bavoy. Some orangutans blow away with the palm of your hand "berries", lying down to sleep: the equivalent of our "Good night." Others involved in sports: how to slide, move out of dead trees at the last moment clutching the nearest branch.
The fact that some orangutans use tools, while others - no, and served as a pretext to search for expressions of culture. But scientists were not convinced. "We've even taken aback when they realized that follows from our data," - says van Schaik.
This work is a continuation of the previous analyzed the availability of skills, culture in chimpanzees (Nature, vol 399, p 682), which also required a decade of effort. Then it was revealed 39 paradigms of cultural behavior, and since then the culture was counted in a family of primates millions of years.
Scientists have hypothesized that the skills of culture emerged before as a way of chimpanzees, an orangutan and Homo sapiens diverged, since it is unlikely that they appear three times separately.
Orangutans less than other great apes are close to man, so that if the origin of human culture include the further in time, scientists will have to do other primates such as monkeys, and maybe even whales or dolphins, said Andrew White of the University sv.Endryu (UK) head of research behavior of chimpanzees.
Some works suggest that whales and dolphins - social animals, possessing a large brain and occupy different ecological niches - may exhibit cultural behavior.
Culture requires extensive social contacts that manners were passed down from generation to generation. But in contrast to themoresociable chimpanzees orangutans often seek solitude.
However, some populations of orangutans demonstrate a greater level of socialization, and that these groups can observe the selected research paradigm of behavior than even weightier confirmed their affiliation to the culture.
There was onemorecaveat: the difference in behavior can be explained only by the fact that the monkeys adapted to different habitats. However, features observed by researchers, differed from region to region and not depend on the habitat. "Consequently, we have to deal with the culture and not an artifact of Ecology", - says van Schaik.
Thoroughly mastered, as similar expressions of culture of chimpanzees and orangutans, says the scientist, we can look at how they differ from human culture, and ask yourself, why the differences.
Currently, however, monkeys are on the brink of destasction. Some of the areas included in the study had disappeared due to illegal logging. "We have to asn a race with time" - says van Schaik.
Natasha McDowell

Source: inopressa.com