Cumulative cultural evolution has been claimed to be a uniquely human phenomenon pivotal to the biological success of our species. One plausible condition for cumulative cultural evolution to emerge is individuals’ ability to use social learning to acquire know-how that they cannot easily innovate by themselves. It has been suggested that chimpanzees may be capable of such know-how social learning, but this assertion remains largely untested. Here we show that chimpanzees use social learning to acquire a skill that they failed to independently innovate. By teaching chimpanzees how to solve a sequential task (one chimpanzee in each of the two tested groups, n = 66) and using network-based diffusion analysis, we found that 14 naive chimpanzees learned to operate a puzzle box that they failed to operate during the preceding three months of exposure to all necessary materials. In conjunction, we present evidence for the hypothesis that social learning in chimpanzees is necessary and sufficient to acquire a new, complex skill after the initial innovation.

累积文化进化被认为是一种独特的人类现象，对于我们物种的生物学成功至关重要。累积文化进化出现的一个合理条件是个人有能力利用社会学习来获取他们自己无法轻易创新的知识。有人认为黑猩猩可能具有这种社交学习技能，但这一说法在很大程度上尚未得到检验。在这里，我们展示了黑猩猩利用社会学习来获得他们无法独立创新的技能。通过教黑猩猩如何解决顺序任务（两个测试组中每组一只黑猩猩，n  = 66）并使用基于网络的扩散分析，我们发现 14 只天真的黑猩猩学会了操作他们在实验期间未能操作的拼图盒。前三个月接触过所有必要材料。结合起来，我们提出了以下假设的证据：黑猩猩的社会学习对于在最初的创新后获得新的、复杂的技能是必要且充分的。