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What is the role of mothers in the acquisition of termite-fishing behaviors in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii)?

Overview of attention for article published in Animal Cognition, September 2005
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  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (98th percentile)

Mentioned by

news
7 news outlets
policy
1 policy source
video
1 YouTube creator

Citations

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173 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
205 Mendeley
Title
What is the role of mothers in the acquisition of termite-fishing behaviors in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii)?
Published in
Animal Cognition, September 2005
DOI 10.1007/s10071-005-0002-7
Pubmed ID
Authors

Elizabeth V. Lonsdorf

Abstract

This paper explores the role of maternal influences on the acquisition of a tool-using task in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) in order to build on and complement previous work done in captivity. Young chimpanzees show a long period of offspring dependency on mothers and it is during this period that offspring learn several important skills, especially how to and on what to forage. At Gombe National Park, one skill that is acquired during dependency is termite-fishing, a complex behavior that involves inserting a tool made from the surrounding vegetation into a termite mound and extracting the termites that attack and cling to the tool. All chimpanzees observed at Gombe have acquired the termite-fishing skill by the age of 5.5 years. Since the mother is the primary source of information throughout this time period, I investigated the influence of mothers' individual termite-fishing characteristics on their offsprings' speed of acquisition and proficiency at the skill once acquired. Mother's time spent alone or with maternal family members, which is highly correlated to time spent termite-fishing, was positively correlated to offspring's acquisition of critical elements of the skill. I also investigated the specific types of social interactions that occur between mothers and offspring at the termite mound and found that mothers are highly tolerant to offspring, even when the behavior of the offspring may disrupt the termite-fishing attempt. However, no active facilitation by mothers of offsprings' attempts were observed.

Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 205 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United States 4 2%
Brazil 1 <1%
Switzerland 1 <1%
Canada 1 <1%
Israel 1 <1%
Unknown 197 96%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 46 22%
Researcher 33 16%
Student > Master 33 16%
Student > Bachelor 26 13%
Student > Doctoral Student 12 6%
Other 32 16%
Unknown 23 11%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 85 41%
Psychology 37 18%
Social Sciences 18 9%
Environmental Science 8 4%
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology 4 2%
Other 20 10%
Unknown 33 16%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 59. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 07 January 2022.
All research outputs
#613,402
of 22,831,537 outputs
Outputs from Animal Cognition
#151
of 1,452 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#677
of 58,623 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Animal Cognition
#1
of 4 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 22,831,537 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 97th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,452 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 33.5. This one has done well, scoring higher than 89% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 58,623 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 98% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 4 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has scored higher than all of them