ArticleBiology letters2020
Examining the mechanisms underlying the acquisition of animal tool behaviour.
Article in Biology letters, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed.
- Sticks and Stones: Hand Preference and Grip in Wild Chimpanzee Tool-Use.American journal of biological anthropology · 2026Article
- Experimental emergence of conventions in human dyads.PloS one · 2026Article
- Observational social learning of "know-how" and "know-what" in wild orangutans: evidence from nest-building skill acquisition.Communications biology · 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
- Human culture is uniquely open-ended rather than uniquely cumulative.Nature human behaviour · 2025Review
- Mechanical Problem Solving in Goffin's Cockatoos-Towards Modeling Complex Behavior.Adaptive behavior · 2024Article
- Chimpanzees use social information to acquire a skill they fail to innovate.Nature human behaviour · 2024Article
- Expanding the causal menu: An interventionist perspective on explaining human behavioural evolution.Evolutionary human sciences · 2024Article
- Naïve, adult, captive chimpanzees do not socially learn how to make and use sharp stone tools.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- The evolution of hierarchically structured communication.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Tool Use in Horses.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- Early knapping techniques do not necessitate cultural transmission.Science advances · 2022Article
- Field experiments find no evidence that chimpanzee nut cracking can be independently innovated.Nature human behaviour · 2022Article
- Experimental investigation of orangutans' lithic percussive and sharp stone tool behaviours.PloS one · 2022Article
- Naïve, unenculturated chimpanzees fail to make and use flaked stone tools.Open research Europe · 2021Article
- Review
- The zone of latent solutions and its relevance to understanding ape cultures.Biology & philosophy · 2020Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Despite major advances in the study of animal tool behaviour, researchers continue to debate how exactly certain behaviours are acquired. While specific mechanisms, such as genetic predispositions or action copying, are sometimes suspected to play a major role in behavioural acquisition, controlled experiments are required to provide conclusive evidence. In this opinion piece, we refer to classic ethological methodologies to emphasize the need for studying the relative contributions of different factors to the emergence of specific tool behaviours. We describe a methodology, consisting of a carefully staged series of baseline and social-learning conditions, that enables us to tease apart the roles of different mechanisms in the development of behavioural repertoires. Experiments employing our proposed methodology will not only advance our understanding of animal learning and culture, but as a result, will also help inform hypotheses about human cognitive, cultural and technological evolution. More generally, our conceptual framework is suitable for guiding the detailed investigation of other seemingly complex animal behaviours.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.