JUST as immigrants adopt the accent of the country that they move to, so
chimpanzees copy the local customs when they join another group. It shows that
chimps have culture, say William McGrew and Linda Marchant at Miami University
in Ohio and their colleagues.
The researchers found that wild chimps learn specific hand gestures. “It’s
like the boy scouts having a three-finger salute and the cub scouts having a
two-finger salute,” says McGrew.
Many social scientists maintain that humans—with our language, fashion
and music—are the only animals sophisticated enough to have culture. But
biologists are now arguing that…
