Cognitive bases of great ape cultures
Field experiments with wild chimpanzees
We develop field experiments in various communities of wild chimpanzees in Uganda to study how their cultural knowledge influence how they solve tasks. Field experiments are notoriously hard to conduct in the wild. The ‘honey-trap experiment’ allowed showing that two communities of chimpanzees in two different forests would solve the same problem (honey trapped inside a log) with different tools, in line with their cultural knowledge (Gruber et al. 2009). This study has become a classic in the animal culture literature and has been replicated in other species (e.g. capuchins) by other researchers. We have developed new paradigms to investigate the use of moss-sponge in Ugandan chimpanzees.
Main papers of interest
Lamon, N., Neumann, C., Zuberbühler, K. & Gruber, T. (2018) Wild chimpanzees select tool material based on efficiency and knowledge. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, doi:
Gruber, T., Zuberbühler, K., Clément, F. & van Schaik, C.P. (2015) Apes have culture but may not know that they do. Frontiers in Psychology, 6:91. doi:
Gruber, T., Singleton, I. & van Schaik, C.P. (2012) Sumatran orangutans differ in their cultural knowledge but not in their cognitive abilities. Current Biology, 22(23), 2231-2235.
Gruber, T., Muller, M.N., Reynolds, V., Wrangham, R.W. & Zuberbühler, K. (2011) Community-specific evaluation of tool affordances in wild chimpanzees. Scientific Reports, 1, doi:
Gruber, T., Muller, M.N., Strimling, P., Wrangham, R.W. & Zuberbühler, K. (2009) Wild chimpanzees rely on cultural knowledge to solve an experimental honey acquisition task. Current biology, 19:1806-10. doi:
Theoretical models of cultural evolution
Based on the findings of our lab as well as the current animal and human cultural evolution literature, we develop theoretical models of the evolution of culture.
Main articles of interest
Gruber, T.‡, Chimento, M.‡, Aplin, L. M., Biro, D. (2022) Efficiency fosters cumulative culture across species. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 377: 20200308. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2020.0308
Gruber, T., Zuberbühler, K., Clément, F. & van Schaik, C.P. (2015) Apes have culture but may not know that they do. Frontiers in Psychology, 6:91. doi:
