FOR all their cognitive prowess, chimps will never create steam engines, stone pyramids, or even a simple wheel.
That’s because they can’t latch onto new ways of doing things, says , a psychologist at the University of St Andrews, UK. Along with his colleagues, Whiten devised a simple test to show that unlike children, who instinctively adopt better methods for obtaining a reward, chimps will stick to their tried and tested techniques.
The researchers taught 11 young chimps to scoop out honey from inside a box by dipping a stick into a hole in the box. They then showed them how moving the stick in the hole released a latch that opened the box, offering up all the honey plus hidden peanuts. Most 3 and 4-year old children readily adopted the better solution, but none of the apes did (, vol 364, p 2417).
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“They didn’t get it. They didn’t show any kind of cumulative cultural evolution,” Whiten says. “There’s something curious going on in these non-human species, where they get stuck on simpler techniques.”
