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Scientists have, for the first time, witnessed in real-time new behaviour being adopted and transmitted from individual to individual within a wild chimpanzee colony.

The groundbreaking video is the first instance of social learning recorded in the wild, and researchers say it also gives a glimpse into the way culture spread among early humans.

The team studied the spread of two novel tool-uses among the Sonso chimpanzee community living in Uganda's Budongo Forest.

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KB of the Sonso chimpanzee community of the Budongo Forest in Uganda, using a moss-sponge in November 2011, a behavior she learned by observing her mother. This is the first instance of social learning recorded in the wild.

'Researchers have been fascinated for decades by the differences in behaviour between chimpanzee communities; some use tools some don't, some use different tools for the same job,' said Dr Catherine Hobaiter of the University of St Andrews, who led the research.

'These behavioural variations have been described as 'cultural', which in human terms would mean they spread when one individual learns from another; but in most cases they're long established and it's hard to know how they originally spread within a group. 

'We were incredibly lucky to be in the right place at the right time to document the appearance and spread of two novel tool-use behaviours, something that is extraordinarily rare in the wild.'

The results of the real-time discovery, described as 'extraordinarily rare', are published in the latest edition of the journal PLOS Biology. 

The researchers investigated the spread of new variations of 'leaf-sponges', which are tools dipped in water to drink from, commonly manufactured by the Sonso chimpanzees by folding leaves in their mouth. 

Different individuals were observed to develop two novel variants: moss-sponging (a sponge made of moss or a mixture of leaves and moss) and leaf-sponge re-use (using a sponge left behind on a previous visit). 

Neither moss-sponging nor leaf-sponge re-use had been previously observed in Sonso in over twenty years of continuous observation. 

Chimpanzees are widely considered to be the most 'cultural' of all non-human animals, but most studies examining how behaviour is transmitted are carried out in captive groups. 

This has long been a focus for critics of arguments for chimpanzee culture, who point out that without similar evidence from the wild it is difficult to argue for an evolutionary connection between human and chimpanzee 'culture'. 

Here, for the first time, researchers tracked in real time how a new natural behaviour was passed from individual to individual in a wild community. 

Scientists from University of St Andrews, University of Neuchâtel, Anglia Ruskin University, and Université du Quebec studied the tool-use.

Dr William Hoppitt, Senior Lecturer in Zoology at Anglia Ruskin University said: 'Our results provide strong evidence for social transmission along the chimpanzees' social network, demonstrating that wild chimpanzees learn novel tool-use from each other and support the claim that some of the observed behavioural diversity in wild chimpanzees should be interpreted as 'cultural'.' 

Dr Thibaud Gruber, Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Neuchâtel, said: 'This study tells us that chimpanzee culture changes over time, little by little, by building on previous knowledge found within the community. 

'This is probably how our early ancestors' cultures also changed over time. 

'In this respect, this is a great example of how studying chimpanzee culture can help us model the evolution of human culture. 

'Nevertheless, something must have subsequently happened in our evolution that caused a qualitative shift in what we could transmit, rendering our culture much more complex than anything found in wild apes. 

'Understanding this qualitative jump in our evolutionary history is what we need to investigate now.'