Lecture 7

Question 1

What is social learning in animals?

Answer 1

A theory of learning and social behaviour which proposes that new behaviours can be acquired by observing and imitating others

Question 2

How did Darwin notice social learning between bumblebees and honeybees?

Answer 2

. Through nectar robbing by cutting complex flowers near the base and taking nectar without having to crawl inside the flower is quite common in bumblebees
. He noted that honeybees would use these cuts to feed from the flowers but did not make them themselves
(. This is an example of social learning leading to a spread of adaptive behaviour)

Question 3

When talking about social learning what do we need to consider?

Answer 3

Cultural transmission

Question 4

Describe the cultural transmission study involving Japanese macaques and sweet potatoes in the 1950s

Answer 4

. Monkeys were fed sweet potatoes on a beach where they became sandy
. One of the troop, Imo, started to wash the food in the sea to remove the sand before eating it- novel behavioural, not seen before
. Spread through social learning
By 1958 most infants watched their moths and learned to wash their sweet potatoes
. Spread by social learning not genetically

Question 5

The macaque monkey ‘Imo’ that was responsible for the cultural transmission of washing sweet potatoes 3 years later introduced a more complex behaviour to the troop. In this studied they used wheat, describe this study

Answer 5

. Researchers provided wheat to the troop, on the sandy beach, so had a mixture of sand and wheat
. Some just picked up and ate wheat covered in sand
. Imo however put the sandy wheat in the water where the sand sank while the wheat floated
. This novel behaviour spread through the troop
So again this is an example of cultural transmission

Question 6

What is cultural transmission?

Answer 6

Is a system of information transfer that affects an individuals phenotype by means of either teaching or some form of social learning

Question 7

What is the difference between social learning and cultural transmission?

Answer 7

Social learning is observation and imitation but cultural transmission includes teaching as well which is a specific sub category of social learning

Question 8

What kind of changes would be through food handling techniques?

Answer 8

Phenotype changes

Question 9

What does social learning/ cultural transmission involve?

Answer 9

Information passing from individual to individual allowing it to spread through a population

Question 10

How does social learning/ cultural transmission information passing work?

Answer 10

. One individual can alter the behaviour of an entire population and this can persist after the death of the individual (e.g.Imo’s food washing)
. This allows passage of information through generations

Question 11

What is the difference between individual and social learning?

Answer 11

In individual learning it is lost when the individual dies.

In social learning it can persist after the death of the individual

Question 12

How does behaviour change differ between natural selection and social learning?

Answer 12

. Natural selection takes many generations to change behaviour, especially if it involves morphological changes
. Cultural transmission can shift the behaviour of populations in just a few generations (so very fast whereas evolution will take many generations). Even within a generation (Imo, macaque monkey example)

Question 13

What do studies of the way in which different populations of chimpanzee ‘fish’ for termites suggest?

Answer 13

Suggests that social learning is the key to these differences. So, it is not something that is necessarily something that is genetically encoded in them but something they have learnt through social learning

Question 14

Studies have found that chimpanzees from different geographic patterns in how they use sticks to ‘fish’ for terminates (differs based on the region they are found). How do they differ?

Answer 14

. Some use short sticks, others longer ones
. Some transfer the terminates directly to their month from the stick while some scrape them off with their hands first
. Some strip the bark from the stick while others do not
(So good evidence for cultural transmission and social learning as scientists have looked at these differences and found that in many cases the animals are able to use all these techniques but continue to use their local method)

Question 15

What are the two types of social learning?

Answer 15

Local enhancement and social facilitation

Question 16

What is the difference between local enhancement and social facilitation?

Answer 16

Local enhancement: involves an observer being drawn to an area by a model or its action or simple being in the presence of models without social learning taking place. One individual sees another individual doing something and it goes to it and starts doing the same thing, doesn’t have to be doing something that is learning just like feeding, something that is already knows how to do
Social facilitation: joining a group just because other individuals are in there- so the model doesn’t have to be feeding or anything can just be standing there. So through social facilitation individuals will join larger groups

Question 17

Describe local enhancement

Answer 17

It involves the model drawing attention to an area by its actions.
The action of the model is what attracts the attention of the observer

Question 18

Explain the example of local enhancement in birds

Answer 18

A bird digging for worms on a lawn might attract the attention of an observer who would then forage in the same garden but it is not necessarily learning anything because it already knows to forage for worms.
(Importantly in this case the observer is not learning a new behaviour from the model and any learning done in the area will be individual learning)

Question 19

Give the example of local enhancement in cliff swallows

Answer 19

Demonstrated to use local enhancement with observers being drawn to good feeding areas simply through the number of conspecifics already there

Question 20

Why might social facilitation take place?

