Collective intelligence – superior performance by groups compared to that of the individuals that compose them – is often achieved via social information use. However, collective intelligence has rarely been studied in terms of social learning. This is partially because social learning strategies (i.e. "when" and "who" to copy) are often hard to observe in a natural group setting. Our main goal in this article is to show that tandem-running recruitment by Temnothorax ants offers a promising model to study the interaction of social learning and collective intelligence. We first review the role of tandem runs in the ecology and collective behavior of these ants, who use them to share information about the locations of valuable resources. A key advantage of Temnothorax ants as a model system is that each instance of information sharing – each tandem run – can be easily observed. Moreover, the specific information transferred can be readily inferred by tracking the history and subsequent behavior of leader and follower. We then propose new investigations into how social learning via tandem runs affects their collective performance. Finally, we discuss how the synthesis of the two fields of social learning and collective intelligence can shed light on the role of feedback from learning in improving collective performance over time.

Social learning, a type of information transmission in which individuals gain information by observing or interacting with another animal or the products of another animal’s actions, is an extensively studied subject in a wide array of species. Of particular interest is the ability of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) to learn socially, especially given their extensive sociality and fission–fusion dynamics, which provides many opportunities for individuals to learn from each other in different contexts. Using observational and experimental approaches, researchers have explored how faithfully chimpanzees copy others, the type of information conveyed between individuals, and the extent to which social learning is influenced by external factors. In this chapter we review what is currently known about the mechanisms by which chimpanzees socially learn and the strategies they may employ when doing so. We also discuss the much-debated topic of chimpanzee "culture," and how this compares to our own culture. Last, we provide a comparative perspective for social learning in chimpanzees with other species, and discuss how understanding chimpanzee social learning can be useful in their captive care and aiding their conservation in the wild.

Capuchins are highly encephalized New World monkeys (family Cebidae, subfamily Cebinae) living in a variety of forest and savannah habitats, from Central to South America, and currently classified as “gracile” (the Cebus genus) or “robust” (the Sapajus genus). The literature on behavioural plasticity in this taxon highlights purported traditions in the social domain (as the dyadic “games” of Cebus capucinus) and in foraging techniques (notably, the use of tools by Sapajus spp.). Behavioural innovations (sensu “process”) are more easily detected in the social realm, while technological traditions seem to result from [inferred] innovations (sensu “product”) facilitated by innate predispositions and environmental affordances and perpetuated by means of socially biased learning. Constraints related to simpler forms of social learning (like “stimulus enhancement”) may limit the potential for cumulative cultural processes, resulting in conservative traditions, as may be the case of percussive stone tools’ use. On the other hand, the degrees of “niche construction” and “observability” associated to different forms of tool use may explain the difference between the widespread stone tool use traditions and the rarer cases of customary probe use (where individual innovations may occur, but seldom spread by socially mediated learning), in terms of different opportunities for socially mediated learning.

The study of convergent cognitive evolution aims to understand how similarities in physical and social intelligence emerge in evolutionarily distant species. This field, which is relatively new, has focused on a number of taxa, including nonhuman primates, corvids, and other birds, cetaceans, canids, and elephants. In this chapter, we highlight the social minds of elephants in particular, with a review of existing observational and experimental research. Investigations of the proximate mechanisms that underlie social behavior require an understanding of how an animal "sees," "hears," "touches,"and "smells" its world. Thus, we emphasize the need to take elephants’ sensory perspective into account when investigating their cognition, especially considering their exceptional olfactory and acoustic senses. We briefly review the literature on elephant social cognition, and discuss the relevance of such research to elephant conservation.

The social life of animals poses specific adaptive challenges that may be cognitively different to challenges from ecological adaptations to their physical environment.Social cognitive adaptations for dealing with other agents are evolutionarily remarkable in that they automatically become an adaptive challenge that may trigger counter- or co-adaptations. This chapter discusses three main problems in social cognition: first, the issue of mentalism or theory of mind, or whether social cognitive adaptations in animals are based on mentalistic attribution skills that may involve representing the intentions and knowledge of others; second, the cognitive underpinnings of animal communication, with a focus on referential and intentional communication; and third, the problem of how animals know and represent the social relations structuring their groups. There is widespread debate about how the social knowledge and reasoning demonstrated in animal social behavior are exactly implemented. The traditional debate in comparative psychology between reductionist behavioristic explanations and complex cognitive explanations has become especially pronounced in social cognition. A widespread proposal is that the type of knowledge demonstrated by animals is ‘implicit,’ distinct both from the verbally expressible knowledge evolved by humans, and from low-level, reflex-like associative behaviours and habits. However, the key notion of implicit knowledge remains elusive and ill-defined.

