Archive for the ‘Wildlife’ Category

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Humans are enabling some animals to evolve larger brains

August 23, 2013

As humans implement artificial selection on themselves – a process and a force for evolution operating much faster than natural selection could  – they are also changing the environment for evolutionary selection in which many animals live. Some of these species are enormously successful in adapting to their new environments while others cannot cope with the change. The changes are so profound that the evolutionary trajectories of these species are changing. It could be that the “urbansisation” of these species has led some species to follow an evolutionary path which includes increasing brain size in their new, man-made surroundings. Carl Zimmer writes in the New York Times:

Are We Making Animal Brains Bigger? 

Evolutionary biologists have come to recognize humans as a tremendous evolutionary force. In hospitals, we drive the evolution of resistant bacteria by giving patients antibiotics. In the oceans, we drive the evolution of small-bodied fish by catching the big ones.

In a new study, a University of Minnesota biologist, Emilie C. Snell-Rood, offers evidence suggesting we may be driving evolution in a more surprising way. As we alter the places where animals live, we may be fueling the evolution of bigger brains.

Dr. Snell-Rood bases her conclusion on a collection of mammal skulls kept at the Bell Museum of Natural History at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Snell-Rood picked out 10 species to study, including mice, shrews, bats and gophers. She selected dozens of individual skulls that were collected as far back as a century ago. An undergraduate student named Naomi Wick measured the dimensions of the skulls, making it possible to estimate the size of their brains.

Two important results emerged from their research. In two species — the white-footed mouse and the meadow vole — the brains of animals from cities or suburbs were about 6 percent bigger than the brains of animals collected from farms or other rural areas. Dr. Snell-Rood concludes that when these species moved to cities and towns, their brains became significantly bigger.

…..  Studies by other scientists have linked better learning in animals with bigger brains. In January, for example, researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden described an experiment in which they bred guppies for larger brain sizes. The big-brained fish scored better on learning tests than their small-brained cousins.

Animals colonizing cities and towns have to learn how to find food in buildings and other places their ancestors hadn’t encountered. ..

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Beetles reduce methane production from cowpats

August 22, 2013

Leaving aside all the extraneous nonsense about global warming and cattle flatulence – which was not actually studied at all – this paper by an intrepid Finnish researcher does address the effect of dung beetles on methane production in dung. Perhaps someday it will not be necessary to wrap-up otherwise good research in a “global warming” cloak just to ensure publication or funding or both

 Penttilä A, Slade EM, Simojoki A, Riutta T, Minkkinen K, and Roslin T. (2013) Quantifying Beetle-Mediated Effects on Gas Fluxes from Dung Pats. PLoS ONE 8(8): e71454. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0071454

Abstract: Agriculture is one of the largest contributors of the anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHGs) responsible for global warming. Measurements of gas fluxes from dung pats suggest that dung is a source of GHGs, but whether these emissions are modified by arthropods has not been studied. A closed chamber system was used to measure the fluxes of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) from dung pats with and without dung beetles on a grass sward. The presence of dung beetles significantly affected the fluxes of GHGs from dung pats. Most importantly, fresh dung pats emitted higher amounts of CO2 and lower amounts of CH4 per day in the presence than absence of beetles. Emissions of N2O showed a distinct peak three weeks after the start of the experiment – a pattern detected only in the presence of beetles. When summed over the main grazing season (June–July), total emissions of CH4proved significantly lower, and total emissions of N2O significantly higher in the presence than absence of beetles. While clearly conditional on the experimental conditions, the patterns observed here reveal a potential impact of dung beetles on gas fluxes realized at a small spatial scale, and thereby suggest that arthropods may have an overall effect on gas fluxes from agriculture. Dissecting the exact mechanisms behind these effects, mapping out the range of conditions under which they occur, and quantifying effect sizes under variable environmental conditions emerge as key priorities for further research.

Dung beetles like Aphodius pedellus may aerate cow pats- Drawing of beetle by Kari Heliövaara

From EurekAlert:

Atte Penttilä, who undertook the study for his Masters, explains: “Cow pats offer a prime food for a large number of organisms. In fact, there are probably as many beetle species living in dung as there are bird species on this planet.”

Of the dung beetles living in Northern Europe, most spend their entire lives within the dung pats. “We believe that these beetles exert much of their impact by simply digging around in the dung. Methane is primarily born under anaerobic conditions, and the tunneling by beetles seems to aerate the pats. This will have a major impact on how carbon escapes from cow pats into the atmosphere.”

“You see, the important thing here is not just how much carbon is released” explains Tomas Roslin, head of the research team. “The question is rather in what form it is released. If carbon is first taken up by plants as carbon dioxide, then emitted in the same format by the cows eating the plants, then the effect of plants passing through cattle will be small in terms of global warming. But if in the process the same carbon is converted from carbon dioxide to methane – a gas with a much higher impact on climate – it is then that we need to worry.”

“If the beetles can keep those methane emissions down, well then we should obviously thank them – and make sure to include them in our calculations of overall climatic effects of dairy and beef farming.”

 

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Young coral reefs will be unaffected by any ocean acidification due to increased carbon dioxide

August 14, 2013

Well now!

File:PH Scale.svg

pH scale : Wikipedia

While I have no belief in the fanciful theory that man-made carbon dioxide emissions will have any significant effect on global warming, I have no doubt that an increasing carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere will lower the pH of the ocean (and they will only be more acidic in the sense of reducing alkanity though with a pH remaining well over 7.0). In fact it is likely that oceans will maintain a pH over 8.0 even in the worst scenarios. (Liquid solutions are usually described as acidic with a pH of less than 7.0 and as alkaline with a pH over 7.0 though on the continuous pH scale any reduction of alkanity is per force an increase of acidity and vice versa).

