Tool use for corpse cleaning in chimpanzees

Van Leeuwen, Edwin J. C.; Cronin, Katherine A.; Haun, Daniel B. M.

doi:10.1038/srep44091

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Add to Basket

Local TagsRelease HistoryDetailsSummary

Released

Journal Article

Tool use for corpse cleaning in chimpanzees

MPS-Authors

/persons/resource/persons16231

Van Leeuwen, Edwin J. C.
Language and Cognition Department, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Society;
University of St Andrews, School of Psychology & Neuroscience;

External Resource

http://www.nature.com/articles/srep44091
(Supplementary material)

Fulltext (restricted access)

There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.

Fulltext (public)

VanLeeuwen_Cronin_Haun_2017.pdf
(Publisher version), 602KB

Supplementary Material (public)

There is no public supplementary material available

Citation

Van Leeuwen, E. J. C., Cronin, K. A., & Haun, D. B. M. (2017). Tool use for corpse cleaning in chimpanzees. Scientific Reports, 7: 44091. doi:10.1038/srep44091.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-002C-DC12-3

Abstract

ct For the first time, chimpanzees have been observed using tools to clean the corpse of a deceased group member. A female chimpanzee sat down at the dead body of a young male, selected a firm stem of grass, and started to intently remove debris from his teeth. This report contributes novel behaviour to the chimpanzee's ethogram, and highlights how crucial information for reconstructing the evolutionary origins of human mortuary practices may be missed by refraining from developing adequate observation techniques to capture non-human animals' death responses