Year: 2017
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Many animals socially learn, but very few do so through teaching, where an \nindividual modifies its behaviour in order to facilitate learning for another in \nindividual. Teaching behaviour is costly, but can confer numerous advantages, \nsuch as high fidelity transmission of information or an increase in the rate of social \nlearning. In many putative cases of teaching, it is not known whether the pupil \nlearns from the modified behaviour. This thesis addresses this issue in three cases \nof potential teaching behaviour. \nIn particular, it investigates whether the role of food transfers in wild golden lion \ntamarins is to teach which foods are good to eat (Chapter 5). There was little \nevidence that novel foods were transferred more than familiar foods, and this was \nnot due to the juveniles attempting to obtain novel foods more than familiar ones, \nor by adults discarding novel foods more than familiar ones. Transfers were \nhowever more successful when donors had previously ingested the food type \ntransferred. Successful food transfers also had a positive correlation with foraging \nchoices once juveniles were older, suggesting they learned from food transfers. \nIn golden lion tamarins, this thesis also examined whether juveniles learned from \nfood-offering calls which substrates were good to forage on (Chapter 6). Juveniles \nthat experienced playback of food-offering calls ate more on a novel substrate, \nthan juveniles that did not experience those playbacks, both immediately as the \ncalls were being played, and in the long term, six months after the playbacks. This \nsuggests that juveniles learned from the playbacks. \nFinally, this thesis attempted to replicate previous findings showing that hens \nmodify their behaviour when chicks feed from seemingly unpalatable food, and \nexplored whether chicks learned what food to eat based on the maternal display \n(Chapter 7). The experiment failed to find evidence for teaching behaviour, but \nresults were not inconsistent with previous findings. Moreover, there was little \nevidence that chicks learned from their mother, quite to the contrary, hens seemed \nto acquire their foraging decisions based on their chicks’ choices.
Author: Camille A. Troisi
Language: English
Topic: Primate Behavior and Ecology
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2767954341