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The Question of Animal Culture
Abstract
In this paper I consider whether traditional behaviors of animals, like traditions of humans, are transmitted by imitation
learning. Review of the literature on problem solving by captive primates, and detailed consideration of two widely cited
instances of purported learning by imitation and of culture in free-living primates (sweet-potato washing by Japanese macaques
and termite fishing by chimpanzees), suggests that nonhuman primates do not learn to solve problems by imitation. It may,
therefore, be misleading to treat animal traditions and human culture as homologous (rather than analogous) and to refer to
animal traditions as cultural.
... The concept of culture in non-human animals (hereafter referred to as animals) is a matter of ongoing debate. 2 While the definition of culture varies, culture-like elements can be found in a wide range of species, supporting arguments on the one hand that invertebrates express cultural traits [3][4][5][6] while on the other hand that they are unique to humans. 7,8 However, recent scientific developments suggest that culture is indeed a phenomenon common to many animal species. 4,[9][10][11][12][13] To encompass its various forms, Whitehead and Rendell provided a broad yet informative definition of culture as "information or behavior-shared within a community-which is acquired from conspecifics through some form of social learning." ...
... 17 An important predictor is to be able to rule out any genetic or ecological factors that pre-determine the development of the behavior in question. 7 A commonly cited example of material culture in the literature is tool use in non-human animals and how this practice varies from one group to another (the style of crafting the tool or how it is used). [17][18][19][20] Recently published research on grooming practices in wild chimpanzees-the grooming handclaps-and how it varies between communities also explores how this non-material cultural practice is passed within a single community. ...
... 73 One specificity connected to this social difference between the geographic locations of humpback populations-Northern and Southern Hemisphere-could also potentially be reflected in the CCE phenomenon. 7,14,[54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62] Recent studies have highlighted humpback whales due to the unique characteristics of their songs. 22 Male humpback whale vocalizations are considered to represent an elaborate oral culture. ...
This review delves into the latest research on culture, learning, and grammar in animals, providing definitions of these debated terms and drawing conclusions about their existence beyond human societies. It explores mechanisms such as social learning and cumulative culture. The core focus is on the vocal culture of vertebrates, defined as the vocal traditions of various geographically spread groups. Numerous examples support each statement, with marine mammals, particularly humpback whales, frequently highlighted as exemplars of highly developed vocal culture in vertebrates, prompting further hypotheses and new questions. Moreover, it draws parallels with human culture, encouraging an exploration of cultural development and inheritance in other animals to gain insights into the evolution of human culture. Finally, the review emphasizes the importance of this phenomenon for the protection and conservation of highly social animals.
... Para ello, deberíamos recurrir a la cuidadosa documentación de Kawai (1965), que cubrió un período bastante anterior durante el cual pocos forasteros se acercaron a Koshima. Mis propias conversaciones con Satsue Mito (quien dirigió el suministro de papas en los primeros años), me generaron serias dudas de que los procedimientos imaginados por Galef (1992) hubiesen sido aplicados alguna vez (de Waal, 2001). En primer lugar, no habría sido lógico. ...
... Sin embargo, hay que añadir que los psicólogos del aprendizaje, quienes provienen de una tradición en la que se testean animales individuales en tareas artificiales, tal vez no posean el mejor enfoque disponible para abordar el enigma mencionado. La confiada afirmación de Galef (1992) de que los actos imitados se extinguirán automáticamente si no consiguen generar recompensas, permite ilustrar dicha limitación. Si bien esto resulta lógico desde la perspectiva del refuerzo, conocemos muchos ejemplos de conductas culturalmente transmitidas que no poseen ningún valor de recompensa. ...
Cuando se trata de nuestra relación con la naturaleza, no hay forma de escapar de la tensión entre percepción y proyección. A menudo, lo que descubrimos en la naturaleza es lo que antes pusimos en ella. En consecuencia, la forma en que los naturalistas han contribuido a la misión de ‘la humanidad ha de conocerse a sí misma’, sólo puede entenderse en el contexto del cristal con que se mire el espejo de la naturaleza. Dado que no nos es posible quitarnos los cristales de esas gafas, la segunda mejor opción que nos queda es comparar otras alternativas.
... This anthropocentric bias in defining culture mirrors the fact that culture was once considered to be specific to humans. Since the mid-20th century, however, there has been an increasing tendency to recognize non-human forms of culture, including not only animal culture (e.g., Laland & Galef 2009; Whiten 2021) but also machine or robot culture (e.g., Brinkmann et al. 2023;Dunstan et al. 2016Dunstan et al. , 2023Ornelas et al. 2023). This tendency goes along with attempts to reconceive culture, freeing it from its anthropocentric connotations. ...
