Animals can learn from each other, maintaining their cultures for long periods of time. What sets people apart may be the uniquely open-ended ways we invent new ideas and share and build on them.
Articles on Animal culture
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Birds’ building behaviour and the shape of the structures might be the result of social interactions.
Understanding how animals think, learn and interact with one another can inform the science of ecology, as predator and prey shape their world.
Lyrebirds learn their songs from other lyrebirds. But when they’re raised in captivity, they learn our songs and sounds.
Octopus build cities, establish hierarchies and show social group behaviours. Domesticating will mean creating a new kind of octopus, with ecological and ethical implications.
To a group of hungry killer whales, a longline fishing boat looks like an all-you-can-eat buffet.
Move over, bin chickens: bin cockies are here, and scientists say they’re confirming the cultural intelligence hypothesis.
Humans aren’t the only animals to learn survival tricks from each other.
Our closest relatives show distinct cultural behaviour in different populations. But those differences are being erased.
Different clicking sounds can’t be explained by genetics or different environments – the whales are learning from their relatives.
Top contributors
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Professor of Marine Sustainability, Technical University of Denmark
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Asso. Professor in Anthropology, University College London, UCL
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Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Gulbali Institute, Charles Sturt University
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Reader in Biology, University of St Andrews
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Honorary Lecturer, University of Exeter
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Postdoctoral research fellow, Research Centre for Future Landscapes, La Trobe University
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Postdoctoral Fellow in Ecology, University of Alberta
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Research Fellow, Primate Models for Behavioural Evolution Lab, University of Oxford
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Behavioural and cognitive ecologist, Australian National University
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Researcher, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior
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Professor, Philosophy, York University, Canada
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Adjunct associate and ecological research scientist, University of Sydney
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Lecturer in Wildlife Conservation
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Lecturer, University of Hull
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Doctoral Candidate in Evolutionary Anthropology, University of California, Davis