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Updated: Mar 26, 2026

Behavioral Assessment of Manual Dexterity in Non-Human Primates
Published on: November 11, 2011
A multidisciplinary view on cultural primatology: behavioral innovations and traditions in Japanese macaques
Jean-Baptiste Leca1, Noëlle Gunst2, Amanda N Pelletier2
1Department of Psychology, University of Lethbridge, 4401 University Drive, Lethbridge, AB, T1K3M4, Canada. jeanbaptiste.leca@uleth.ca.
Abstract:
Cultural primatology (i.e., the study of behavioral traditions in nonhuman primates as a window into the evolution of human cultural capacities) was founded in Japan by Kinji Imanishi in the early 1950s. This relatively new research area straddles different disciplines and now benefits from collaborations between Japanese and Western primatologists. In this paper, we return to the cradle of cultural primatology by revisiting our original articles on behavioral innovations and traditions in Japanese macaques. For the past 35 years, our international team of biologists, psychologists and anthropologists from Japan, France, Sri Lanka, the USA and Canada, has been taking an integrative approach to addressing the influence of environmental, sociodemographic, developmental, cognitive and behavioral constraints on the appearance, diffusion, and maintenance of behavioral traditions in Macaca fuscata across various domains; namely, feeding innovation, tool use, object play, and non-conceptive sex.
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