Anglia Ruskin Research Online (ARRO)
Browse
- No file added yet -

How New Caledonian crows solve novel foraging problems and what it means for cumulative culture

Download (23.95 MB)
journal contribution
posted on 2023-08-30, 16:22 authored by Corina J. Logan, Alexis J. Breen, Alex H. Taylor, Russell D. Gray, William J. E. Hoppitt
New Caledonian crows make and use tools, and tool types vary over geographic landscapes. Social learning may explain the variation in tool design, but it is unknown to what degree social learning accounts for the maintenance of these designs. Indeed, little is known about the mechanisms these crows use to obtain information from others, despite the question’s importance in understanding whether tool behavior is transmitted via social, genetic, or environmental means. For social transmission to account for tool-type variation, copying must utilize a mechanism that is action specific (e.g., pushing left vs. right) as well as context specific (e.g., pushing a particular object vs. any object). To determine whether crows can copy a demonstrator’s actions as well as the contexts in which they occur, we conducted a diffusion experiment using a novel foraging task. We used a nontool task to eliminate any confounds introduced by individual differences in their prior tool experience. Two groups had demonstrators (trained in isolation on different options of a four-option task, including a two-action option) and one group did not. We found that crows socially learn about context: After observers see a demonstrator interact with the task, they are more likely to interact with the same parts of the task. In contrast, observers did not copy the demonstrator’s specific actions. Our results suggest it is unlikely that observing tool-making behavior transmits tool types. We suggest it is possible that tool types are transmitted when crows copy the physical form of the tools they encounter.

History

Refereed

  • Yes

Volume

44

Issue number

1

Page range

18-28

Publication title

Learning & Behavior

ISSN

1543-4508

Publisher

Springer

File version

  • Accepted version

Language

  • eng

Legacy posted date

2019-07-03

Legacy creation date

2019-07-03

Legacy Faculty/School/Department

ARCHIVED Faculty of Science & Technology (until September 2018)

Usage metrics

    ARU Outputs

    Categories

    No categories selected

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC