ArticleLearning & behavior2016
How New Caledonian crows solve novel foraging problems and what it means for cumulative culture.
Article in Learning & behavior, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed.
- Social learning and culture in birds: emerging patterns and relevance to conservation.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Hooded crows (Corvus cornix) manufacture objects relative to a mental template.Animal cognition · 2024Article
- Long-term memory of experienced jays facilitates problem-solving by naïve group members in the wild.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Social behavior mediates the use of social and personal information in wild jays.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Technical reasoning is important for cumulative technological culture.Nature human behaviour · 2021Article
- Object manufacture based on a memorized template: Goffin's cockatoos attend to different model features.Animal cognition · 2021Article
- Extended parenting and the evolution of cognition.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Review
- Old and New Approaches to Animal Cognition: There Is Not "One Cognition".Journal of Intelligence · 2020Review
- Article
- New Caledonian crows infer the weight of objects from observing their movements in a breeze.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2019Article
- Captive jays exhibit reduced problem-solving performance compared to wild conspecifics.Royal Society open science · 2019Article
- Wild chimpanzees select tool material based on efficiency and knowledge.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2018Article
- Mental template matching is a potential cultural transmission mechanism for New Caledonian crow tool manufacturing traditions.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- Cumulative culture in nonhumans: overlooked findings from Japanese monkeys?Primates; journal of primatology · 2018Review
- From the Age of 5 Humans Decide Economically, Whereas Crows Exhibit Individual Preferences.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- Tool bending in New Caledonian crows.Royal Society open science · 2016Article
- Social networks predict selective observation and information spread in ravens.Royal Society open science · 2016Article
- Strong between-site variation in New Caledonian crows' use of hook-tool-making materials.Biological journal of the Linnean Society. Linnean Society of London · 2016Article
- Eurasian jays do not copy the choices of conspecifics, but they do show evidence of stimulus enhancement.PeerJ · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
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.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.