Could One Of These Cultured Chimpanzees Please Show Me How To Open A Juice Box For My Kid?
“Researchers from Kyoto University in Japan and the University of Kent in England gave two groups of chimpanzees straws and put them in rooms with juice boxes mounted onto the wall. One group started using the 7-inch straws to dip into a hole in the juice box, while the other started using the sucking method (as humans would for a milkshake, or pretty much any other drink). Sucking juice through a straw was 50 times more efficient: A chimp could down 50 milliliters of juice in 30 seconds, while it would take their dipping peers 10 minutes to pull out a mere 20 milliliters. When the researchers put a straw-sucker and a straw-dipper in the same room, they found that the dipper would quickly adopt this better, faster method if they closely observed it in action.”
— Scientists prove that the old monkey-see, monkey-do thing extends further toward actual observational learning, one of the hallmarks of what we humans consider “culture,” than had apparently been previously established. Fascinating, etc. But did the chimpanzees have to open the juice boxes themselves? That’s what I’m interested in. Because if one of those self-satisfied creatures has figured out a way to puncture the little foil seal with the sharp point of the straw without spraying cranapple juice into its face, well… frankly, on second thought, I don’t want to know about it after all. Also, you know they’re coming to get us, right?