Hostname: page-component-6766d58669-88psn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-05-15T15:43:15.044Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A unified account of culture should accommodate animal cultures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2020

Andrew Whiten Open the ORCID record for Andrew Whiten [Opens in a new window]
Andrew Whiten*
Affiliation:
Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St AndrewsKY16 9JP, UK. a.whiten@st-andrews.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Discoveries about social learning and culture in non-human animals have burgeoned this century, yet despite aspiring to offer a unified account of culture, the target article neglects these discoveries almost totally. I offer an overview of principal findings in this field including phylogenetic reach, intraspecies pervasiveness, stability, fidelity, and attentional funnelling in social learning. Can the authors’ approach accommodate these?

Information

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 43 , 2020 , e118
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Alem, S., Perry, C. J., Zhu, X., Loukola, O. J., Ingraham, T., Søvik, E. & Chittka, L. (2016) Associative mechanisms allow for social learning and cultural transmission of string pulling in an insect. PLoS Biology 14:e1002564.Google Scholar
Allen, J., Garland, E. C., Dunlop, R. A. & Noad, M. J. (2018) Cultural revolutions reduce complexity in the songs of humpback whales. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 285:20182088.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Aplin, L. M. (2019) Culture and cultural evolution in birds: A review of the evidence. Animal Behaviour 147:179–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aplin, L. M., Farine, D. R., Morand-Ferron, J., Cockburn, A., Thornton, A. & Sheldon, B. C. (2015) Experimentally induced innovations lead to persistent culture via conformity in wild birds. Nature 518:538–41.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bono, A. E. J., Whiten, A., van Schaik, C., Krutzen, M., Eichenberger, F., Schnider, A. & van de Waal, E. (2018) Payoff- and sex-biased social learning interact in a wild primate population. Current Biology 28:2800–805.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Danchin, E., Nöbel, S., Pocheville, A., Dagaeff, A.-C., Demay, L., Alphand, M., Ranty-Roby, S., van Renssen, L., Monier, M., Gazagne, E., Allain, M. & Isabel, G. (2018) Cultural flies: Conformist social learning in fruit flies predicts long-lasting mate-choice traditions. Science 362:1025–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henrich, J. (2015) The secret of our success: How culture is driving human evolution, domesticating our species, and making us smarter. Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horner, V., Whiten, A., Flynn, E. & de Waal, F. B. M. (2006) Faithful replication of foraging techniques along cultural transmission chains by chimpanzees and children. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 103:13878–83.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kendal, R. L., Boogert, N. J., Rendell, L., Laland, K. N., Webster, M. & Jones, P. L. (2018) Social learning strategies: Bridge-building between fields. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 22(7):651–65. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2018.04.003.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kendal, R. M., Hopper, L. M., Whiten, A., Brosnan, S. F., Lambeth, S. P., Schapiro, S. J. & Hoppitt, W. (2015) Chimpanzees copy dominant and knowledgeable individuals: Implications for cultural diversity. Evolution and Human Behavior 36:65–72.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kulahci, I. G., Ghazanfar, A. A. & Rubenstein, D. I. (2018) Knowledgeable lemurs become more central in social networks. Current Biology 28:1306–10.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Laland, K. N., Atton, N. & Webster, M. M. (2011) From fish to fashion: Experimental and theoretical insights into the evolution of culture. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 366:958–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mercader, J., Barton, H., Gillisepie, J., Harris, S., Kuhn, S., Tyler, R., & Boesch, C. (2007) 4,300-year-old chimpanzee sites and the origins of percussive stone technology. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104:3043–48.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Osiurak, F. & Reynaud, E. (2020) The elephant in the room: What matters cognitively in cumulative technological culture. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X19003236.Google Scholar
Price, E. E., Wood, L. A. & Whiten, A. (2017) Adaptive cultural transmission biases in children and nonhuman primates. Infant Behavior & Development 48:45–53.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schuppli, C. & van Schaik, C. P. (2019) Animal cultures: How we've only seen the tip of the iceberg. Evolutionary Human Sciences 1:e2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tamariz, M. (2019) Replication and emergence in cultural transmission. Physics of Life Reviews 30:47–71. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plrev.2019.04.004.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Watson, S. K., Lambeth, S. P., Schapiro, S. J. & Whiten, A. (2018) Chimpanzees prioritise social information over existing behaviours in a group context but not in dyads. Animal Cognition 21:407–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitehead, H. & Rendell, L. (2015) The cultural lives of whales and dolphins. Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Whiten, A. (2017a) A second inheritance system: The extension of biology through culture. Interface Focus 7:20160142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whiten, A. (2017b) How culture extends the scope of evolutionary biology in the great apes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 114:7790–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whiten, A. (2018a) Culture and conformity shape fruit fly mating. Science 362:998–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whiten, A. (2018b) Social dynamics: Knowledgeable lemurs gain status. Current Biology 28:R344–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whiten, A. (2019c) Social learning: Peering deeper into ape culture. Current Biology 29(17):R845–R847.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whiten, A. (2019a) Conformity and over-imitation: An integrative review of variant forms of hyper-reliance on social learning. Advances in the Study of Behavior 51:31–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whiten, A. (2019b) Cultural evolution in animals. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics 50:27–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whiten, A. & van de Waal, E. (2018) The pervasive role of social learning in primate lifetime development. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 72:UNSP 80.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Whiten, A. & van Schaik, C. P. (2007) The evolution of animal “cultures” and social intelligence. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 362:603–20.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed