look for the presence/absence of behaviors that could be considered potential cultural traits in well-habituated groups from five study sites of the two species of gorillas. Of the 41 behaviors considered, 23 met the criteria of potential cultural traits, of which one was foraging related, nine were environment related, seven involved social interactions, five were gestures, and one was communication related. There was a strong positive correlation between behavioral dissimilarity and geographic distance among gorilla study sites. Roughly half of all variation in potential cultural traits was intraspecific differences (i.e. variability among sites within a species) and the other 50% of potential cultural traits were differences between western and eastern gorillas. Further research is needed to investigate if the occurrence of these traits is influenced by social learning. These findings emphasize the importance of investigating cultural traits in African apes and other species to shed light on the origin of human culture.
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