Monkey puzzle reveals social skills
Friday, 23 Mar 2007 17:23
Monkeys have displayed an ability to use tools
Science In Focus
Click here to see how British small businesses are creating innovative, low carbon business ideas, on inthenews.co.uk. Full Story
Researchers have discovered that monkeys have greater social and learning skills than previously thought.
The study, conducted in capuchin monkeys in South America, challenges human understanding of what the creatures are capable of.
Dr Phyllis Lee of Stirling University, which carried out the research, said that the use of tools among the great apes is well documented.
But there are key differences between monkeys and apes which meant that the former should not have developed such skills.
Tools are used to scare people away by banging them on the sides of the cliffs where they live, to dig and to pound open nuts.
"Most of our previous research on technical intelligence, the use of tools, has been done on the great apes. So we know that gorillas and orangutans and chimps in particular use large numbers of tools in lots of different contexts, but we kind of expect that because they are our ancestors," Dr Lee told the Today programme.
"Monkeys, however, should not be able to do this. They are not really ancestors, but surprisingly capuchins can use tools in a huge number of different contexts. It is quite exciting because it means monkeys can learn socially, we can look at monkeys learning socially and understand social traditions."