Biology subjects

Schuppli, C.

Publications and source records attributed to Schuppli, C..

9 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Maternal ranging strategies facilitate offspring social play at energetic cost in the most solitary ape

In most vertebrates, social play among peers is considered essential for behavioral development. Yet in solitary species bearing single offspring, opportunities for social play are inherently scarce. Whether mothers of such species actively facilitate play opportunities for their offspring, and at what cost, remains unknown. We used 15 years of behavioral and movement data ([~]30,000 observation hours) from 31 wild Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii) mother-offspring pairs to test whether mothers adjust ranging behavior to increase their offsprings access to play with neighboring peers. Neighboring mothers with similarly aged offspring showed disproportionately high annual overlap in space use, independent of their relatedness or fruit availability. They intensified use of shared areas within existing range boundaries rather than shifting or expanding their ranges, indicating a fine-scaled ranging strategy. Mothers also incurred energetic costs; on days their offspring played with peers, mothers traveled farther and spent less time feeding. Travel distances were also elevated on the days before and after play, with mothers orienting movement toward play partners core areas before play and back toward their own core areas after play. This suggests these encounters are planned and actively pursued over multiple days rather than arising by chance. These findings reveal that orangutan mothers incorporate their infants social needs into daily ranging decisions, at a cost to their own energy budgets. This points toward an underappreciated form of maternal investment and illustrates how the social requirements of development can be met even near the solitary extreme of animal social organization.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2025

Chimpanzee culture beyond the conspicuous: Evidence for broad-scale observational social learning in wild individuals

Wild chimpanzees possess diverse cultural repertoires, representing the richest example of non-human animal cultures. However, traditional methods, which investigate culture at the group level, have likely underestimated the full extent of chimpanzee cultural repertoires. In particular, the cultural relevance of everyday behaviors has remained largely unexplored. Here, we investigated evidence for social transmission of everyday behaviors to assess the breadth of individuals cultural repertoires in a population of wild eastern chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii). First, we validated whether peering (i.e. close-range observation of a conspecific) serves as an indicator of social (i.e., cultural) learning. We then examined the contexts in which chimpanzees engage in peering to determine the range of behaviors that may be culturally transmitted. Finally, we explored potential motivations and additional functions of peering behavior. Our results indicate that chimpanzees use peering for targeted social information seeking in learning-intensive contexts. Peering rate was highest during immaturity, for complex or rare food items, and when observing older, more experienced conspecifics. Overall, wild chimpanzees peered at a wide range of everyday skills, such as feeding and grooming, and directed peering towards various conspecifics from an early age. We found no evidence supporting peering as a begging or submissive "gesture", but our findings indicate that it may function as a signal to initiate affinitive interactions. Our findings suggest that wild chimpanzees use peering to learn a broad variety of skills, thereby highlighting unrecognized cultural potential in everyday skills. Furthermore, our findings suggest that peering may have multiple functions and underlying motivations.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2025

Eight years of social and asocial learning synergistically shape orangutan diet profiles

Cultural learning permeates human skill and knowledge acquisition. To understand its significance for nonhuman animals, we must examine how social learning shapes the development of broad behavioral repertoires, and operates alongside other forms of learning. We analyzed nearly seven thousand records of behavioral indicators of social and individual learning across wild orangutans eight-year dependency period to assess their combined effects on ecological competence relevant for post-independence survival. Social learning was five times more frequent than individual learning and influenced subsequent learning for hours. Immatures varied substantially in their learning propensities and those with heightened social and individual learning propensities developed the most expansive diet profiles at independence. Our findings advance the science of cultural evolution by showing that multi-year social and individual learning synergistically shape great apes broad ecological competence.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2025

Observational social learning of "know-how" and "know-what" in wild orangutans: evidence from nest-building skill acquisition

Immature great apes learn how to build their nests over multiple years, yet how they do so has remained largely unclear. We investigated the detailed role of social learning in the acquisition of nest-building skills in wild Sumatran orangutans (Pongo abelii) using data on nest-building, nest practice, and nest peering behaviour from 44 individuals, collected over 17 years. We found that nest peering (but not being close to a nesting individual without peering) is associated with a significant increase in nest practice behaviour, and mostly directed at multi-step nest elements. Dependent immatures mostly peer at their mothers and use nest tree species in common with her, independent immatures peer at a larger range of individuals and use nest tree species in common with them. Our results suggest that orangutans acquire their nest-building skills through observational social learning including selective attention to "know-how" and the transmission of "know-what" information.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2024

Sumatran orangutan mothers differ in the extent and trajectory of their expression of maternal behaviour

Mothers play a crucial role in the early development and survival of mammalian offspring, and differences in maternal care may differentially affect offsprings development. Whereas previous research has primarily focused on biological and socioecological factors to understand population-level variation in maternal behaviour, the individual as a source of variation remains understudied. We investigated between-individual variation in the average expression of, and plasticity in, six maternal behaviours in Sumatran orangutans, using 15 years of behavioural data. We found that mothers differed substantially in the average expression of four maternal behaviours, even after controlling for socioecological conditions, biological state characteristics, and the offsprings influence on these behaviours. Furthermore, not controlling for these confounding effects exaggerated or masked between-individual variation. Mothers also substantially differed in how they adjusted three of the maternal behaviours during offspring development, meaning that mothers differed in behavioural plasticity. Our results suggest that Sumatran orangutan mothers are constrained in the average expression of maternal behaviours and their plastic responses, potentially resulting in consistent differences among mothers, otherwise called maternal personality. Our findings highlight that individual variation around the population mean in maternal behaviour is more than noise and presents opportunities to study novel evolutionary processes that shape maternal behaviour.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2024

