Tennsplyr

Culture, when defined as the transmission of behaviors from one generation to the next, can be transmitted among animals through various methods. The most common of these methods include imitation, teaching, and language. Imitation has been found to be one of the most prevalent modes of cultural transmission in non-human animals, while teaching and language are much less widespread, with the possible exceptions of primates and cetaceans. Recent research has suggested that teaching, as opposed to imitation, may be a characteristic of certain animals who have more advanced cultural capacities, though this is debatable.

Animal Culture: How Culture is Transmitted

Genetic Vs. Cultural Transmission

Culture, which was once thought of as a uniquely human trait, is now firmly established as a common trait among animals and is not merely a set of related behaviors passed on by genetic transmission as some have argued. Genetic transmission, like cultural transmission is a means of passing behavioral traits from one individual to another.The main difference is that Genetic transmission is the transfer of genes to an organism from its parents when the egg is fertilized during conception. As can be seen, genetic transmission can only occur once during the lifetime of an organism. Thus, genetic transmission is quite slow compared to the relative speed of cultural transmission. In cultural transmission, behavioral information is passed through means of verbal, visual, or written methods of teaching. Therefore, in cultural transmission, new behaviors can be learned by many organisms in a matter of days and hours rather than the many years of reproduction it would take for a behavior to spread among organisms in genetic transmission.

Teaching

Until recently, teachingwas a skill that was thought to be uniquely human. Now, as research has increased into the transmission of culture in animals, the role of teaching among animal groups has become apparent.Teaching is not merely limited to mammals either. Many insects, for example have been observed demonstrating various forms of teaching in order to obtain food. Ants, for example, will guide each other to food sources through a process called "tandem running," in which an ant will guide a companion ant to a source of food. It has been suggested that the "pupil" ant is able to learn this route in order to obtain food in the future or teach the route to other ants. There have been various recent studies demonstrating that cetaceans are able to transmit culture through teaching as well. Killer whales are known to "intentionally beach" themselves in order to catch and eat pinnipeds who are breeding on the shore. Mother killer whales teach their young to catch pinnipeds by pushing them onto the shore and encouraging them to attack and eat the prey. Because the mother killer whale is altering her behavior in order to help her offspring learn to catch prey, this is evidence of teaching and cultural learning. The intentional beaching of the killer whales, along with other cetacean behaviors such as the variations of songs among humpback whales and the sponging technique used by the bottlenose dolphin to obtain food, provide substantial support for the idea of cetacean cultural transmission.

Imitation

Imitation can be found in a few members of the avian word, in particular the parrot. Imitation forms the basis of culture, but does not singularly imply culture.

Imitation is often misinterpreted as merely the observation and copying of another's actions. This would be known as mimicry, because the repetition of the observed action is done for no other purpose than to copy the original doer or speaker. In the scientific community, imitation is rather the process in which an organism purposefully observes and copies the methods of another in order to achieve a tangible goal. Therefore, the identification and classification of animal behavior as being imitation has been very difficult. Recent research into imitation in animals has resulted in the tentative labeling of certain species of birds, monkeys, apes, and cetaceans as having the capacity for imitation. For example, a Grey parrot by the name of Alex underwent a series of tests and experiments at the University of Arizona in which scientist Irene Pepperberg judged his ability to imitate the human language in order to create vocalizations and object labels. Through the efforts of Pepperberg, Alex was able to learn a large vocabulary of English words and phrases. Alex then combined these words and phrases to make completely new words which were meaningless, but utilized the phonetic rules of the English language. Alex's capabilities of using and understanding more than 80 words, along with his ability to put together short phrases, demonstrates how birds, who many people do not credit with having deep intellect, can actually imitate and use rudimentary language skills in an effective manner. The results of this experiment culminated with the conclusion that the use of the English language to refer to objects is not unique to humans and is arguably true imitation, a basic form of cultural learning found in young children.

Language

Language is another key indicator of animals who have greater a potential to possess culture. Though animals do not naturally use words like humans when they are communicating, the well-known parrot Alex demonstrated that even animals with small brains, but are adept at imitation, can have a deeper understanding of language after lengthy training. A bonobo named Kanzi has taken the use of the English language even further. Kanzi was taught to recognize words and their associations by using a lexigram board. Through observation of its mother's language training, Kanzi learned how to use the lexigrams to obtain food and other items that he desired. Kanzi also used his understanding of lexigrams to decipher and comprehend simple sentences. For example, when he was told to "give the doggie a shot," Kanzi grabbed a toy dog along with a syringe and gave it a realistic shot. The advanced behavior and comprehension of these animals is what scientists have used as compelling evidence for language based culture in animals.

External Links

• Dolphins teach their children to use sponges
• Culture's not only human
• Animal Culture
• DeWaal serves up idea of animal culture
• Detailed article on defining culture
• What is Culture? - Washington State University
• Define Culture Compilation of 100+ user submitted definitions of culture from around the globe

See Also

• Culture
• Cultural Theory
• Animal
• Cultural Transmission