Department of Education and Psychology, Comparative Developmental Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, 14195, Berlin, Germany.
Faculty of Human Sciences, Cognitive BioCognition, Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrück, Artilleriestrasse 34, 49076, Osnabrück, Germany.
Primates. 2020 Jul;61(4):583-591. doi: 10.1007/s10329-020-00805-6. Epub 2020 Mar 12.
The use of tools, long thought to be uniquely human, has now been observed in other animal taxa including several species of birds, non-primate mammals as well as some non-human primate species. Chimpanzees, one of humankind's closest living relatives, exceed all other non-human animal species as they have been reported to use an exceptionally large toolkit. However, relatively little is known about the tool-use skills of the other great ape species. While the majority of tools described are inanimate objects, the use of social tools has received relatively little attention. Here we provide the first evidence of naturally occurring spontaneous exploitative behaviour of a conspecific as a social tool for food acquisition in non-human animals. We observed gorillas in captivity utilising a conspecific as a ladder to gain access to unreachable food. We discuss our findings in the light of other studies on social tool use and suggest the need for more nuanced interpretations of gorillas' cognitive skills.
工具的使用长期以来被认为是人类独有的行为，但现在已经在其他动物分类群中观察到，包括几种鸟类、非灵长类哺乳动物以及一些非人类灵长类物种。黑猩猩是人类最亲近的现存亲属之一，它们的工具使用种类异常丰富，超过了所有其他非人类动物物种。然而，关于其他大型类人猿物种的工具使用技能，我们知之甚少。虽然大多数描述的工具都是无生命的物体，但对社会工具的使用却相对较少关注。在这里，我们首次提供了在非人类动物中自然发生的同类作为获取食物的社会工具的自发利用行为的证据。我们观察到圈养中的大猩猩利用同类作为梯子来获取无法触及的食物。我们根据其他关于社会工具使用的研究讨论了我们的发现，并建议需要更细致地解释大猩猩的认知技能。
