    |
||
|
|
ALEX THORNTON ............................................................................................................................................ Social learning, development and the spread of traditions .............................................................................................................................................
.............................................................................................................................................
My research investigates the role of
social information in development, evolution and the roots of culture,
using wild meerkats as a model system. Meerkats are a highly
cooperative mongoose species from the arid regions of southern Africa.
I conduct my research at the Kalahari
Meerkat Project,
a long-term study site run by Tim Clutton-Brock
in the South African Kalahari. The meerkats at the site are habituated
to close observation, allowing me to walk among them and collect
extremely detailed data without disturbing their natural behaviour. I
am also able to weigh them regularly and conduct experiments, giving me
many of the advantages of working with laboratory populations, but
while retaining ecological validity. These advantages have given me
excellent opportunities to ask detailed questions about the use of
social information in animal societies.
Social
influences on development
Over the course of two months, meerkat pups must acquire the skills required to make the transition from being incompetent foragers to being able to find and handle prey, including potentially lethal scorpions. Interactions with older group members play a major role in the development of all the major components of foraging behaviour in meerkat pups: selecting microhabitats in which to dig for food, digging efficiently, selecting what to eat and handling difficult prey. The degree of social influence varies according to pups’ opportunities for individual learning and the costs involved. At one extreme, adults play an active role by teaching pups prey-handling skills. However, in addition to being taught, pups actively seek information. My research suggests that pups learn what to eat by eating foods they see adults eating and suitable places to dig for food by digging in places adults have dug. This allows them to acquire critical information, reducing the need for costly and time-consuming trial-and-error learning. Finally, in the development of foraging efficiency, older group members act as food suppliers, but pups appear to largely drive their own development through practice. Although they could gain higher returns through begging for food from adults, pups in good condition invest considerable time in foraging for themselves when young: they can afford to invest time and energy in practising for the future. As a result of this additional experience, they subsequently show higher foraging success individuals which were in poor condition early in life. s The evolution of
teaching
Teaching is ubiquitous in
human
societies, but until recently it was commonly assumed that it is a
trait that we alone possess. My work has shown that meerkats teach pups
prey-handling skills. This is the first time that teaching has been demonstrated
in a wild population. Meerkat pups rarely find mobile food items
themselves, but must rapidly learn to handle a variety of difficult
prey, including scorpions. Adult meerkats, including parents and other
group members, actively teach pups prey-handling skills by gradually
introducing them to live prey. This provides pups with otherwise
unavailable opportunities to practice handling live prey and
facilitates the acquisition of pup handling skills. Teaching in
meerkats is governed by simple responses to changes in pup begging
calls with age and is not reliant on complex cognitive
faculties such as higher order
intentionality or mental state attribution. This finding, along with
recent evidence for teaching in insect and bird societies, allows
research to move on from the question of whether teaching occurs at all
among non-human animals to examine the conditions under which it may
evolve and the forms it may take. I suggest that teaching is best
thought of as a form of cooperative behaviour that functions to promote
learning in others. As with other forms of cooperative behaviour, my
work has shown that individual contributions to teaching vary with the
costs experienced by
different group members. Social learning and the
establishment of traditions
Although there has been considerable theoretical and empirical research into social learning, almost all experimental studies have used captive animals, which may not provide a reliable indication of the relative importance of social learning and of factors affecting the spread and persistence of traditions in natural populations. On the other hand, observational field studies tell us little about patterns of social information transmission, and can seldom determine whether differences between groups arise through social learning or through asocial learning or some other non-cultural process. I have therefore recently set up a series of experiments looking in detail at the factors affecting the spread of social information in groups of wild meerkats. This work will help to improve our understanding of the action of biases in cultural transmission of as a result of natural social dynamics, as well as examining how opportunities for individual learning may constrain the establishment of group-typical traditions.
Thornton,
A. & Raihani, N. J. (2010) Identifying teaching in wild
animals. Thornton,
A., Samson, J. & Clutton-Brock,
T.
2010. Multi-generational persistence of traditions in neighbouring
meerkat groups. Proceedings of the
Royal Society B (online) [PDF] Thornton, A. & Malapert, A. 2009. Experimental evidence for social transmission of food acquisition techniques in wild meerkats. Animal Behaviour 78: 255-264. [PDF] Hodge, S. J., Thornton, A., Flower, T. P. & Clutton-Brock, T. H. 2009. Food limitation increases aggression in juvenile meerkats. Behavioral Ecology 20: 930-935. [PDF] Thornton, A. & Malapert, A. 2009. The rise and fall of an arbitrary tradition: an experiment with wild meerkats. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 276, 1269-1276. [PDF] Thornton,
A. & Hodge, S. J. 2009. The development of
foraging microhabitat preferences in meerkats. Behavioral Ecology, 20, 103-110. [PDF] Thornton,
A. 2008. Social learning about novel foods in
young meerkats. Animal
Behaviour, 76, 1411-1421. [PDF]
Hoppit, W.J.E., Brown, G.R., Kendal, R., Thornton, A., Webster, M.M. &
Laland, K.N. 2008. Lessons from animal teaching. Trends in Ecology & Evolution. 23,
486-493 Thornton, A. & Raihani, N.J. 2008. The evolution of teaching. Animal Behaviour. 75, 1823-1836. [PDF] Thornton, A. 2008 Variation in contributions to teaching by meerkats. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 275, 1745-1751. [PDF] Thornton, A. 2008. Early condition, time budgets and the acquisition of foraging skills in meerkats. Animal Behaviour, 75, 951-962. [PDF]Thornton, A., Raihani, N.J. & Radford, A.N. 2007. Teachers in the wild: some clarification. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 272-273. [PDF] Thornton, A. & McAuliffe, K. 2006. Teaching in wild meerkats. Science, 313, 227-229. [PDF]
Thornton, A. 2007. Social
influences on the development of foraging behaviour in meerkats. PhD
thesis: University of Cambridge. Popular Science
Information related to the article on meerkat traditions: Thornton, A.
Kalahari classrooms. Planet Earth
Magazine, winter edition 2006. [PDF] Radio interviews for National
Public Radio (USA), Canadian Broadcasting Company, BBC World Service,
BBC Scotland and BBC Cambridge. Link
to NPR interview.
Press articles on my research have appeared in National Geographic, The New York Times, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Enquirer, Associated Press, Times (London), The Daily Telegraph, ScienceNow magazine, Science News, Cosmos magazine, L’Express (France), Telepolis magazine (Germany) and Die Burger (South Africa)
|
|
|
|
||
