animal culture

Instead, it seems chimpanzees watched others perform these feeding techniques, learned them and passed them on through tradition, said study author Andrew Whiten, Ph.D., an emeritus professor in the School of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of St. Andrews who studies animal culture in the U.K.

Next year, the researchers hope to explore aspects of animal culture, as well as the emotional lives of turkeys.

But the details of technique evolve to differ in different groups as the innovation spreads, a mark of animal culture.

The process is similar to the spread and evolution of human cultural innovations like language, or a classic example of animal culture, bird song, which can vary from region to region in the same species.

Peter Richerson of the University of California at Davis, who studies the coevolution of genes and culture in humans, admitted he was once reluctant to talk about animal culture, but he has since changed his mind.