Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Towards a biology of traditions
- 2 What the models say about social learning
- 3 Relative brain size and the distribution of innovation and social learning across the nonhuman primates
- 4 Social learning about food in birds
- 5 The cue reliability approach to social transmission: designing tests for adaptive traditions
- 6 “Traditional” foraging behaviors of brown and black rats (Rattus norvegicus and Rattus rattus)
- 7 Food for thought: social learning about food in feeding capuchin monkeys
- 8 Traditions in mammalian and avian vocal communication
- 9 Like mother, like calf: the ontogeny of foraging traditions in wild Indian Ocean bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops sp.)
- 10 Biological and ecological foundations of primate behavioral tradition
- 11 Local traditions in orangutans and chimpanzees: social learning and social tolerance
- 12 Developmental perspectives on great ape traditions
- 13 Do brown capuchins socially learn foraging skills?
- 14 Traditions in wild white-faced capuchin monkeys
- 15 Conclusions and research agendas
- Further reading
- Index
- References
10 - Biological and ecological foundations of primate behavioral tradition
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 October 2009
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Towards a biology of traditions
- 2 What the models say about social learning
- 3 Relative brain size and the distribution of innovation and social learning across the nonhuman primates
- 4 Social learning about food in birds
- 5 The cue reliability approach to social transmission: designing tests for adaptive traditions
- 6 “Traditional” foraging behaviors of brown and black rats (Rattus norvegicus and Rattus rattus)
- 7 Food for thought: social learning about food in feeding capuchin monkeys
- 8 Traditions in mammalian and avian vocal communication
- 9 Like mother, like calf: the ontogeny of foraging traditions in wild Indian Ocean bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops sp.)
- 10 Biological and ecological foundations of primate behavioral tradition
- 11 Local traditions in orangutans and chimpanzees: social learning and social tolerance
- 12 Developmental perspectives on great ape traditions
- 13 Do brown capuchins socially learn foraging skills?
- 14 Traditions in wild white-faced capuchin monkeys
- 15 Conclusions and research agendas
- Further reading
- Index
- References
Summary
Introduction
An interest in nonhuman primate behavioral traditions has existed since the beginning of primatology, with some of the earliest details coming from the Japanese macaque (Macaca fuscata). When Kyoto University researchers began their investigations in 1948, under the leadership of Denzaburo Miyadi and Kinji Imanishi (Asquith, 1991), animals were considered to act on instinct and such concepts as tradition or culture were considered to be a uniquely human trait (de Waal, 2001; Kroeber and Kluckhohn, 1952). Imanishi (1952) predicted the presence of “culture” in animals even before the results of these observations had begun to be published. He emphasized that, unlike instinct, culture in animals should be viewed as the expression of developmentally labile behaviors. He reasoned that, if one defines culture as behavior transmitted to offspring from parents, differences in the way of life of members of the same species, whether they are human, monkey, or wasp, belonging to different social groups could be attributed to culture. Imanishi's general argument still holds today, albeit with greater refinements in our overall view of the phenomenon (e.g., Avital and Jablonka, 2000; de Waal, 2001; McGrew, 2001). Currently, healthy debate over whether culture or tradition in humans and animals is really the same is ongoing (e.g., Boesch and Tomasello, 1998; Galef, 1992; Tuttle, 2001; see also Ch. 6).
We use the term behavioral tradition in this chapter to denote those behaviors for which social context contributes to their acquisition by new practitioners and which are maintained within a population through social means (as defined by Fragaszy and Perry in Ch. 1; McGrew, 2001).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Biology of TraditionsModels and Evidence, pp. 267 - 296Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003
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