What You See is Different from What I See: Species Differences in Visual Perception

Abstract

Fieldwork and laboratory work need to go hand in hand to provide us with a complete picture of the life and mind of the chimpanzee. Laboratory study is done with a community of 14 chimpanzees of 3 generations at KUPRI. The Ai project continues since 1978. My colleagues and I have covered various topics such as perception, cognition, memory and its development. Field study focuses on the community of 13 chimpanzees of 3 generations at Bossou, Guinea, West Africa. Bossou chimpanzees are well known to use a pair of stones as hammer and anvil to crack open nuts. Since 1986, I have explored developmental changes in the tool technology. The combination of laboratory and field studies has revealed a unique mode of social learning in chimpanzees, called "Education by master-apprenticeship". The features are 1) the strong mother-infant bond, 2) the lack of active teaching, 3) the infants' intrinsic motivation to copy the mother's behavior and 4) the high tolerance of the mothers. Through education by master-apprenticeship, chimpanzees can pass knowledge and skills from one generation to the next, thereby maintaining their community's cultural repertoire.