Although many chimpanzees live in environments with oil palm nuts, members of only a few populations use stones to crack open the nuts. The likely explanation is that
a. The behavioral difference is caused by genetic differences between populations.
b. Members of different populations have different nutritional requirements.
c. The cultural tradition of using stones to crack nuts has arisen in only some populations.
d. Members of different populations differ in learning ability.

Question

Although many chimpanzees live in environments with oil palm nuts, members of only a few populations use stones to crack open the nuts. The likely explanation is that

a. The behavioral difference is caused by genetic differences between populations.

b. Members of different populations have different nutritional requirements.

c. The cultural tradition of using stones to crack nuts has arisen in only some populations.

d. Members of different populations differ in learning ability.

Accepted Answer

Welcome back. Let's look at our next problem, identify the incorrect statement regarding chimpanzees. So we'll be looking for a false statement, remember that. And all of our answer choices involve um chimpanzees populations in which some of the groups use stones as tools to crack open oil palm nuts that were prevalent in the environment that many chimpanzees lived in. And only a small group of them, Only certain communities started to use stones to crack open the nuts. So let's recall this from our content video and look at the answer choices here. So Choice A. Says members of only a few populations use stones to crack open the nuts. That is true. Even though many chimpanzees lived near the nuts, only a few populations began to exhibit this behavior choices incorrect choice B says many chimpanzees live in an environment with oil palm nuts. This is also true. So Choice B is not our correct answer choice C. Says using stones to crack nuts is a custom that has only developed in a few communities. This is also true and we can eliminate choice. See so now you have choice D genetic variations across groups are what led to the behavioral variability. Well, we know that chimpanzees are capable of social learning, which means observing a behavior and another individual and copying it. Um chimpanzees are long lived um are born, you know not knowing a lot. They don't have a lot of innate behaviors. And so when we look at something where we have um large numbers of animals with these nuts but we only see a small number of groups and it's within a group that pick up that behavior. Um We can say that it's most likely given that we know chimpanzees are a species with social learning, it's far more likely that this is a case of learned behavior, one individual figuring this out, others watching them and learning that sprang up in a few of these groups and not genetic variations. Or we'd expect to see perhaps more groups um using this advantageous behavior. So social learning much more likely when it comes to chimpanzees versus genetic variations. So we will call this a false statement, and so say that our correct answer is choice D as the incorrect statement about chimpanzees. Thanks for watching. See you in the next video.

Verified video answer for a similar problem:

Key Concepts

Cultural Traditions in Animal Behavior

Genetic Differences in Populations

Learning Ability in Animals