This article is an ethnographic study about the researches dedicated to chimpanzee behavior focusing questions related to symbolization, sociability, communication, cognition and consciousness taking as central the problem of "chimpanzee cultures", as many primatologists have affirming to exist in last decade. The strategy consists in to establish a constant dialogue between the production of knowledge about the chimpanzee behavior, since 1960, and the parameters and questions that sociocultural anthropology emphasizes in its reflection about humans, theirs cultures, theirs societies, through the debate between local and universal, culture and nature. The theoretical and methodological parameters utilized coming from the Anthropology of Science, Ideas and Knowledge, as is named the anthropological area that think about aspects of production of knowledge, inside and outside the discipline.
anthropology of knowledge; chimpanzee cultures; culture-nature relations; symbolic capacity