ArticlePeerJ2020
Exploring the role of individual learning in animal tool-use.
Article in PeerJ, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- Learning pathway determines motor organization and long-term retention of tool use in hornbills.iScience · 2026Article
- Three centuries of technological innovation: Opportunity is the mother of invention.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- How to Apply Positive-Reinforcement-Based Training for Self-Loading and Self-Unloading in Dromedary Camels.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Article
- Article
- Observational social learning of "know-how" and "know-what" in wild orangutans: evidence from nest-building skill acquisition.Communications biology · 2025Article
- An eye-tracking study of visual attention in chimpanzees and bonobos when viewing different tool-using techniques.Animal cognition · 2025Article
- A new addition to the toolbox: stone tool use in blonde capuchin monkeys (Sapajus flavius).Primates; journal of primatology · 2024Article
- Simulation and social network analysis provide insight into the acquisition of tool behaviour in hybrid macaques.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- The influence of task difficulty, social tolerance and model success on social learning in Barbary macaques.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Young children spontaneously invent three different types of associative tool use behaviour.Evolutionary human sciences · 2022Article
- Experimental investigation of orangutans' lithic percussive and sharp stone tool behaviours.PloS one · 2022Article
- Processing of novel food reveals payoff and rank-biased social learning in a wild primate.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- The zone of latent solutions and its relevance to understanding ape cultures.Biology & philosophy · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The notion that tool-use is unique to humans has long been refuted by the growing number of observations of animals using tools across various contexts. Yet, the mechanisms behind the emergence and sustenance of these tool-use repertoires are still heavily debated. We argue that the current animal behaviour literature is biased towards a social learning approach, in which animal, and in particular primate, tool-use repertoires are thought to require social learning mechanisms (copying variants of social learning are most often invoked). However, concrete evidence for a widespread dependency on social learning is still lacking. On the other hand, a growing body of observational and experimental data demonstrates that various animal species are capable of acquiring the forms of their tool-use behaviours via individual learning, with (non-copying) social learning regulating the frequencies of the behavioural forms within (and, indirectly, between) groups. As a first outline of the extent of the role of individual learning in animal tool-use, a literature review of reports of the spontaneous acquisition of animal tool-use behaviours was carried out across observational and experimental studies. The results of this review suggest that perhaps due to the pervasive focus on social learning in the literature, accounts of the individual learning of tool-use forms by naïve animals may have been largely overlooked, and their importance under-examined.
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Registered trials
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