A further food-washing tradition in Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata)

Stone handling, an object play behaviour in macaques: welfare and neurological health implications of a bio-culturally driven tradition

Object play in primates is viewed as generally having no immediate functional purpose, limited for the most part to immature individuals. At the proximate level, the occurrence of object play in immatures is regarded as being intrinsically self-rewarding, with the ultimate function of supporting motoneuronal development and the acquisition of skills necessary to prepare them for survival as adults. Stone handling (SH), a solitary object play behaviour occurs, and has been studied, in multiple free-ranging and captive troops of provisioned Japanese macaques, as well as rhesus and long-tailed macaques for over 35 years now. A review of our combined findings from these observations reveal that infants acquire SH in the first 3-4 months of life and exhibit increasingly more complex and varied behavioural patterns with age. The longitudinal data shows that many individuals maintain this activity throughout life, practicing it under relaxed ecological and social conditions. The ultimate function may be bimodal, promoting motor development in young and neural maintenance and regeneration in adult and aging individuals.

CULTURE IN NONHUMAN PRIMATES?

▪ Abstract  Cultural primatology is hypothesized on the basis of social learning of group-specific behavior by nonhuman primates, especially in nature. Scholars ask different questions in testing this idea: what? (anthropologists), how? (psychologists), and why? (zoologists). Most evidence comes from five genera: Cebus (capuchin monkeys), Macaca (macaque monkeys), Gorilla (gorilla), Pongo (orangutan), and Pan (chimpanzees). Two species especially, Japanese monkey (Macaca fuscata) and chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes), show innovation, dissemination, standardization, durability, diffusion, and tradition in both subsistence and nonsubsistence activities, as revealed by decades of longitudinal study.