Answer 20

. Increased foraging rate per individual (vigilance behaviour)
. Dilution if the observer learns that there is safety in numbers

Question 21

What is imitation? What Hat does this mean?

Answer 21

. Acquisition of a topographically novel response through observation of a demonstrator making that response
. This means that to imitate an animal must learn a new behaviour involving new spatial manipulation to achieve a goal

Question 22

Give an example of imitation taking place. What was it suggested this was down to?

Answer 22

. Starting in the 1959/ foil tops in glass milk bottles were often torn by blue tits that had learned to open the bottles and get at the cream
. Suggested his was down to social learning, that they were observing and imitating others. So, one blue tit has discovered this novel food source and method which was then imitated by others and so the behaviour spread
(. The macaque monkeys imitating Imo is a good example also)

Question 23

Give an example of a species imitating that is a topological novel response

Answer 23

. Parakeets, native birds watched a model lift a cover from a dish using either its bill or its foot
. Observers of the birds using their feet were more likely to use their feet while birds that watched a model use its bill also used their bill more frequently
. So birds learned a topologically novel response

Question 24

What does the area in the brain of a monkey known as F5 contain?

Answer 24

A set of ‘mirror’ neurons

Question 25

F5 neurons in monkeys are active before when? what do you need for the neurons to fire?

Answer 25

. When the monkey observed an action, like a hand gasping food
. When the animal performs the action. So, if a monkey is sat in front of a human and it is showing them what to do (move a counter) then these F5 neurons in the monkeys brain fire and when the monkey comes to moving the counter itself then they will fire again. But if the human uses some sort of implement to move the counter around the piece of paper then they don’t fire but then when the monkey moves it around the piece of paper again they do fire. So, for these F5 neurons to fire then you need an appropriate model and an appropriate response otherwise they don’t fire properly. So, these F5 neurons seem to underly imitations in animals

Question 26

What do F5 neurons seem to underly?

Answer 26

Imitations in animals

Question 27

Why are F5 neurons interesting when studying imitation?

Answer 27

. Some of the neurons in this region are motor neurons (needed to repeat the act being observed) and some are visual neurons (needed to observe the model)
. Additionally, actions must first be observed before the mirror neurons will fire which suggests a further connection to imitation
. In fact, these neurons will only fire if the animal sees a hand manipulating the object
. The object alone or being manipulated by a tool do not elicit a response

Question 28

How does copying differ from imitation?

Answer 28

. Copying doesn’t need to be novel or involve learning some new topological action
. So, an animal can copy the action of another even if it already knows how to perform the action and even if it does not involve learning some new spatial orientation to be so

Question 29

Give an example of when copying may occur

Answer 29

An animal will choose a mate in the absence of copying opportunities. However, given the opportunity they may well copy the mate choice of a model

Question 30

Define ‘a teacher’

Answer 30

A teacher must provide an immediate benefit to the students but not to themselves. They must only teach native ‘students’ and impart some information to students faster than they would otherwise receive it

Question 31

Give examples of animals that show teaching

Answer 31

. Mother cheetahs

. Meerkats

Question 32

Why are we not sure if mother cheetahs teach their young?

Answer 32

Because it is not clear if what they ‘teach’ actually accelerates the skill learning of the young

Question 33

Give the example of cultural transmission in Brown rats. What did they also find?

Answer 33

. Naturally scavengers and highly adaptive to new foods
. Danger here is toxic food, people put out poison for them and they have to avoid it, so some prior knowledge is valuable about what is good and what is bad to eat
. Use nest mates odour to aid foraging decisions, just smell their conspecifics to tell what they have been eating
. They found that observing conspecifics eat certain foods led to more of those foods being eaten by the individual
. So, they would watch each other eat and that would influence their tendency to eat these things
. Also found that information can be passed on at a time and place distant to the resource, so it is another example of this information centre hypothesis, they will go away and have experiences and bring it back to a communal area and they will all observe each other and then they will change their behaviour based on what they have seen

Question 34

Explain/ describe the example of teaching in mother cheetahs

Answer 34

. First they pursued and knocked down the quarry but instead of suffocating the victim she allowed it to stand and run off. By the time the prey had risen the cubs had normally arrived
. Second, mothers carried live animals back to their cubs before releasing them, repeatedly calling to their cubs
. Third, the less often, mothers ran slowly during their initial chase of a prey and allowed their cubs to overtake them and thus be the first to knock down the prey themselves
(. We can still not be sure it is teaching as it is not clear if this actually accelerated the skill learning of the young)