Although a large body of primate cognition research is done in captive institutions, little is known about how much individuals from different facilities vary in their experiences and cognitive skills. Here we present the results of an experimental study investigating how physical cognitive skills vary between chimpanzees in relation to captive settings and their time in captivity. We tested 59 chimpanzees housed at two different captive facilities (a rehabilitation center (sanctuary) and a zoo) in three problem-solving tasks. Our results showed that chimpanzees at the two housing facilities significantly differed in overall task performance. On average, the sanctuary chimpanzees outperformed the chimpanzees housed at the zoo in the detour reaching task and the honey trap task. However, the zoo chimpanzees performed slightly better on average in the learning task. We propose that, for this particular sample, the documented differences result from a combination of factors, such as prior experience with cognitive testing, motivation levels and varying degrees of human exposure. Within the sanctuary sample, we found that chimpanzees who arrived at an earlier age at the sanctuary and had therefore spent a larger percentage of their lives in a captive environment, were better problem-solvers than those that arrived at a later age to the sanctuary. Thus, rehabilitation and time in captivity contributed to improved physical cognitive skills in sanctuary chimpanzees. Our results highlight the importance of studying intraspecific variation and the effect that previous experience and living conditions might have on physical cognitive skills in non-human apes. Accordingly, we should be cautious when extrapolating findings of cognitive studies from one population to the species as a whole.

中文翻译：

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黑猩猩（Pan troglodytes）解决问题的能力受住房设施和圈养时间的影响

尽管在圈养机构中进行了大量灵长类动物认知研究，但人们对来自不同机构的个体在经历和认知技能方面的差异程度知之甚少。在这里，我们展示了一项实验研究的结果，该研究调查了与圈养环境及其圈养时间相关的黑猩猩之间的身体认知技能如何变化。我们在三个解决问题的任务中测试了住在两个不同圈养设施（康复中心（保护区）和动物园）的 59 只黑猩猩。我们的结果表明，两个饲养设施中的黑猩猩在整体任务表现上存在显着差异。平均而言，保护区黑猩猩在绕行到达任务和蜜罐任务中的表现优于动物园的黑猩猩。然而，动物园黑猩猩在学习任务中的平均表现略好。我们建议，对于这个特定的样本，记录的差异是由多种因素造成的，例如先前的认知测试经验、动机水平和不同程度的人类暴露。在保护区样本中，我们发现较早到达保护区的黑猩猩，因此在圈养环境中度过了更大比例的生命，比那些较晚到达保护区的黑猩猩更善于解决问题。因此，康复和圈养时间有助于提高保护区黑猩猩的身体认知技能。我们的结果强调了研究种内变异的重要性，以及以前的经验和生活条件可能对非人类猿的身体认知技能产生的影响。因此，在将认知研究的结果从一个种群外推到整个物种时，我们应该谨慎。