Proximate Factors of Different Types of Grooming Hand-Clasp in Mahale Chimpanzees: Implications for Chimpanzee Social Customs 1.

The article presents information on proximate factors of different types of grooming hand-clasp in Mahale Chimpanzees. Studies of wild chimpanzees that they show quite a wide range of behavioral diversity that cannot simply be explained in terms of ecological differences. Laboratory studies have supplied useful information on, for example, whether particular kinds of social learning occur in nonhuman animals. These studies are important because culture is usually regarded as being transmitted through some kind of social means and the details of such processes are often difficult to see in the wild. In detailed studies of chimpanzee tool use, stress is often placed on the way in which transmissible particles of information are transferred from one individual to another or functionally shaped.