Bottlenose dolphins are a large-brained, long-lived, highly social species, operating within a fission-fusion society characterized by broad multi-level social networks, extensive care giving and teaching of offspring, cooperative and diverse hunting tactics, long-term alliances, and learned vocal signals that broadcast an individual’s identity, can be used in referential exchanges and can be imitated by close associates.Observations of behavior and social interactions in the wild suggest that social cognition in the bottlenose dolphins is well developed.Over the past thrity years, experimental studies have revealed that bottlenose dolphins have decades long social memories of associates, can develop a broad concept of imitation that extends to arbitrary novel sounds and social behaviors presented in a variety of contexts as well as to self-initiated behaviors.Dolphins have also been shown to be able to learn about and appreciate the social requisites of cooperative behavior, can spontaneously understand the referential character of human-initiated social signals involving pointing and gazing, and can employ pointing productively in communicative exchanges with humans to achieve goals.Collectively, dolphin social-cognition abilities are sophisticated and similar in several aspects to those of other species living within complex social networks, such as elephants, chimpanzees, and humans.

Birds have contributed a great deal to our understanding of social learning. In this chapter we briefly review this extensive body of research, describing the contexts in which birds use social information to make behavioral decisions. We discuss the ecological factors that promote social learning, and the mechanisms by which social learning occurs. We consider individual differences in social learning, focusing on how learning strategies and biases influence when, how and from whom birds will learn. We examine the consequences of social learning for evolutionary processes, from the emergence of culture to speciation and adaptation to environmental change. Finally, we highlight how knowledge of social learning processes can be applied in the conservation and management of threatened bird species.

This chapter reviews research on visual categorization in pigeons including (1) basic-level categories, members of which are perceptually similar to each other (e.g., car or chair), (2) subordinate-level categories representing a subclass of a basic level category (e.g.,office chair or sports car), and (3) superordinate-level categories comprising several basic-level categories (e.g., furniture or vehicle).Current research convincingly demonstrates pigeons’ ability to form these categories. Moreover, pigeons’ basic-level categories appear to be similar to those of humans. However, the extent of similarity between superordinate-level and subordinate-level categories in pigeons and humans is not yet clear.

Hummingbirds are faced with a challenging memory task every day. In order to keep a positive energy balance, these birds need to remember which flowers they have visited and which ones they have not. The properties of flowers provide hummingbirds with different types of information about colour, shape, space, and time to guide how they forage. Here we discuss how researchers have adapted established laboratory paradigms for use in the field to understand how hummingbirds use this information. We discuss why hummingbirds have turned out to be a suitable model to study cognition in the wild, the main findings that have established how to study memory in wild animals of a project expanding to three decades.

Ants appeared in the Jurassic and diversified into a multitude of new forms during the Cretaceous, around 100 million years ago. Today, ants are ecologically dominant in most terrestrial ecosystems. In tropical rain forest, ant biomass is four times greater than the biomass of all the vertebrates. The trait common to all ant species is sociality: they are all social insects that live in colonies. As in human societies, the size of ant societies varies enormously, from just a few individuals to tens of millions. Ants show extraordinary adaptations. They evolved the ability to build complex nest structures; they cultivate fungi for food and milk aphids, thus practicing agriculture and animal farming; they have nurseries and cemeteries, they cooperate. The key to their evolutionary success is efficient division labour in which the colony behaves as an organism. To achieve this remarkable social organization, ants rely on effective communication. Even though they use several different channels, such as the visual, acoustic and tactile, chemical communication is the most widespread way to exchange messages in an ant colony. Ants have developed multicomponent body odours, a myriad of exocrine glands and refined chemosensory abilities.

