- Can animals be gay?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
- Can animals catch yawns off humans?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
- Can other animals be conscientious?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
- Can fish count?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>
<\/p><\/div> <\/section>
There is an assumption that when we teach, we are using our big brains to work out the best methods, balancing our own beliefs and motivations with what we know about those of our pupils.\u00a0This capability to predict what others are thinking is termed \u2018theory of mind\u2019. For a long time, other animals were thought to lack any of these \u2018mind-reading\u2019 abilities, so they were also assumed incapable of teaching.<\/p>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Teaching \u2013 is it only humans that do it? \u00a9 Getty<\/em><\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n So who was first to prove that animals can teach?<\/h2>\n
It was a little species of ant, in 2006 \u2013 a discovery that caused shockwaves. \u201cIt was the last thing people expected,\u201d says Nichola Raihani, professor of evolution and behaviour at University College London<\/a>. \u201cFor such a long time, people were looking for examples of teaching in chimpanzees<\/a><\/strong>. And then it comes from an ant.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ants in question were rock ants, which live in colonies of 150-200 individuals, nesting in crevices. They also nest between microscope slides, making them great subjects for study. At the University of Bristol<\/a>, Nigel Franks and his team were studying how the ants communicated the location of food to their colony-mates.<\/p>\n
They observed something known as \u2018tandem-running\u2019, in which a knowledgeable ant (a \u2018teacher\u2019) led a naive ant (a \u2018pupil\u2019) to the meal. The pupil kept track of the teacher by tapping her antennae on the teacher\u2019s bottom, sometimes pausing to take in visual landmarks, in order to learn the route for herself.<\/p>\n
When this happened, the teacher also stopped, making its journey on average four times slower than if it was going it alone. And yet, tandem-running meant that more ants could learn the route and, in turn, guide more naive ants, enabling the colony to reach the food faster overall.<\/p>\n
The study sounds controversial\u2026<\/h2>\n
It was! But it had been carefully designed to meet the three key criteria for animal teaching, put forward in 1992 by biologists Tim Caro and Marc Hauser. First, knowledgeable ants clearly adjusted their behaviour towards their pupils; second, tandem-running was costly for the teacher; third, pupils learned the route because of the teacher\u2019s behaviour.<\/p>\n
The implications were huge. We humans thought our ability to teach made us special \u2013 yet even a humble ant could do it.<\/p>\n
Wow! What other studies have looked at whether animals can teach?<\/h2>\n
The next example came the Kalahari Research Centre<\/a>, where meerkats<\/a> are so accustomed to people that they ignore them. \u201cYou can observe them in an enormous amount of detail,\u201d says Alex Thornton, professor of cognitive ecology at the University of Exeter<\/a>, who studied the species for his PhD.<\/p>\n
Meerkats are cooperative breeders, meaning that as well as a dominant pair of breeding individuals, groups also include a variable number of non-breeding \u2018helpers\u2019, who all pitch in to look after the pups. Meerkats are carnivores that eat a range of prey and are partial to feasting on poisonous scorpions, and Thornton wanted to find out how the youngsters learned how to handle such a dangerous prey item.<\/p>\n
![\"""\"]( "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Meerkats \u00a9 Paul Souders\/Getty<\/em><\/span><\/figcaption> Paul Souders \/ Getty Images<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n And\u2026?<\/h2>\n
Recording thousands of feeding events, he discovered something remarkable: the adults were provisioning the pups with \u2018age-appropriate\u2019 food. The youngest individuals received dead prey, and as they got older, received live animals. These were either \u2018child-proofed\u2019 (a scorpion without its sting, for instance) or, for the oldest, left intact. The adults experienced a cost when they caught a scorpion and their clumsy offspring allowed it to escape. Further tests proved that the young were learning because of the adults\u2019 behaviour. Meerkats were teachers too.<\/p>\n
How else can teaching manifest in the animal kingdom?<\/h2>\n
Animal teaching isn\u2019t just about learning routes or skills. Also being studied at the Kalahari Research Centre were southern pied babblers \u2013 striking white-and-black birds that, like meerkats, are cooperative breeders. Studying them for her PhD, Raihani noticed that the adults made a distinctive \u2018purr\u2019 when feeding the chicks, and after a certain age, the chicks responded to the call by begging. The adults continued to purr-call to fledged birds, which now responded by approaching the caller.<\/p>\n
Raihani wasn\u2019t thinking about teaching initially. \u201cJust seeing the birds fly to the nest and give a weird call, you don\u2019t think, \u2018oh, they\u2019re teaching\u2019. You have to piece that puzzle together,\u201d she says. She discussed her observations with Thornton and they wondered whether this could be a different kind of teaching.<\/p>\n
The data agreed. Adults seemed to be conditioning their chicks to respond to purr-calls by associating them with meals (much like Pavlov\u2019s dog). Adults weren\u2019t directly benefitting by calling; in fact, the most prolific callers gained the least weight. And by playing purr-calls to some broods before the age at which the adults started to make these calls to them naturally, Raihani could show that it was from the calls that the chicks learned, rather than something else.<\/p>\n
![\"""\"]( "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Southern pied babbler \u00a9 Getty<\/em><\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n So why go to all that effort?<\/h2>\n
By teaching their chicks to respond to a call, they had a tool for gathering their fledglings closer. Like a teacher blowing a whistle to assemble his or her pupils, the adults could lead their offspring towards food or away from danger.<\/p>\n
Ants, meerkats and babblers aren\u2019t usually grouped together, yet they all showed unequivocal evidence for something apparently unique to humans \u2013 and the response from other scientists was polarised. But the genie was out of the bottle. Not only could teaching be observed in animals, but it also quite conclusively did not require advanced cognition. \u201cThe whole point is that \u2028meerkats teach, despite not being clever,\u201d says Thornton.<\/p>\n
What other forms of teaching are there?<\/h2>\n
Superb fairy wren mothers have been found to teach their embryos a \u2018vocal password\u2019 . And several other studies either claim evidence for, or are highly suggestive of, teaching. These include dolphins<\/a> communicating hunting techniques, elephants<\/a> educating younger females how to respond to bulls in musth, and chimpanzees<\/a> facilitating tool-use in their offspring. The difficulty is that none of them fulfil all of Caro and Hauser\u2019s criteria. But does that really mean that only a handful \u2028of non-human animals can teach?<\/p>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Mother and baby elephant grazing \u00a9 Getty<\/em><\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n What about apes \u2013 our closest relative? Can they teach?<\/h2>\n
Some 30 years after Caro and Hauser put forward their definition, the question of whether apes can teach remains disputed. Christophe Boesch, professor at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology<\/a>, initiated a study of the wild chimpanzees of Ta\u00ef National Park<\/a> on the Ivory Coast in 1979, which continues to this day. Members of this population crack open hard Panda nuts by placing them on anvils and pounding them with rocks \u2013 a complex behaviour that takes years to learn and yields rich pickings in the form of highly calorific nut meat. In other words, a potentially good system in which to investigate teaching.<\/p>\n
In 1991, he published his first observations of teaching in these chimpanzees, which included two examples where a mother appeared to help her infant learn by, for example, repositioning a nut into a better position for cracking. Since then, more reports of teaching have been documented among the Ta\u00ef chimpanzees including, recently, a fascinating comparison of nut-cracking in chimpanzees and the indigenous Mbendjele BaYaka people of the Congo.<\/p>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>A chimpanzee family \u00a9 Getty<\/em><\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n But\u2026 is there a but?<\/h2>\n
I\u2019m afraid so. Caro and Hauser\u2019s criteria haven\u2019t been conclusively met for chimpanzees, something that may simply reflect the practical difficulties of experimentally evaluating them in wild, slow-developing animals. Boesch accepts that there is some scepticism over whether chimpanzees should be considered teachers, but remains convinced that this is how the Ta\u00ef chimpanzees are learning, because of the inherent complexity involved in mastering nut-cracking behaviour. He explains that if teaching is an adaptation to environmental challenges, when juveniles cannot learn quickly enough on their own to survive, then it could be far more widespread.<\/p>\n
And what about orangutans? Do orangutans teach their young?<\/h2>\n
Orangutans<\/a><\/strong>, while great apes, have never been thought of as teachers. A mother is closely watched by her infant while she strips leaves from a vine or uses a tool to extract seeds from a Neesia fruit, but other than tolerating its frequent attempts to beg for and take food, she is always thought to be a passive role model, not teaching.<\/p>\n
But a recent study found that mothers may be more active than thought in helping their infants to learn. \u201cIt took a long time to understand the orangutan way of doing it,\u201d says Caroline Schuppli from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior.<\/p>\n
Decoding the subtleties of orangutan behaviour revealed that mothers adjust their tolerance levels according to an infant\u2019s age and how difficult a particular food type is to process and eat.\u00a0The missing piece is evidence that infants learn because of this \u2013 they may just improve their food handling skills as they get older. Schuppli is therefore careful not to claim that orangutans teach; to do so she needs to show that maternal tolerance levels impact the speed at which infants learn.<\/p>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Baby Sumatran orangutan \u00a9 Bob Bennett\/Getty<\/em><\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n So what\u2019s next?<\/h2>\n
If further research shows that teaching does occur among orangutans, the next question would be how they do it.\u00a0Clearly, having a theory of mind isn\u2019t a prerequisite, and that may be true of humans too. And yet, the information processing system of an ape is vastly more complex than that of an individual ant, so is it feasible that they\u2019re achieving the behaviour in different ways?<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the big question,\u201d says Schuppli. \u201cWhat is it that triggers their choice in sharing or not sharing? What do mothers really understand about the development of their offspring? This finding has opened a whole new avenue of research.\u201d<\/p>\n
- Humpback whales can learn songs from other populations, study reveals<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
- How did shrikes learn to impale their prey?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>
<\/p><\/div> <\/section>
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Main image \u00a9 Getty<\/em><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p><\/body><\/html>\n
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- How did shrikes learn to impale their prey?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>
- Can animals catch yawns off humans?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
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