The Comparative Neuropsychology of Tool Use in Primates with Specific Reference to Chimpanzees and Capuchin Monkeys

This chapter reviews behavioral and neurobiological data on tool use in primates. It shows that great apes, in particular chimpanzees, excel at tool use-especially generalizing principles to new tool-using tasks and contexts. However, there is limited evidence that monkeys, even highly manual species such as capuchins, do so as readily. It is argued that this behavior is strongly associated with neuroanatomical changes that include the expansion of the cerebellum and interhemispheric connectivity.