ArticleScientific reports2016
Tool transfers are a form of teaching among chimpanzees.
Article in Scientific reports, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 42 papers.
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Who cites it
42 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- A population threshold for dedicated teaching.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Savanna chimpanzee tool and fruit transfers facilitate the transmission of technological behaviours at Dindefelo, Senegal.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Atypical tool and object use in wild immature chimpanzees reveals developmental pathways to innovation.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Costs of Early Stone Toolmaking cannot Establish the Presence of Know-how Copying.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2025Article
- The growing methodological toolkit for identifying and studying social learning and culture in non-human animals.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Concerted conservation actions to support chimpanzee cultures.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Article
- Wild chimpanzee termite mound inspections converge with the onset of rain.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Postnatal dependency as the foundation of social learning in humans.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Social tolerance and role model diversity increase tool use learning opportunities across chimpanzee ontogeny.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Developmental and Sex-Based Variation in Nest Building Among Wild Immature Chimpanzees.American journal of primatology · 2025Article
- The coevolution of learning schedules and teaching enhances cumulative knowledge and drives a teacher-innovator syndrome.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Shaping behaviors through social experience and their proposed sensitivity to stress.Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.) · 2024Review
- Chimpanzees employ context-specific behavioral strategies within fission-fusion societies.Primates; journal of primatology · 2024Article
- Planning abilities of wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes) in tool-using contexts.Primates; journal of primatology · 2024Article
- Review
- Body part categorical matching in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Article
- Chimpanzees communicate to coordinate a cultural practice.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Teaching is a form of high-fidelity social learning that promotes human cumulative culture. Although recently documented in several nonhuman animals, teaching is rare among primates. In this study, we show that wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes) in the Goualougo Triangle teach tool skills by providing learners with termite fishing probes. Tool donors experienced significant reductions in tool use and feeding, while tool recipients significantly increased their tool use and feeding after tool transfers. These transfers meet functional criteria for teaching: they occur in a learner's presence, are costly to the teacher, and improve the learner's performance. Donors also showed sophisticated cognitive strategies that effectively buffered them against potential costs. Teaching is predicted when less costly learning mechanisms are insufficient. Given that these chimpanzees manufacture sophisticated, brush-tipped fishing probes from specific raw materials, teaching in this population may relate to the complexity of these termite-gathering tasks.
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Registered trials
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