Given chimps’ close genetic relationship with humans, he suspects social learning was a quality found in the common ancestor of the two species. Van Leeuwen sees a potential link between this chimp cultural behavior-and specifically, their ability to learn and then maintain customs over long periods of time-and the evolution of human social behavior. While the function of handclasping is not known, University of Antwerp researcher Edwin van Leeuwen, the study’s author, says he’s not bothered by the ease of comparing these handclasps to human handshakes, themselves a cultural behavior. Andrews in Scotland, first reported observing handclasp grooming in wild chimps in 1978, and this behavior among chimp dyads has attracted increasing research interest in recent years. “The longevity of is new,” she adds, noting that the semi-wild setting of the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage Trust in Zambia where the research was conducted means that the study’s findings likely apply to wild chimps, too.Ĭhimp researcher William McGrew, then affiliated with the University of St. “The fact that different groups of chimps have different repertoires of gestures is something we’ve known for some time,” says Mary Lee Jensvold, the associate director of the chimp sanctuary Fauna Foundation, who was not involved in the research, but it was not clear how stable these behaviors were. The study findings represent a step forward in understanding chimp sociality and chimp culture-the behavioral patterns that are learned from others in a social group. Over a 12-year span, two groups of chimpanzees maintained distinct, consistent styles of clasping hands while grooming one another, according to a study published May 26 in Biology Letters.
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