Do chimpanzees anticipate an object’s weight? A field experiment on the kinematics of hammer-lifting movements in the nut-cracking Taï chimpanzees
| Autor: | Giulia Sirianni, Axel Schüler, Roger Mundry, Christophe Boesch, Paolo Gratton, Roman M. Wittig |
|---|---|
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2017 |
| Předmět: |
0301 basic medicine
Nut Settore BIO/05 Pan troglodytes Computer science Foraging Experimental and Cognitive Psychology Kinematics nuts law.invention 03 medical and health sciences Acceleration 0302 clinical medicine chimpanzees camera traps male law tool use behavior motor cognition Computer vision Hammer Sensory cue Ecology Evolution Behavior and Systematics Original Paper Force profile business.industry weight cues Object (philosophy) biomechanical phenomena animals tool use 030104 developmental biology Cote d'Ivoire female kinematics video recording lifting Artificial intelligence business 030217 neurology & neurosurgery |
| Zdroj: | Animal Cognition |
| Popis: | When humans are about to manipulate an object, our brains use visual cues to recall an internal representation to predict its weight and scale the lifting force accordingly. Such a long-term force profile, formed through repeated experiences with similar objects, has been proposed to improve manipulative performance. Skillful object manipulation is crucial for many animals, particularly those that rely on tools for foraging. However, despite enduring interest in tool use in non-human animals, there has been very little investigation of their ability to form an expectation about an object’s weight. In this study, we tested whether wild chimpanzees use long-term force profiles to anticipate the weight of a nut-cracking hammer from its size. To this end, we conducted a field experiment presenting chimpanzees with natural wooden hammers and artificially hollowed, lighter hammers of the same size and external appearance. We used calibrated videos from camera traps to extract kinematic parameters of lifting movements. We found that, when lacking previous experience, chimpanzees lifted hollowed hammers with a higher acceleration than natural hammers (overshoot effect). After using a hammer to crack open one nut, chimpanzees tuned down the lifting acceleration for the hollowed hammers, but continued lifting natural hammers with the same acceleration. Our results show that chimpanzees anticipate the weight of an object using long-term force profiles and suggest that, similarly to humans, they use internal representations of weight to plan their lifting movements. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s10071-017-1144-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
| Externí odkaz: |
|