In most studies to date, innovations were studied if their origination was witnessed or if they arose in response to a pronounced environmental change, making it difficult to generalize. In this study, we use an operational definition developed by Ramsey et al. (MS) to design a procedure for recognizing...

Inspired by the demonstration that tool-use variants among wild chimpanzees and orangutans qualify as traditions (or cultures), we developed a formal model to predict the incidence of these acquired specializations among wild primates and to examine the evolution of their underlying abilities. We assumed...