Diffusion of novel foraging behaviour in Amazon parrots through social learning

Abstract

While social learning has been demonstrated in species across many taxa, the role it plays in everyday foraging decisions is not well understood. Investigating social learning during foraging could shed light on the emergence of cultural variation in different groups. We used an open diffusion experiment to examine the spread of a novel foraging technique in captive Amazon parrots. Three groups were tested using a two-action foraging box, including experimental groups exposed to demonstrators using different techniques and control birds. We also examined the influence of agonistic and pilfering behaviour on task acquisition. We found evidence of social learning: more experimental birds than control birds interacted with and opened the box. The birds were, however, no more likely to use the demonstrated technique than the non-demonstrated one, making local or stimulus enhancement the most likely mechanism. Exhibiting aggression was positively correlated with box opening, whilst receiving aggression did not reduce motivation to engage with the box, indicating that willingness to defend access to the box was important in task acquisition. Pilfering food and success in opening the box were also positively correlated; however, having food pilfered did not affect victims� motivation to interact with the box. In a group context, pilfering may promote learning of new foraging opportunities. Although previous studies have demonstrated that psittacines are capable of imitation, in this naturalistic set-up there was no evidence that parrots copied the demonstrated opening technique. Foraging behaviour in wild populations of Amazons could therefore be facilitated by low-fidelity social learning mechanisms. © 2016 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelber

Neophobia and social facilitation in narrow-striped mongooses

“…Similarly, in meerkats and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), the rank of demonstrators influenced the tendency of lowerranking individuals to seek social information during social learning (meerkats: Thornton and Malapert 2009;chimpanzees: Watson et al 2017). Moreover, in Amazonian parrots (Amazonia amazonica), individuals receiving aggression at an artificial feeding apparatus interacted less often with the apparatus, thereby constraining their social learning opportunities (Morales Picard et al 2017). In chacma baboons (Papio ursinus), boldness/neophobia did not co-vary with the tendency to pay attention to a demonstrator in a social learning experiment (Carter et al 2014).…”

“…Although social learning is widespread across animals (insects: Slaa et al 2003;Grüter and Leadbeater 2014;fish: Nomakuchi et al 2009;Webster and Laland 2017;birds: Marchetti and Drent 2000;Morales Picard et al 2017; carnivorans: Thornton and Clutton-Brock 2011; primates: Schnoell and Fichtel 2012;van de Waal et al 2013), it has been less often studied experimentally in social carnivores. For instance, spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta) did not learn socially in a problem-solving task (Benson-Amram et al 2014).…”

Manipulating actions: A selective two‐option device for cognitive experiments in wild animals

“…Alternatively, the hardware could be scaled up or down to accommodate body size, strength and cognitive abilities of different target species. In fact, various studies have used a very similar sliding‐door paradigm in socio‐cognitive studies in other species, such as chimpanzees (Sánchez‐Amaro et al, 2018), parrots (Picard et al, 2017) or vervet monkeys (van de Waal et al, 2013).…”

Parrots have evolved a primate-like telencephalic-midbrain-cerebellar circuit

“…In mammals, cortico-cerebellar pathways are involved in the learning of complex motor behaviors, such as tool use e.g. 70 , and several studies suggest that parrots are only able to perform complex extractions after learning by observation of conspecifics 71 , 72 . The expansion of SpM may also be important for other behaviors which parrots are capable of and that demand the capacity for planning, execution and understanding complex behavioural sequences, such as the string pulling task 73 and the use of tools e.g.…”