Research reveals you can still teach an old chimp new tricks

By Stephen Beech via SWNS

It's never too old to learn - even for chimps, reveals new research.

The primates continue to learn and improve their tool-using skills well in to adulthood, according to the study.

And prolonged learning capacity might be key to the evolution of tool use in both chimpanzees and humans, say scientists.

The study, published in the journal PLOS Biology, was conducted at Taï National Park, Ivory Coast, by an international research team led by Mathieu Malherbe, of the Institute of Cognitive Sciences, France.

Malherbe, formally the camp manager at the Tai Chimpanzee Project, is currently a PhD student.

He said: "Humans have the capacity to continue learning throughout our entire lifespan.

"It has been hypothesized that this ability is responsible for the extraordinary flexibility with which humans use tools, a key factor in the evolution of human cognition and culture."

Malherbe and his colleagues investigated whether chimps share this feature by examining how they develop tool techniques as they age.

The team observed 70 wild chimps of various ages using sticks to retrieve food via video recordings collected over several years at Taï National Park.

Malherbe said: " “In wild chimpanzees, the intricacies of tool use learning continue into adulthood.

"As they aged, the chimps became more skilled at employing suitable finger grips to handle the sticks.

"These motor skills became fully functional by the age of six, but the chimps continued to hone their techniques well into adulthood.

"Certain advanced skills, such as using sticks to extract insects from hard-to-reach places or adjusting grip to suit different tasks, weren’t fully developed until age 15.

"This suggests that these skills aren’t just a matter of physical development, but also of learning capacities for new technological skills continuing into adulthood."

He added: "This pattern supports ideas that large brains across hominids allow continued learning through the first two decades of life.

”Retention of learning capacity into adulthood thus seems to be a beneficial attribute for tool-using species, a key insight into the evolution of chimpanzees as well as humans."

The team say further research will be needed to understand the details of the chimps’ learning process, such as the role of reasoning and memory or the relative importance of experience compared to instruction from peers.