Question:
Do Non-Human Primates have Culture?
Culture is the extra somatic character of human being, is a complex whole. It incorporates knowledge, art, belief, morals, customs, laws and any other characteristics inhabited by man as a part of the society. Social behavior on the other hand is the behavior directed towards the society or taking place between members of the same species. Both culture and social behavior are the exclusive characteristics inherited by man as they are the only one to live in a social grouping. To be precise, the primates are the only animals that forms social group. Man being a part of the order primate reflects the highest specialization in case of social grouping and social behavior that lead to the formation of culture. This social behavior and possibly culture is present in some other higher group of primate. This question is under constant debate over decades if the non-human primates have culture. This study will focus on the social behavior of the non-human primates and seek evidence of culture among them. It will further relate to the pre-human forms to assume their behavior.
The social behavior of the non-human primates explores a wide range due to their arboreal and terrestrial nature. Almost all the non-human primates enjoy strong social bonding and lives in organized social groups. Some of the social behavior of different non-human primate is expressed in the following section.
Pika and Liebal (2012) identified a wide range of communication mechanism exists among the non-human primates. However, none of them have articulated any kind of verbal language. They use their bodily parts for their communication within the group. They can be like making sound, facial expression and gesture, olfactory signals, grooming and touching. The facial expression is believed to convey their psychological state. Moreover, they use their gesture to communicate with other animals for defending their home ground. It is a mechanism used by the primates for displaying threat for intimidating other animals. It includes grunting, yawning, ground slapping, branch shaking and many more to threaten the predators and keep them away from their territory and group members. Smelling mechanism on the other hand is prevalent among the prosimian monkeys. They use to mark their territory. Grooming is another mode of communication among the non-human primates. It is evident in every group of primate. It is believed to increase the social bonding of the group members and reflects their affection towards each others. Hence, for the non-human primates, grooming is more than just a mechanism to keep them hygiene. They are likely to sit in a circle formation and groom the member sitting in front of them.
Emery Thompson (2013) on the other hand focused his study on the mate selection mechanism prevails in different types of non-human primate and the type of grouping. The orangutans, lemurs and galagos are the only groups that follow single mother and offspring grouping. The males usually lead their lives alone for the most of the time. They only connect to their groups during the mating season. Gibbons on the other hand lives a follows the monogamous grouping where the male and the female lives with their offspring. Polygynous mating is prevalent among gorillas. It is the concept of single male multiple female. The most prevalent mating that is found among most the non-human primates is the multi-female, multi-male where the no stable heterosexual bond is evidenced. The group members cumulatively share their sexual partners with all the group members. Dubuc et al. (2014) on the other hand, highlight.
The evidence of dominance hierarchy is also evidence among the non-human primates. A study conducted by Lefevre et al. (2014) identifies that non-human primates also follows dominancy hierarchy. Every group has a dominant individual who is likely to lead the whole group. The leaders are basically selected according to their physical appearance and strength. The individual with largest body structure and physical strength are more likely to become the leader of the groupo. Each group has a male leader and a female leader. The male leader is termed as alpha male and the female leader is referred as alpha female. The rest of the group is bound to follow the leadership of alpha male and alpha female.
Some of the higher level non-human primate reflects the deliberate use of tool in their daily life activities. The chimpanzee, orangutan, capuchin and gorilla use simple tools for getting their food and water. The tools they use ranges a wide variety such as twigs, wads of chewed leaves and stones. They use stones to break nuts, twigs to extract termites from their nests and wads as sponges to absorb drinking water. They also use sticks to fetch honey from the combs and to take seeds from ripe Nessia tree fruit. Hence, it is confirmed that the non-human primates has the knowledge of using the tools according to their needs. However, it is still under debate if they know how to make them. Many scholars believe that the non-human primates use these tools for making their jobs easy, but they don’t know how to make one. They just collect the materials and use the things they find useful for their work. Hence, the tool making knowledge is absent among the primates. However, this intelligence reflected by the higher level non-human primates led many to believe that the primates are capable or will become capable of making tools themselves. They related their thoughts with the Australopithecus, as they were believed to be tool users instead of makers (Matsuzawa, 2008).
All these studies conducted by different scholars highlighted the presence of high level of social behavior among the non-human primates. Though they could not develop language for communication, they have achieved a proficient communication mechanism. However, it does not justify the presence of culture among the non-human primates as it is a more complex idea. Non-human primates are no doubt social beings living is social groups, but they lack what it needs to be called culture.
Study of non-human primates has yielded interesting facts about the human evolution and about the earlier ancestors. The non-human primates specifically the great apes- orang-utan, chimpanzee, gorilla and bonobos, are closely related to humans according to genetic data.
The non-human primates co-existed with the earliest human ancestors and they simultaneously separated in two divergent ways. These non-human primates moved around via brachiating and knuckle walking, and still do, but human ancestors on the other hand had evolved, based on their anatomy and had shifted to quadrupedal and later bipedal mode of locomotion. The ecology of these non-human primates favored their mode of locomotion but as the humans started to migrate outside, they picked up the bipedal mode, and these change of behavior and environment brought out an evolutionary change. Their gait became erect following some physiological changes, like appearance of chin, more centrally placed foramen of magnum, formation of linea-aspera, among many. Because of the erect posture now, the hands of these earliest men were free, for the first time and they used it to grasp and hold things. After sometime, they started to use stones, bones, and wood as tools and weapons. They formed a toolkit and eventually it gave rise to a culture.
Humans have since then evolved a lot and have built civilizations and societies, but the non –human primates are still living in, more or less, the same environment they inhabited in the ancient times.
Comparative study of these non-human primates shed light on the question of primate culture, particularly with respect to their behavioral ecology. Chimpanzees have been seen to build sleeping nests made of twigs and leaves. In addition, these behaviors are observed to have been imitated by young primates from their adult counterparts. At times, these apes are found using stones to crack open nuts, sticks for ant-fishing, leaves to sit on and sometimes even using the leaves to clean themselves after excreting or sexual intercourse. These non -human primates’ dietary pattern was based on their food sources, which depended on their habitat and environment, and they were mainly frugivorous, flavored, insectivore, and omnivore. Initially the human ancestors also shared this dietary pattern. Eventually the dietary patter evolved into a more complex foraging-hunting mode.
Conclusion
These fascinating examples provide some insights and suggest how the earliest human ancestors began to develop culture as a key form of adaptation to various environments. By examining the modern day non-human primate, we might be able to reconstruct the ways of the earliest ancestors in a more detailed way. However, the constant evolution of man helped them achieve culture where the other primate lacks. Hence, the non-human primates are in a stage of evolution that distinguish human and early hominids from other primates. The non-human primates may or may not further evolve to some stage where they might attain culture, but currently they are have not yet attain culture, despite of demonstration of social behavior.
References
Emery Thompson, M. (2013). Comparative reproductive energetics of human and nonhuman primates. Annual Review of Anthropology, 42, 287-304.
Lefevre, C. E., Wilson, V. A., Morton, F. B., Brosnan, S. F., Paukner, A., & Bates, T. C. (2014). Facial width-to-height ratio relates to alpha status and assertive personality in capuchin monkeys. PloS one, 9(4), e93369.
Matsuzawa, T. (2008). Primate foundations of human intelligence: a view of tool use in nonhuman primates and fossil hominids. In Primate origins of human cognition and behavior (pp. 3-25). Springer Japan.
Miller, B. (2011). Cultural Anthropology, 6th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Inc.
Pika, S., & Liebal, K. (Eds.). (2012). Developments in primate gesture research (Vol. 6). John Benjamins Publishing.
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