Over the last few decades, comparative cognitive research has focused on the pinnacles of
mental evolution, asking all-or-nothing questions such as which animals (if any) possess a …

Field experiments can provide compelling demonstrations of social learning in wild
populations. Social learning has been experimentally demonstrated in at least 23 field …

Humans follow the example of prestigious, high-status individuals much more readily than
that of others, such as when we copy the behavior of village elders, community leaders, or …

The ability to learn from the actions of another is adaptive, as it is a shortcut for acquiring
new information. However, the evolutionary origins of this trait are still unclear. There is …

In recent years researchers have drawn attention to a need for new methods with which to
identify the spread of behavioural innovations through social transmission in animal …

In The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, published in 1871, Charles Darwin
wrote:“I fully… subscribe to the judgment of those writers who maintain that of all the …

Many animal species are “cultural” in the sense that individuals acquire important behaviors
and skills from groupmates via social learning. Thus, whales socially learn some foraging …

Human behaviour is often based on social learning, a mechanism that has been
documented also in a variety of other vertebrates. However, social learning as a means of …

Theoretical analyses have reported that in most circumstances where natural selection
favours reliance on social learning, conformity (positive frequency-dependent social …

Social scientists can learn a lot from evolutionary biology-from systematics and principles of
evolutionary ecology to theories of social interaction including competition, conflict and …