Many studies have documented the types of memory evident in nonhuman primates.These range in time scales of remembering for seconds to remembering for minutes or even years. An important distinction in human memory is between recognition and recall modes of remembering. Recognition occurs when an external cue aids in memory performance, where the cue evokes the memory. Recall, however, requires a more spontaneous and internally driven memory process. In humans, recall typically is seen when people report experiences verbally, without need of specific cues. This is more difficult to demonstrate in nonhuman animals but can be done if a test can be used that provides no specific, recognizable cues included in the assessment of what is remembered. Some of those tests, as given to different nonhuman primate species, are outlined in this chapter. The resulting data indicate that nonhuman primates do engage in memory recall without the need of external cues, and the implications of this reflect another commonality in the cognitive systems of humans and other animals.

The social intelligence hypothesis states that a complex social life is cognitively challenging and thus a driving force for mental evolution. Support for the hypothesis comes mainly from studies on primates, and more recently also from birds, specifically corvids. In this paper, I review what is known about the socio-cognitive skills of common ravens, a corvid species that has been intensively studied over the past twenty-five years. The findings show that temporary foraging groups are composed of individuals with different degrees of familiarity and structured by different types of social relationships. Familiar ravens show profound knowledge about their own and others’ relationships, and they appear to use this knowledge selectively and strategically in cooperative and competitive settings. The studies on ravens may thus inform our understanding of what constitutes social complexity and which cognitive skills are selected for.

The history of attempts to identify a correlational structure across a battery of cognitive tasks in nonhumans is reviewed, specifically with respect to mice. The literature on human cognition has long included the idea that subjects retain something of their rank-ordering across a battery of cognitive tasks, yielding what is characterized as a positive manifold of cross-task correlations. This manifold is often referred to as marking a general intelligence factor (g). The literature on individual differences in nonhumans has until recently evidenced a different conclusion, one that emphasized the evolution of niche-specific adaptive specializations rather than the evolution of general cognitive mechanisms. That conclusion in the nonhuman literature has now been successfully challenged. There is little doubt that nonhuman subjects also reveal a positive manifold that is of a similar magnitudecompared to the human data. Problems remain in deciding whether this nonhuman g is the same g as is found using human subjects. The available data are promising but not decisive in suggesting that the two constructs are marking similar processes.

Fishes offer fantastic systems in which to study the evolutionary drivers of cognition because they comprise more than 30,000 species occupying a diverse range of habitats. Many researchers have taken advantage of this diversity to examine the ecological correlates of brain morphology and learning, but memory abilities per se are still fairly understudied compared to terrestrial vertebrates. Here, we review studies that have examined memory retention in fish, sharks, and rays and summarize the mechanisms of regulation of memory in these groups. Mechanisms of memory regulation are similar to those of terrestrial vertebrates, and it is clear that they can retain information from several days, months, and even years. We also address the potential for episodic-like memory in fish, which appears to be on par with evidence from other nonhuman vertebrates, further suggesting the process of memory retention is conserved across all vertebrates. In the last section of this review, we discuss avenues of memory research in which fish have been given little attention and highlight areas of future investigation.

Parrots are sometimes referred to as "feathered apes,"` as they rival our closest relatives in many cognitive abilities. Similar to apes, they show a high propensity for innovative behaviour. Factors that were suggested to influence innovativeness are manifold. We discuss the various reasons why parrots might be particularly well-equipped to innovate. Many psittaciformes have ecological backgrounds that have been suggested to correlate with innovativeness, and recent neurological findings suggest a link between their brain anatomy and advanced cognitive abilities. The parrots’ beak has been described as a "multi-purpose tool" that allows them to employ a wide range of motoric interactions with different substrates, foods, or objects. Moreover, parrots generally approach novel situations with curiosity and caution, and explore in a haptic and playful manner, which presumably provides them with more opportunities to innovate. Studies on model species in innovative problem-solving, such as the kea and the Goffin’s cockatoos, highlight their sensitivity to changes in their environment and their ability to flexibly adjust to them. Multiple parrot species show tool innovations in captivity. However, controlled comparisons between captive and wild populations are still scarce. In summary, studying innovation in large-brained, non-primate models, such as parrots, will ultimately contribute to our understanding of the evolution of inventive minds.