Anticulturalist Objections
Although culturalists hail all of these examples as evidence that animals have culture, anticulturalists raise a number of objections to that conclusion. Most notably, the anticulturalist Bennett Galef has argued that neither macaque potato washing nor chimpanzee insect fishing—two examples that culturalists hail as among their strongest evidence for animal culture—qualify as true culture.
According to Galef, potato washing by the macaques, contrary to most reports, may not have been learned through imitation, in which case it could not be considered cultural. He cites research by scientists who visited Koshima Island in the 1970's and observed a caretaker giving potatoes only to those macaques that would wash them. The potatoes were, in effect, a reward for engaging in washing behavior. This sort of process, giving a reward for the performance of a particular behavior, is called conditioning. In conditioning, the scientists rather than the animals are responsible for any changes in the animals' behavior, and so the spread of the new behavior is not a true transmission of animal culture. Galef suggests the possibility that the macaques in the 1950's, following Imo's pioneering trip to the water's edge, may have been influenced by their caretakers to take up potato washing. The caretakers who worked on Koshima at that time, however, denied that they influenced the monkeys in this way.
Another flaw in the case for accepting potato washing as culture, Galef argues, is that a socially imitated behavior would be expected to spread throughout a group rapidly. However, nine years passed before most of the younger macaques in the Koshima troop followed Imo's lead. In light of these factors, Galef concludes that potato washing, if not induced by the caretakers, may at least have been discovered by each individual macaque by chance. In either case, it would not be a cultural behavior.
Galef also argues against a cultural explanation for insect fishing by chimpanzees at Gombe. He proposes that ant and termite fishing might actually be a spontaneous behavior driven more by the chimpanzees' environment than by imitation. He points out that young chimps, who do not fish for insects, often poke at ants with twigs and blades of grass as a form of play. As they get older, the young chimps often pick up the discarded twigs and blades of grass of adults who have been insect fishing and do some probing of their own. Occasionally, they get lucky and get a few nibbles. Learning to fish for insects in this way, says Galef, is more of a rewarded type of behavior than an imitative one and thus does not qualify as culture.
Anticulturalists argue that similar noncultural explanations might be made for many of the other observed types of chimpanzee behavior. As for the examples of supposed cultural behavior in other kinds of animals, anticulturalists propose that some of these behaviors, such as variations in bird-song dialects, can be better explained by genetic differences between populations. And other kinds of behaviors, such as the orcas' seal-hunting strategies and the bower birds' construction behavior, might be the product of trial and error rather than teaching and imitation.
