Apes Imitate But Will Never Innovate

Interesting article from New Scientist on some latest thoughts from comparative psychologists as to whether human powers of cultural transfer of information are indeed unique. See the final chapter in NOT A CHIMP for a long discussion on this. Scientists in Leipzig formulated an experiment where four year-old children and chimps had to try and make a loop out of a piece of string in order to tow a piece of wood with a nail in it toward them for a reward. Neither species managed it on its own but only the children responded to tutoring on the making of loops - such that the majority succeeded. The chimps seemed impervious - concentrating on the outcome rather than the complicated steps needed to achieve it.
"Because apes focused on the outcome, rather than the process of creating a loop and bringing the block closer, they did not – and will never – transcend their inability to discover the solution on their own", the NS reports the lead scientist concluding. Andy Whiten, at the University of St. Andrews thinks the problem is more nuanced than that and it has to do with "over-imitation" - a slavish attention to all the details, relevant or not, in a demonstrator's actions.Chimps' imitation is good enough to allow them to copy very simple techniques but it runs out of steam the more difficult and opaque the technique being demonstrated becomes. As Whiten says: "They didn't get it. They didn't show any kind of cumulative cultural evolution. There's something rather curious going on in these non-human species, where they get stuck on simpler techniques."
The article concludes that such comparative experiments are bringing together once disparate scientific camps into general agreement on the limits to chimpanzee cultural intelligence.