Social influences on foraging behavior in young nonhuman primates: Learning what,where, and how to eat |
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| Authors: | Lisa G Rapaport Gillian R Brown |
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| Institution: | 1. Lisa Rapaport is an Assistant Professor in the department of Biological Sciences at Clemson University, Clemson, SC. Her research focuses on the development of foraging behavior in golden lion tamarins. She is interested in delineating the relative importance of social and independent learning in this endangered Neotropical primate. Department of Biological Sciences, 132 Long Hall, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634, U.S.A.;2. Gillian Brown holds a faculty position in the School of Psychology, University of St Andrews, and is a member of the Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution. Her research focuses on mammalian behavioral development, particularly mother‐infant interactions, sex‐biased investment patterns and hormone‐behavior interactions. She also studies how evolutionary theory is applied to human behavior. |
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| Abstract: | Human infants rely on social interactions to acquire food‐related information. 1 , 2 Adults actively teach children about food through culturally diverse feeding practices. Characteristics we share with the other primates, such as complex diets, highly social lives, and extended juvenile periods, suggest that social learning may be important during ontogeny throughout the order. Although all young primates typically pay attention to feeding adults, great apes and callitrichids, in particular, acquire new foraging techniques through abilities unknown in other nonhuman primates; that is, they learn by imitation. However, ape social learning is almost exclusively infant‐initiated, while adult callitrichids actively teach their young. It is unlikely that the same selective forces have acted to favor sophisticated social‐learning mechanisms in both taxa. 3 , 4 Equipped with an ape brain, complex foraging methods, and a cooperative infant‐care system, early hominins were uniquely poised to take social learning about food and foraging techniques to a new level. |
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| Keywords: | socially mediated learning food transfer provisioning coforaging teaching |
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