ArticleBiology letters2016
The effects of tradition on problem solving by two wild populations of bearded capuchin monkeys in a probing task.
Article in Biology letters, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 47 citations in OpenAlex.
- Primates and disability: Behavioral flexibility and implications for resilience to environmental change.American journal of primatology · 2025Pooled it
- Variation in cultural attitude, knowledge and individual motivational factors impact engagement and tool use in a field experiment in wild chimpanzees.Royal Society open science · 2026Article
- Object and tool manipulation diversity in an urban capuchin monkey (Sapajus libidinosus) group in Brasília National park.Primates; journal of primatology · 2026Article
- Bearded capuchin monkeys as a model for Alzheimer's disease.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Bearded capuchin monkey as a model for Alzheimer's disease research.Research square · 2023Article
- Dialects in leaf-clipping and other leaf-modifying gestures between neighbouring communities of East African chimpanzees.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Chimpanzees' behavioral flexibility, social tolerance, and use of tool-composites in a progressively challenging foraging problem.iScience · 2021Article
- Spontaneous categorization of tools based on observation in children and chimpanzees.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Habitual tool use innovated by free-living New Zealand kea.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- Chimpanzees (PeerJ · 2018Article
- Food or threat? Wild capuchin monkeys (Sapajus libidinosus) as both predators and prey of snakes.Primates; journal of primatology · 2018Article
- Digging up food: excavation stone tool use by wild capuchin monkeys.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- The effects of tradition on problem solving by two wild populations of bearded capuchin monkeys in a probing task.Biology letters · 2016Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The effects of culture on individual cognition have become a core issue among cultural primatologists. Field studies with wild populations provide evidence on the role of social cues in the ontogeny of tool use in non-human primates, and on the transmission of such behaviours over generations through socially biased learning. Recent experimental studies have shown that cultural knowledge may influence problem solving in wild populations of chimpanzees. Here, we present the results from a field experiment comparing the performance of bearded capuchin monkeys (Sapajus libidinosus) from two wild savannah populations with distinct toolkits in a probing task. Only the population that already exhibited the customary use of probing tools succeeded in solving the new problem, suggesting that their cultural repertoire shaped their approach to the new task. Moreover, only this population, which uses stone tools in a broader range of contexts, tried to use them to solve the problem. Social interactions can affect the formation of learning sets and they affect the performance of the monkeys in problem solving. We suggest that behavioural traditions affect the ways non-human primates solve novel foraging problems using tools.
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