Indirect social influence in the maintenance of the stone-handling tradition in Japanese macaques, Macaca fuscata
Section snippets
Study Group
The following observations were made on the free-ranging Arashiyama E troop of Japanese macaques at the Iwatayama Monkey Park, Arashiyama, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan. Japanese macaques have been provisioned and studied at Arashiyama since 1954 (Huffman 1991). At the time of our observations, the study group was provisioned with wheat grains four times a day by the park staff. This type of food was eaten by the monkeys without any processing whatsoever other than chewing. Visitors were also allowed
Number and Activity of Group Members Involved in Sessions
The number of identified group members entering the areas at least once during the experimental sessions was 116 (i.e. 80.0% of group members), among which 82 were engaged in SH activity (i.e. 56.6% of group members). Of 48 sessions, we recorded a total of 448 entrances, among which 247 (55.1%) were followed by SH activity, whereas 201 (44.9%) were not. The average number of entrances per session was 9.3, among which 5.1 ± 3.9 were followed by SH activity. The average duration of presence of an
Discussion
Through the semicontrolled conditions of field experiments, we aimed to simulate the context under which SH might be socially maintained in the wild, and infer which form(s) of social influence might support the persistence of the SH culture in Japanese macaques. Our results supported the ‘stimulus/local enhancement hypothesis’ that individuals preferentially direct their SH behaviour towards typical physical traces of SH activity (piles of stones) over randomly scattered stones. In other
Acknowledgments
Our work was funded by a Grant-In-Aid for scientific research (No. 1907421 to M.A.H.) sponsored by Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture, Japan, by a JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) postdoctoral fellowship to J.-B.L. (No. 07421), and by travel funds from the HOPE Project, a core-to-core programme sponsored by JSPS. We are grateful to S. Asaba, J. Hashiguchi, S. Kobatake and S. Tamada from Iwatayama Monkey Park for helping us during the course of the study. For
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N. Gunst is now at Kyodai Syokuin Syukusha 142, Tonoji Ooguro 178-44, Inuyama, Aichi 484-0094, Japan.