The semiotic realism of the American philosopher and scientist Charles S. Peirce (1839–1914) originally emerged out of a systematic critique of Kant’s transcendental philosophy. As such, it does not only offer numerous notions that can be and have been, fruitfully applied to a large variety of cultural phenomena, but it also requires rethinking and reconceiving the concept of culture itself, especially as regards its relation to the concept of nature and its anthropocentric premises and biases. Accordingly, this essay aims to explore how to reconceive culture in a Peircean transcendental framework. I first describe that framework itself, sketching how Peirce’s semiotic realism can be understood as the result of the attempt to realize Kant’s project of a transcendental philosophy more consistently than Kant himself had done. On this basis, I then explore how the relation between culture and nature, and between culture and humanity can be conceived within Peirce’s semiotic paradigm. It is suggested that the relation between culture and nature cannot be sufficiently accounted for in terms of the distinction between symbolic and non-symbolic semiosis, and that various forms of non-human culture, including non-animal and cross-species cultures, are conceivable.
... Regardless of the learning method employed (social or asocial), individuals possess evaluative brain structures that allow them to choose whether to maintain or reject a specific behaviour (Galef 1992;Heyes and Galef 1996;Enquist and Ghirlanda 2007;Enquist et al. 2007;Castro et al. 2019). In particular, socially learned behaviours are typically perpetuated because they offer benefits when implemented (Rendell et al. 2010;Baum 2017). ...
Norms play a crucial role in governing human societies. From an early age, humans possess an innate understanding of norms, recognizing certain behaviours, contexts, and roles as being governed by them. The evolution of normativity has been linked to its contribution to the promotion of cooperation in large groups and is intertwined with the development of joint intentionality. However, there is no evolutionary consensus on what normatively differentiated our hominin ancestors from the phylogenetic lineage leading to chimpanzees and bonobos. Here we propose that the development of teaching through a process of evaluative feedback between parent and offspring functioned as a prerequisite for the later development of normativity. Parents approve or disapprove of offspring’s behaviours based on their own learned knowledge of what is appropriate or inappropriate. We argue our proposition using a simple model of cultural transmission, which shows the adaptive advantage offered by these elementary forms of teaching. We show that an important part of this adaptive advantage can arise from the benefits derived from guidance about which behaviours to adopt or reject. We propose that this type of guidance has fundamental elements that characterise the normative world. We complete our argument by reviewing several studies that examine the emergence of normativity in young children without prior exposure to a normative framework with respect to the behaviours under analysis. We suggest that this normativity is best interpreted as manifestations of teaching among young children rather than as norm recognition among early normative children.
... Therefore, there is much more disagreement on the question of what culture is than on the question of what tradition is. For example, Galef (1992) proposed to consider as "culture" only those traditions that are transmitted through imitation or active teaching, i.e. higher forms of social learning, implying similarity with humans. Other researchers propose different criteria, for example, culture becoming more complex over time, like in humans (Levinson, 2006). ...
Ecological niche partitioning is a process that allows organisms to achieve differences in resource use to reduce competition. Niche partitioning is traditionally viewed as a result of modification of genetically inherited traits through the process of adaptive evolution. However, in social animals with developed cognitive abilities, a significant portion of behavioral patterns is transmitted not genetically, but through social learning. Complex sets of behavioral patterns transmitted through social learning are called cultural traditions. The partitioning of ecological niches in cetaceans is most often considered in the context of morphological adaptations: changes in size, skull shape, and the structure of the filtering apparatus. The role of cultural traditions in niche partitioning is still poorly understood, but it is an important and promising area of research, as it provides a novel approach to the ability of animals to change their behavior in order to exploit the environment more efficiently. The main advantage of traditions over genetically inherited behavioral patterns is the ability to change quickly and spread rapidly in a population. Estimating the role of cultural traditions in ecological niche partitioning would highlight the significance of behavior plasticity and social learning in the evolution of animal intelligence. Ecological niche partitioning through the rapidly changing and rapidly spreading behavioral adaptations in the population, allowing to adapt quickly to changes in the environment, could provide a significant evolutionary advantage, which could lead to the development of a relatively high level of intelligence in cetaceans.
