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Originally Posted by cookie_365
So why should it be a surprise that the group whose member learned how to get the food one way uses this method, and the other uses the other?
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The surprise was that the apes copied from the member that had been taught how to access the food. i.e. they didn't try to invent their own solution.
The suggestion being that they 'conformed' to the original template - i.e. the method brought into the group.
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Originally Posted by cookie_365
Or was it a single group of chimps that was split in two before the training and then combined back into the original group?
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That's not really clear, is it? However, I suspect they kept the groups separate, as mixing them would have confused the issue.
I'm not so sure this is all that ground-breaking, because is copying others really a mark of 'culture'? Particularly when it comes to getting to food - because there is an imperative to feed, the quickest and easiest way will be used. Once you've been shown a sure-fire way, that is easily the quickest and easiest, since anything else would take time and effort to devise. Time better spent munching on the food you just got using the tried and tested method.