Chimpanzees Learn From Tool-Making Video

BBC article about recent research from St. Andrews University probing chimpanzees' capacity for imitation / emulation. The task - similar to one that pioneer psychologist Wolfgang Kohler gave to his prize chimp Sultan almost 100 years ago - was to allow chimps to watch various versions of a video showing another, trained, chimp assembling a long rod out of two connecting parts, to reach food outside their cages. Some chimps were shown the full video, others only part of the process. The latter group constructed a usable tool using the gist of what was shown them, those that witnessed the full assembly slavishly followed it even when the food was only a short distance from the cage, making the longer tool cumbersome to employ. Children seem to "anally" over-imitate like this and further comparative tests with chimps and children are underway. Why is there no such strong social learning documented in chimps in the wild? Perhaps, the researchers say, they suffer from a lack of tolerant teachers.