Researchers have been inquiring whether capuchin monkeys (Cebus spp.) tool use
proficiency is a result of arbitrary discoveries resulting of exploratory behaviors that are
frequent in these primates or is a result of the understanding of the tool function.
Considering that these animals may modify, transport and fabricate tools, it is possible to
propose that some level of understanding is involved, although related to the life history
and built through a series of interactions with situations which are relevant to acquisition
of a generalized repertoire of tool use. Aiming to investigate this proposal, a series of
experiments with two groups of capuchin monkeys (Cebus cf. apella) was made, with the
manipulation of the experimental history of these animals. All subjects were exposed
repeatedly to a problem in which they should assembly six plastic blocks to build a tower,
use it to reach a stick, with that stick reaching a second stick further distant, assembly the
two sticks into a longer one and with that flip containers, dropping and obtaining food
pellets. While two subjects were repeatedly exposed to that problem without any additional
training, other two subjects were exposed, between exposures to the problem itself, to a
rich experimental history of indirectly related tasks. The subjects of the first group were
not able to solve the problem, but the subjects of the second group did it, although without
direct training. It was concluded that a previous relevant history is essential to the so-called
understanding of the solution of the problem and that this understanding or insight is an
adaptive behavioral process, in which the learned skills are transferred to new contexts by
basic behavioral processes as stimulus generalization, functional generalization and
learning-set.
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