The development of social attention in orangutans: comparing peering behaviour in wild and zoo-housed individuals

Social learning is the cornerstone of all cultural processes and plays a pivotal role during the evolution of cognition. To understand how social learning evolved, we have to look at the immediate and developmental conditions affecting individuals tendencies to attend to social information. We compared peering behaviour (i.e., close-range and sustained observation of the activities of conspecifics) in wild and zoo-housed immature Sumatran orangutans (Pongo abelii) by analysing long-term data which included 3101 peering events collected at the Suaq Balimbing research site in Indonesia and at four European zoos on 35 immature individuals. Using Generalized-Additive-Mixed-Models, we tested for age-specific patterns in peering frequency, target, and context selection. We found similar age trajectories of peering in both settings but higher mean frequencies of peering in the zoos, even after controlling for varying social opportunities to peer. Wild immatures preferably peered at their mothers but zoo-housed immatures at non-mother individuals. In both settings, immatures preferred to peer at older individuals, and in learning-intense contexts. Our findings suggest a hard-wired component in the tendency to attend to social information and a considerable degree of ontogenetic plasticity - a combination that was likely foundational for the evolution of complex cultures, including human culture. HighlightsO_LIWe compared attendance to social information in wild and zoo-housed orangutans C_LIO_LIImmature orangutans peer in contexts where learning is expected C_LIO_LIPeering frequency develops similarly over age, suggesting hardwired propensities C_LIO_LIPeering target and context selection differs between the two settings C_LIO_LIOrangutans tendency to attend to social information shows plasticity C_LI

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2024

Maternal behavior in Sumatran orangutans (Pongo abelii) is modulated by mother-offspring characteristics and socioecological factors

Mammalian mothers flexibly invest in their offspring to maximize their lifetime fitness. Flexible maternal investment may be particularly important in large-brained species with prolonged maternal care - e.g., in great apes. We investigated the effects of socioecological factors and mother-offspring characteristics on nine maternal behaviors in wild Sumatran orangutans (Pongo abelii; N=22 mother-offspring pairs; over 11,200 hours of focal data; collected from 2007-2022) using generalized linear mixed models. The behaviors fall under four maternal functions: locomotory support (carrying), skill acquisition support (feeding in proximity, food transfer), protective proximity maintenance (body contact and proximity initiation, following), and independence promotion (body contact and proximity termination, avoiding). Mothers parity was not significantly associated with any maternal behavior. Mothers were more likely to show locomotory support, skill acquisition support, and protective proximity maintenance toward younger than older offspring; whereas they were more likely to promote independence in older than younger offspring. Mothers with male offspring were more likely to show skill acquisition support to their offspring than those with female offspring. With increasing food availability, skill acquisition support reduced. With increasing association size, mothers were more likely to show protective proximity maintenance and less likely to promote independence. When males were present, mothers were more likely to show locomotory support to their offspring. Sumatran orangutan mothers thus flexibly adjust offspring directed behavior in response to prevailing socioecological factors and mother-offspring characteristics. Our findings add support to the evolutionary theory that mammalian mothers flexibly invest in their offspring.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2024

Short-term memory, attentional control and brain size in primates

Brain size variability in primates has been attributed to various domain-specific socio-ecological factors. A recently published large-scale study of short-term memory abilities in 41 primate species [1] did not find any correlations with 11 different proxies of external cognitive demands. Here we found that the interspecific variation in test performance shows correlated evolution with total brain size, with the relationship becoming tighter as species with small sample sizes were successively removed, whereas it was not predicted by the often-used encephalization quotient (EQ). In a subsample, we also found that the sizes of brain region thought to be involved in short-term memory did not predict performance better than did overall brain size. The dependence on brain size suggests that domain-general cognitive processes underlie short-term memory as tested in [1]. These results support the emerging notion that comparative studies of brain size do not generally identify domain-specific cognitive adaptations, but rather reveal varying selection on domain-general cognitive abilities. Finally, because attentional processes beyond short- term memory also affected test performance, we suggest that the delayed response test can be refined.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2021

Wild-captive contrasts in non-vocal communicative repertoires and functional specificity in orang-utans

The creation of novel communicative acts is an essential element of human language. Although some research suggests the presence of this ability in great apes, this claim remains controversial. Here, we use orang-utans (Pongo spp.) to systematically assess the effect of the wild-captive contrast on the repertoire size of communicative acts. We find that individual communicative repertoires are significantly larger in captive compared to wild settings, irrespective of species, age-sex class or sampling effort. Twenty percent of the orang-utan repertoire in captivity were not observed in the wild. In Sumatran orang-utans, the more sociable species, functional specificity was also higher in captive versus wild settings. We thus conclude that orang-utans, when exposed to a more sociable and terrestrial lifestyle, have the behavioural plasticity to invent new communicative behaviours that are highly functionally specific. This productive capacity by great apes is a major prerequisite for the evolution of language and seems to be ancestral in the hominid lineage.

animal behavior and cognition↗