14 DAY TRIAL // According to the conclusions of a new study by researchers at the Max Planck Institute (MPI), in Germany, it would appear that chimpanzees are not as conformists as originally believed. The primates can adhere to social influences, but they are also rational enough to stick to their own strategies.
Details of the new study appear in a recent issue of the open-access, peer-reviewed scientific journal PLoS ONE. The science team also included experts from the Wolfgang Kohler Primate Research Center in Leipzig and the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage Trust.
The team was able to establish that chimpanzees are indeed very prone to internalizing social influences. At the same time, they also displayed a tendency to adhere to their own problem-solving strategies, instead of simply following the herd, e! Science News reports.
Additionally, it was observed that chimps are likely to change their strategies when they have a higher chance of obtaining greater rewards. This suggests that these creatures are much more rational than originally thought, even though they are very curious.
Study leader Edwin van Leeuwen, from the MPI for Psycholinguistics and Evolutionary Anthropology, says that chimps are very likely to adhere to their familiar behaviors even when the latter become very ineffective. As such, he wanted to learn more about the conditions that would persuade chimps to change.
The study he conducted was focused on 16 captive chimps in Leipzig and 12 semi-wild chimps in Zambia. The primates were trained to operate two vending machines, but one of the groups was much smaller than the other. One of the machines gave one peanut for a wooden ball inserted in its lot.
Chimps in the smaller group saw this happening, and yet exhibited no desire to change their losing strategies. However, when their machine was made more profitable (returning five peanuts for each wooden ball), the majority of chimps in the larger group gradually switched to using this machine.
“Where chimpanzees do not readily change their behavior under majority influences, they do change their behavior when they can maximize their payoffs,” explains Van Leeuwen.
“We conclude that chimpanzees may prefer persevering in successful and familiar strategies over adopting the equally effective strategy of the majority, but that chimpanzees find sufficient incentive in changing their behaviour when they can obtain higher rewards somewhere else.” he adds.