Scientists Crack Monkey Behaviour
Scientists have observed two groups of long-tailed macaque monkeys (长尾猕猴) in Thailand, Southeast Asia, using stone tools differently, even though the islands they live on are less than six miles apart.
Long-tailed macaques are one of only a few primate species (灵长类物种) known to use stone tools. The macaques use stones that they choose carefully to hammer the shells of shellfish, such as oysters, sea snails and crabs. They crack them open and scoop out (挖出) the flesh to eat.
On two neighbouring islands off the coast of Thailand, one group of macaques were seen reusing their tools, called hammer stones, whereas the monkeys on the other island threw their stones away after using them once. A team of scientists from the UK, Germany and Thailand, led by Lydia Luncz from the University of Oxford, studied hammer stones found on Yao Noi island and on nearby Boi Yai island.
Distinctive patterns of wear on stones meant that they could tell which stones had been used as tools. The team found that the stones on Boi Yai used to crack open oysters had more and deeper lines and they had been well used, but on Yao Noi the ones hadn’t been used much at all. The hammer stones used by each group were so different that the researchers were able to work out which group had used the tool just by looking at it. At first, the researchers thought there might be a shortage of stones on Boi Yai, which would explain why one group reused them. However, the team soon found lots of solid stones on both islands.
They think that the difference in the behaviour of each group is an example of culture. Culture is the ideas, customs and social behaviour in a group and is a typically human quality. It includes shared habits passed down from older to younger animals. The different patterns of behaviour between the two groups of monkeys suggest that different traditions can develop in different groups of macaques, even though they live in similar sorts of environments. “The use of tools is passed on from monkey to monkey as they learn from each other,” said Luncz.
The researchers hope that this work will be helpful for scientists Studying any early humans and the way they used stone tools.
【小题1】What can we know about the macaques from the first two paragraphs?| A．They can make use of stones. | B．They use different tools to hunt. |
| C．Their favourite food is shellfish. | D．Their groups live far from each other. |
| A．Damage. | B．Dirt. | C．Size. | D．Decoration. |
| A．macaques on Boi Yai work harder |
| B．macaques on Yao Noi have more stones |
| C．macaques have their own traditions in groups |
| D．macaques learnt some behaviour from humans |
