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Researchers have found that chimpanzees love fashion just as much as humans do.
The findings of this study are published in Animal Cognition. A team of researchers that have been examining chimps say that the latest trend among chimpanzees is “grass-in-ear” behavior, according to AmericanLiveWire. This behavior seems to back the age-old saying “monkey see, monkey do.”
Once researchers saw that other chimps were copying the grass-in-ear behavior, it caused a great deal of interest, according to Word Science. Researchers wanted to be sure that the behavior was learned socially and not just something chimps do.
It has shown that chimps can learn from one another like gorillas do.
By analyzing 700 hours of video, researchers were able to reveal how a single chimp named Julie stuck a piece of grass in her ear and it has become a trend.
The study looked at 94 different chimps in four different social groups. Even after Julie died, the behavior continued.
Eight of the 12 chimps in Julie’s group repeated this action.
“This reflects chimpanzees‘ proclivity to actively investigate and learn from group members’ behaviors in order to obtain biologically relevant information,” lead researcher Edwin van Leeuwen stated.