Surprising Difference in Learning by Human Children and Bonobo Apes #Science #Behavior #Ethology

From an early age, children are very skilled in imitating the actions of others and are so motivated to do so that they will even copy actions for no reason. (Stock image)

Credit: © bartsadowski / Fotolia


From an early age, children are very skilled in imitating the actions of others and are so motivated to do so that they will even copy actions for no reason. Imitation is part of what it means to be human, underlying our capacity to acquire and transmit culture, including social rituals, norms, and conventions. A new study compared children's capacity to imitate behavior with the same capacity of humans' closest living great ape relatives, the bonobos. The study found that bonobos do not copy actions as children do, which highlights the unique nature of human imitation. The study, by researchers at the University of Birmingham and Durham University in the United Kingdom, appears in the journal Child Development. "Our results show striking species differences in imitation," explains Zanna Clay, assistant professor of psychology at Durham University (formerly at the University of Birmingham), the study's lead author. "The young children were very willing to copy actions even though they served no obvious function, while the bonobos were not. Children's tendency to imitate in this way likely represents a critical piece of the puzzle as to why human cultures differ so profoundly from those of great apes."

Science Daily:  Humans imitate in unique ways: Comparing children and bonobos

There's no clever punchline since it's remarkable to see such a simple thing yielding such a profound effect.


America has an expression, my father lived his life and let me watch.

That's nicely pithy but I recall as a kid watching my ol' Dad washing his hands since he did it like a surgeon.  That printed as the proper way to get your hands clean and I probably haven't altered the method since.

That simple tendency to absorb the things we see serves an immigrant well, especially as a kid and especially with the local slang.  The perspective in the science that this is something humans do but even our closest relatives cannot is a remarkable thing.


There's a general philosophical aspect insofar as this demonstrates a deeply-rooted tendency to imitate and copy things since that spins out to everything from conformity to obedience to Milgram experiments in twisted psychology.

Based on our earliest programming for learning, being creative wasn't necessarily productive.  Spin that as far as you like and you see the evidence for it.  The rest of the article is there for the interested student.