Young
Female Chimps Outlearn Their Brothers Young female chimps
are faster and better learners than young male chimps, suggests a new study,
echoing learning differences seen in human girls and boys While
young male chimps pass their time playing, young female chimps carefully study
their mothers. AS a result, they learn how to fish for tasty termite snacks over
two years before the boys. Elizabeth Lonsdorf, now at Lincoln
Park Zoo in .Chicago, US, and colleagues at the University of Minnesota, Saint
Paul, spent four years watching how young ’chimpanzees in the Gombe National
Park in Tanzania learned "cultural behavior". The sex
differences in learning behavior were "consistent and strikingly apparent", says
the team. The researchers point out that similar differences are seen in human
children with regard to skills such as writing. "A sex-based learning
differences may therefore date back at least to the last common ancestor of
chimpanzees and humans," they write in the journal Nature.
Chimps make flexible tools from vegetation and then insert them into
termite mounds, extract them and then munch the termites clinging onto the tool
The researchers used video cameras to record this feeding behavior and found
that each chimp mother had her own technique, such as how she used tools of
different lengths; Analysis of the six infants whose ages were
known showed that girl chimps were an average of 31 months old when they
succeeded in fishing out their termites, Where the boy chimps were aged 58
months on average. Females were also more skillful at getting out more termites
with every dip and used techniques similar to their mothers while males did
not. Instead of studying their mothers, the boy chimps spent a
significantly greater amount of time frolicking around the termite mound.
Behaviors such as playing or swinging might help the male infants later in life
when typically male activities like hunting or fighting for dominance become
important, suggest the researchers. Lonsdorf adds that there are
just two main sources of animal portein for chimps -- the termites or colobus
monkeys. "Mature males often hunt monkeys up trees, but females are almost
always either pregnant or burdened with a clinging infant. This makes hunting
difficult," she says. "Adult females spend more time fishing, for termites than
males." So becoming proficient at termite fishing could mean adult females eat
better. "They can watch their offspring at the same time. The young of both
sexes seem to pursue activities related to their adult sex roles at a very young
age."
What are the tools with which chimps fish for termites
