Why is chimpanzee tool use considered a form of culture?

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A common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) sits on a rock holding a long blade of grass in its mouth, with dense green foliage in the background. — chimpanzee The West African, or masked, chimpanzee (*Pan troglodytes verus*) is a critically endangered subspecies of chimpanzee.

Chimpanzee tool use is considered a form of culture because it involves the transmission of information from generation to generation through social learning.1

While some definitions of culture are restricted to behaviors dependent on human symboling—the ability to assign arbitrary meanings to things—researchers observe that chimpanzees exhibit distinct local variations in their tool-using repertoires. Because younger chimpanzees acquire these specific behaviors from their elders, and because these practices are shared by most members of a group, this process meets the definition of culture as a socially transmitted tradition. These cultural differences extend beyond tools to include variations in food consumption and gestural communication.123