This website provides a searchable, graphical database that describes the cultural variations identified in the 1999 Nature paper and shows their distribution across the long-term African study sites. It is planned to add to the photographic and video documentation of these behaviours as material of appropriate quality becomes available. Our cultural diversity is surely a major part of any answer to this question. Human societies vary in language, dress, cuisine and a host of other customs. It seems to be in the nature of a human child to assimilate these.
Humans are the most deeply cultural creatures on the planet.
However, the basic phenomenon underlying culture, the passing on of behavioral traditions, is not unique to us. Traditions have been documented in several animal species. For example, some songbirds copy parental songs, and this has led to the development of different song dialects in local populations. This variation is the subject of this website, complementing the article Cultures in Chimpanzees, published in the scientific journal Nature in June, 1999. This was not the first publication to address the question of chimpanzee cultures, nor will it be the last, but it sets out the most definitive picture available by the turn of the century.