The sample had a wide age range, with male and female chimps observed. The researchers examined 84 video clips of chimpanzees grooming leaves near at least one other individual to search for possible explanations for the divergence from typically observed behavior.
“She is really persistent with trying to get her mom to look at it, and it’s only when her mom really visibly dropped her whole head to orient to the leaf that (Fiona) then seems satisfied.” Fiona is then showing her the leaf to say, ‘look at it,’” Slocombe said.
“When Fiona was doing this, (Sutherland) didn’t really seem interested she wasn’t watching and wasn’t giving her any attention. From Tobias DeschnerĬhimpanzees apply 'medicine' to each others' wounds in a possible show of empathy This photo shows a chimpanzee female, Roxy, applying an insect to a wound on the face of an adult chimpanzee male named Thea. Often, surrounding chimpanzees will also become engrossed in the action, intently watching the leaf being groomed. The reasoning behind the behavior is a mystery, but Slocombe and her colleagues suspect it could be to inspect an ectoparasite, such as a tick, on top of the leaf. “This is the first promising kind of suggestion that this (behavior) might not be uniquely human, and that chimpanzees might be capable and motivated to do this,” Slocombe said.įiona had been engaged in what researchers call “leaf grooming,” a common behavior in which a chimpanzee will stroke and manipulate a leaf. Slocombe and her colleagues were studying Fiona and her infant as part of a separate project on their wider social group, when they captured the footage of Fiona holding the leaf out to her mother before taking it back again once she had Sutherland’s attention. The mother-daughter chimps, called Sutherland and Fiona by researchers, are part of the Ngogo chimpanzee community in Kibale National Park in Uganda. It’s like, ‘look, look, this is cool, isn’t it?’ And that is very humanlike and something that we thought was fairly unique to our species,” said study coauthor Katie Slocombe, a professor of psychology at the University of York in the United Kingdom. … She seems to be showing it just for the sake of showing it. “Critically, she didn’t seem to want her mom to do anything with the leaf. More examples of such interactions are needed to better understand the intention behind the gesture, the study’s researchers said, but the observation could demonstrate chimpanzees possess a social behavior once thought to be specific only to their human relatives. Recently, however, scientists documented footage of a wild adult chimpanzee showing her mother a leaf, apparently just to share the experience with her, according to a study published Monday in the journal PNAS. Until now, these behaviors have only been observed when a chimpanzee wants something. Researchers have often observed captive chimps pointing to an object they want their caregivers to give them or young chimps in the wild having tantrums to get attention from their mother. The closest cousin of humans, this species of great ape has effective ways of communicating what it needs. A chimpanzee doesn’t hesitate to make it clear when it wants attention.
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