[neuromanser]

I, too, thought that chimps learning from each other was nothing new (Jared Diamond, etc).

Besides that: I haven't read either study, just the article, so who knows what were the actual claims, but…

The article opens with:

> chimpanzees can learn skills from their peers so complicated that they could never have mastered them on their own.

Which you object with:

> Basically, the study is showing that a chimp can teach other chimps something humans trained it to do.

and:

> I am not sure the study is showing human like “cumulative culture”.

That reads a bit like rejecting evolution because we haven't fully replicated abiogenesis (yet).

Is "humans trained it to do" in "a chimp can teach other chimps something humans trained it to do" so important?

[Ensorceled]

"cumulative culture" is also called "the ratchet effect" ... when you learn something from someone else and then improve on it and pass on the improvements, over and over and over across generations.

This is just learning, there was no ratchet effect.