Animals create own cultural traditions like humans, scientist says

Psychologist says people can no longer consider themselves unique in learning traits from others

Matriarch elephants are a source of knowledge for their young, Prof Whiten points out (Getty Images)

Animals may create and maintain their own cultures just like humans, a scientist has concluded.

Andrew Whiten, who reviewed decades of research in the field, is challenging the idea that only humans have culture, separating us from animals.

He says there is growing evidence of culture spanning a variety of mammals, birds, fish and insects.

In one example, chimpanzees at a wildlife sanctuary in Zambia were found to have developed a tradition of fashionably wearing a grass blade in one ear.

One chimp, named Julie, began the trend before others copied, with most of the group – eight out of 12 – following suit.

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Prof Whiten, of the School of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of St Andrews, says that if culture is an array of traditions passed on by learning from others, including non-family members, it is far from unique to humans.

“The all-pervading cultural nature of our species was long thought to define what it is to be human, separating us from the rest of the natural world and the evolutionary processes that shape it,” he said.

“Other species were thought to live by instinct and some ability to learn, but only humans had culture. Over recent decades, a rapidly growing body of research has increasingly revealed a very different picture.

“Culture even pervades animals’ lifetimes, from infancy to adulthood.

“The young of many species may first learn much from their parents, but increasingly learn from the different skills of others as we humans do, even coming to focus on those in their group who display the greatest expertise, for example in using tools.

“Learning from others continues to be important into adulthood. Monkeys and apes dispersing as adults into new groups, avoiding inbreeding, have been found to adopt local habits different to those back home. ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do’ appears a useful rule of what can be learnt from the locals in an environment new to these animal immigrants.”

Prof Whiten, a zoologist and emeritus professor of evolutionary and developmental psychology, says the evidence has wide-ranging implications, including on anthropology, evolutionary biology and the conservation of wild animal populations.

An understanding of culture allows humans to help conserve species, he said, so that bird species whose migration routes have been lost can be shown them again by microlight aircraft.

In some countries, primates in captivity have been shown videos to teach them mothering skills they had not had chance to learn previously.

He toldThe Independent: “Where there’s a taking of animals for hunting or fishing, the traditional idea is you take adults so younger ones will still grow and breed so cropping adults doesn’t matter much, but looking at this through a cultural lens, a good example is elephants.

“The oldest individuals, matriarchs have vast cultural knowledge, such as where water holes are. If you take that out younger ones are lost. So this can produce radical new thoughts.”

He added: “It must be recognised that culture is not a uniquely human capacity that emerged ‘out of the blue’, but instead has deep evolutionary roots,” he added.

“Evolutionary biology needs to expand to recognise the widespread influence of social learning, which provides a ‘second inheritance system’ built on top of the primary genetic inheritance system, creating the potential for a second form of evolution, cultural evolution.

“Recognition of such practical implications of the reach of animal culture, along with implications for the broad range of scientific disciplines, should help assure a bright future for researchers in this field.

“A new generation of scientists will now surely pursue the wider reaches of culture in animals’ lives, aided by the substantial armoury of methodological advances developed over the past two decades.”

His paper, The Burgeoning Reach of Animal Culture, is published in Science.