ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2022
Complex foraging behaviours in wild birds emerge from social learning and recombination of components.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2022. 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
- Article
- Siblings and nonparental adults provide alternative pathways to cultural inheritance in juvenile great tits.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Immigrant birds learn from socially observed differences in payoffs when their environment changes.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- Spatial and seasonal foraging patterns drive diet differences among north Pacific resident killer whale populations.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Article
- Advances in biologging can identify nuanced energetic costs and gains in predators.Movement ecology · 2024Review
- Competition and generalization impede cultural formation in wild jackdaws.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Captive Asian short-clawed otters (Royal Society open science · 2022Article
- Efficiency fosters cumulative culture across species.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Collective knowledge and the dynamics of culture in chimpanzees.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- The emergence of collective knowledge and cumulative culture in animals, humans and machines.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Collective minds: social network topology shapes collective cognition.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
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6 authors.
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Abstract
Recent well-documented cases of cultural evolution towards increasing efficiency in non-human animals have led some authors to propose that other animals are also capable of cumulative cultural evolution, where traits become more refined and/or complex over time. Yet few comparative examples exist of traits increasing in complexity, and experimental tests remain scarce. In a previous study, we introduced a foraging innovation into replicate subpopulations of great tits, the 'sliding-door puzzle'. Here, we track diffusion of a second 'dial puzzle', before introducing a two-step puzzle that combines both actions. We mapped social networks across two generations to ask if individuals could: (1) recombine socially-learned traits and (2) socially transmit a two-step trait. Our results show birds could recombine skills into more complex foraging behaviours, and naïve birds across both generations could learn the two-step trait. However, closer interrogation revealed that acquisition was not achieved entirely through social learning-rather, birds socially learned components before reconstructing full solutions asocially. As a consequence, singular cultural traditions failed to emerge, although subpopulations of birds shared preferences for a subset of behavioural variants. Our results show that while tits can socially learn complex foraging behaviours, these may need to be scaffolded by rewarding each component. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'The emergence of collective knowledge and cumulative culture in animals, humans and machines'.
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