We provide quantitative evidence suggesting social learning in sperm whales across sociocultural boundaries, using acoustic data from the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Traditionally, sperm whale populations are categorized into clans based on their vocal repertoire : the rhythmically patterned click sequences (codas) that they use. Among these codas, identity codas function as symbolic markers for each clan, accounting for 35-60% of codas they produce. We introduce a computational method to model whale communication, which encodes rhythmic micro-variations within codas, capturing their vocal style . We find that vocal style-clans closely align with repertoire-clans. However, contrary to vocal repertoire, we show that sympatry increases vocal style similarity between clans for non -identity codas, i.e. most codas, suggesting social learning across cultural boundaries. More broadly, this subcoda structure model offers a framework for comparing communication systems in other species, with potential implications for deeper understanding of vocal and cultural transmission within animal societies.
Over the course of the latter part of the 20th century the notion that some animals might partake in a cultural form of life has gained growing support in the natural sciences. Iconic examples of tool using chimpanzees, sweet potato washing macaques, and milk bottle opening birds have captured scientific and popular interest alike. But at the same time that this effort to describe, define, and study animal cultures was developing, the global ecological crisis was deepening. This article explores this strange juxtaposition. It offers a critical overview of the concept of animal culture as it has taken shape in the natural sciences. Building on this foundation, the article explores how and why animal cultures matter at the edge of extinction, exploring possible roles for the environmental humanities, extinction studies, and philosophical ethology, in developing new approaches to the question of animal culture in a time of escalating biodiversity loss.
From a paleoanthropological standpoint, this chapter critically explores some essential assumptions of Cognitive Model Theory (CMT). CMT considers common mental constructs to be the fundamental components of culture. It takes a primarily cognitivist stance, with theory of mind being a prerequisite of a cultural model and its reproduction. A central question remains how culture can be a collective property that is realized and referred to by individuals. Here, examples from animal culture and early prehistory show that cultural performances could have evolved without clear mental representations. Acheulean handaxes are the oldest artifact group for which a mental template has been proposed as cognitive basis. The model of Evolution and Expansion of Cultural Capacities is used to trace the interdependencies of evolutionary-biological, individual, historical-social, and ecological dimensions in the development of cultural performances, as well as how processes of innovation and tradition work. Legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice and participatory sense-making are described as processes of habituation, social learning, and group differentiation. Finally, the social becoming of individuals and, in parallel, the individual becoming of the social sphere are examined. From a paleoanthropological perspective, cultural models must be regarded as a result of cultural performances rather than as their basic source. A constructivist approach is appropriate for understanding the development of a cultural model, whereas a cognitivist approach supports its reproduction.
Wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) in northeastern Gabon use tools made of vegetation to obtain termites (Macrotermes? nobilis) for food. They mostly use probes in termite fishing, as recorded elsewhere in eastern and far western Africa. This is the first record of termite fishing by the central west African race of chimpanzees. There are signs that they also use stouter tools, perhaps to perforate the mounds of the termites. These new findings further complicate the status of material culture in this species of ape in nature.
In this book we take a fresh look at imitation. With the knowledge of some 20 years of research after Chomsky's initial critique of the behavioristic approach to language learning, it is time to explore imitation once again. How imitation is viewed in this book has changed greatly since the 1950s and can only be under stood by reading the various contributions. This reading reveals many faces, many forms, many causes, and many functions of imitation-cognitive, social, information processing, learning, and biological. Some views are far removed from the notion that an imitation must occur immediately or that it must be a per fect copy of an adult sentence. But the essence of the concept of imitation is retained: Some of the child's language behavior originates as an imitation of a prior model. The range of phenomena covered is broad and stimulating. Imitation's role is discussed from infancy on through all stages of language learning. Individual differences among children are examined in how much they use imitation, and in what forms and to what purposes they use it. The forms and functions of parent imitation of their child are considered. Second-language learning is studied alongside first-language learning. The juxtaposition of so many views and facets of imitation in this book will help us to study the commonalities as well as differences of various forms and functions of imitative language and will help us to discern the further dimensions along which we must begin to differentiate imitation.
The concept of teaching contains the notion that the teacher's behaviour is guided by the pupil's performance. Teaching may be said to occur when an animal is punished for approaching or obstructing another. Other kinds of teaching are aided by imitation, or learning by observation. The ontogeny of imitation, and of teaching at least among human beings, has scarcely been discussed, and would repay study.
A solution is suggested for an old unresolved social psychological problem.