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More on Chimpanzees and Peanuts

Yesterday, I wrote about this paper on chimpanzees learning (or not) to spit water into a tube to retrieve a peanut. I was so very sad to see that there were no supplementary materials included with the paper.

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Yesterday, I wrote about this paper on chimpanzees learning (or not) to spit water into a tube to retrieve a peanut.

I was so very sad to see that there were no supplementary materials included with the paper. No awesome videos of chimps spitting water into a tube to share with you.


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So I sent an email to Dr. Claudio Tennie, the lead author of the paper, and postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, inquiring as to the possible existence of a video. It seems that there aren't any available. But, he gave me a link to an awesome video already on youtube of an orangutan doing the exact same task!

Check it out:

Tennie, C., Call, J., & Tomasello, M. (2010). Evidence for Emulation in Chimpanzees in Social Settings Using the Floating Peanut Task PLoS ONE, 5 (5). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0010544

Jason G. Goldman is a science journalist based in Los Angeles. He has written about animal behavior, wildlife biology, conservation, and ecology for Scientific American, Los Angeles magazine, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the BBC, Conservation magazine, and elsewhere. He contributes to Scientific American's "60-Second Science" podcast, and is co-editor of Science Blogging: The Essential Guide (Yale University Press). He enjoys sharing his wildlife knowledge on television and on the radio, and often speaks to the public about wildlife and science communication.

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