Motes-Rodrigo Alba, Hernandez-Aguilar R Adriana, Laska Matthias
IFM Biology, Linköping University, 581 83, Linköping, Sweden.
Department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
Primates. 2019 Jul;60(4):367-373. doi: 10.1007/s10329-019-00727-y. Epub 2019 Apr 20.
Digging for underground storage organs of plants has been reported in various populations of wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). However, it is unknown so far whether chimpanzees display lateral biases in manual digging as direct observations of this behavior are still lacking. It was therefore the aim of the present study to assess, for the first time, hand preferences for digging in a group of nine captive chimpanzees. We found that with only one exception, all individuals engaged in manual digging for buried food. Five individuals displayed a significant right-hand preference, two a significant left-hand preference, and one was ambidextrous. No apparent differences between males and females were found with regard to the direction or strength of hand preferences for manual digging. Only one out of four parent-offspring pairs was congruent in their preferred hand for manual digging. Three of the eight chimpanzees who dug manually also used tools in order to excavate buried food. Among those three individuals, one displayed a significant right-, one a significant left-hand preference, and one was ambidextrous. Only one of these three chimpanzees was consistent in preferring the same hand for manual and tool digging. The present findings are in line with the notion that chimpanzees display significant hand preferences at the individual level for haptic-guided behaviors, with a tendency for the right hand.
在不同的野生黑猩猩（Pan troglodytes）群体中，都有挖掘植物地下贮藏器官的报道。然而，到目前为止，由于仍缺乏对这种行为的直接观察，尚不清楚黑猩猩在手动挖掘时是否存在侧向偏好。因此，本研究的目的是首次评估一组9只圈养黑猩猩在挖掘时的手偏好。我们发现，除了一个例外，所有个体都参与了手动挖掘埋藏的食物。5只个体表现出显著的右手偏好，2只表现出显著的左手偏好，1只两手都灵活使用。在手动挖掘的手偏好方向或强度方面，未发现雄性和雌性之间有明显差异。在四对亲子中，只有一对在手动挖掘的偏好手上是一致的。在八只手动挖掘的黑猩猩中，有三只也使用工具来挖掘埋藏的食物。在这三只个体中，一只表现出显著的右手偏好，一只表现出显著的左手偏好，一只两手都灵活使用。这三只黑猩猩中只有一只在手动挖掘和使用工具挖掘时都一致地偏好同一只手。目前的研究结果与以下观点一致，即黑猩猩在个体水平上对触觉引导行为表现出显著的手偏好，且有右手偏好的倾向。
