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Over a 12-year span, two groups of chimpanzees maintained distinct, consistent styles of clasping hands while grooming one another, according to a study published May 26 in Biology Letters. The study findings represent a step forward in understanding chimp sociality and chimp culture—the behavioral patterns that are learned from others in a social group.
“The fact that different groups of chimps have different repertoires of gestures is something we’ve known for some time,” says Mary Lee Jensvold, the associate director of the chimp sanctuary Fauna Foundation, who was not involved in the research, but it was not clear how stable these behaviors were. “The longevity of [this study] is new,” she adds, noting that the semi-wild setting of the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage Trust in Zambia where the research was conducted means that the study’s findings likely apply to wild chimps, too.
Chimp researcher William McGrew, then ...
