Teaching in Wild Meerkats
Abstract
Despite the obvious benefits of directed mechanisms that facilitate the efficient transfer of skills, there is little critical evidence for teaching in nonhuman animals. Using observational and experimental data, we show that wild meerkats (Suricata suricatta) teach pups prey-handling skills by providing them with opportunities to interact with live prey. In response to changing pup begging calls, helpers alter their prey-provisioning methods as pups grow older, thus accelerating learning without the use of complex cognition. The lack of evidence for teaching in species other than humans may reflect problems in producing unequivocal support for the occurrence of teaching, rather than the absence of teaching.
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References and Notes
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H. and J. Kotze kindly allowed us to work on their land, and the Northern Cape Conservation Authority granted permission to conduct the research. We are grateful for the support of the Mammal Research Institute at the University of Pretoria and for the help of N. Jordan, T. Flower, N. Tayar, and volunteers who contributed to data collection. L. Hollén allowed us the use of some begging call recordings. We thank T. Clutton-Brock for supervision and access to the meerkats and S. Hodge, J. Gilchrist, K. Isvaran, A. Radford, N. Raihani, S. English, and A. Young for discussion and advice. The work was funded by a Natural Environment Research Council studentship to A.T.
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Published In
Science
Volume 313 | Issue 5784
14 July 2006
14 July 2006
Copyright
American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Submission history
Received: 13 April 2006
Accepted: 2 June 2006
Published in print: 14 July 2006
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Supporting Online Material
www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/313/5784/227/DC1
Materials and Methods
Tables S1 to S5
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- Alex Thornton,
- Katherine McAuliffe
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- The burgeoning reach of animal culture, Science, 372, 6537, (2021)./doi/10.1126/science.abe6514
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