A new paper shows that the hypothesised catastrophic scenarios about ocean “acidification” (more correctly – a reduction of alkanity) and the consequent effects on coral reefs are little more than fantasy because they find that “there will be no direct ecological effects of ocean acidification on the early life-history stages of reef corals, at least in the near future”.

CM Chua, W Leggat, A Moya, AH Baird. Near-future reductions in pH will have no consistent ecological effects on the early life-history stages of reef corals. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 2013; 486: 143 DOI:10.3354/meps10318

Abstract: Until recently, research into the consequences of oceanic uptake of CO2 for corals focused on its effect on physiological processes, in particular, calcification. However, events early in the life history of corals are also likely to be vulnerable to changes in ocean chemistry caused by increases in the atmospheric concentration of CO2 (ocean acidification). We tested the effect of reduced pH on embryonic development, larval survivorship and metamorphosis of 3 common scleractinian corals from the Great Barrier Reef. We used 4 treatment levels of pH, corresponding to the current level of ocean pH and 3 values projected to occur later this century. None of the early life-history stages we studied were consistently affected by reduced pH. Our results suggest that there will be no direct ecological effects of ocean acidification on the early life-history stages of reef corals, at least in the near future.

ScienceDaily:

Corals can survive the early stages of their development even under the tough conditions that rising carbon emissions will impose on them says a new study from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. …. 

Dr Andrew Baird, Principal Research Fellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University, was part of the research team and explains their findings.

“The prevailing view is that ocean acidification will act like a toxin to corals, but we were unconvinced by results from previous work on young corals and ocean acidification so we tested critical early stages of development in several coral species at several different acid (or ‘pH’) concentrations of seawater.

“Our results showed no clear response to increasing ocean acidification in any of the stages, or for any of the coral species,” says Dr Baird. “In fact, in only one of nine experiments did we get the response expected if CO2 was acting like a toxin. More often than not we found no effect.”

By bubbling CO2 through seawater the research team was able to simulate future levels of ocean acidification expected to result from rising human carbon emissions. They tested the success of embryo development, the survival of coral larvae and finally their success in settling on coral reefs.

The rest of the reporting by ScienceDaily is almost embarassing as they try to pay lip-service to the orthodoxy of the “the carbon dioxide is evil” fantasy. They waste space in trying to emphasise that even if young corals are not affected this “study does not discount the possibility that coral larvae may suffer other ill-effects from increasing ocean acidification, for example, their swimming speeds may slow down, but because coral larvae typically settle on the reef two or three weeks after birth it is unlikely that these effects will have a major impact on the survival or settlement of coral larvae”.

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Ants which adapt to human behaviour are considered a threat

August 14, 2013

Why do we penalise successful species and protect the failures? Almost as if we we wish to deny evolution by ensuring the survival of those which don’t deserve to survive.

If Giant Pandas were not as disinterested as they seem to be in reproducing themselves and as specialised in eating only a few species of bamboo, but instead were immensely successful in increasing their own numbers, then we would no doubt be organising Panda culls. But since they are an almost perfect example of a species bent on its own extinction we go to all possible lengths to keep them going!

Yet another story where a successful species which adapts to and make use of humans and human behaviour is then considered a “threat”. Unsuccessful species of course would become “endangered” and would then be protected!

BBC: The problem of invasive ants may be far worse than previously thought. 

A Spanish team of scientists has found that larger than expected numbers of the insects are being unwittingly shipped around the world. The researchers warn that many of these species are establishing colonies in their new habitats that could pose a threat to the environment, infrastructure and human health. The research is published in the journal Royal Society Biology Letters.

Lead author Veronica Miravete, from the University of Gerona in Spain, said: “Due to their small size, most ants are transported involuntarily in containers and other boxes, together with soil, wood, ornamental plants and fruits etc, on ships or airplanes.”

The research team looked at the numbers of exotic ants in the Netherlands, the United States and New Zealand.

Fire ant

They found far more of these accidental stowaways than had previously been reported.

Extrapolating from this data, they estimate that 768 exotic ant species could have been introduced around the world through trade routes.

Of these, they believe that more than 600 species could have established new colonies.

Dr Miravete said: “The number of ants arriving is very large and 85% of the introduced species are able to establish successfully. This indicates that there are many introduced species that are living around us as of yet undetected.”

While not all animals that move to a new region pose a threat, some can wreak havoc – and invasive ants are some of the worst alien offenders.

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Successful owl species to be killed off to assist an unsuccessful owl species!

July 24, 2013

“Conservation” is fundamentally anti-evolution if human intervention is to protect unviable species while killing off the successful ones. And here it would seem that the intervention by the US Fish and Wildlife Service is more to atone for their past sins than for any sound principles. All in the name of “Conservation”.

Barred owl

A barred owl is seen near Index, Wash. The federal government is considering killing some of the owls in the Pacific Northwest to aid the smaller northern spotted owl in the area. (Barton Glasser / Associated Press)LATimes: 

LA Times: Federal wildlife officials have moved one step closer to their plan to play referee in a habitat supremacy contest that has pitted two species of owl against one another in the forests of the Pacific Northwest.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released a final environmental review of an experiment planned in three states to see if killing barred owls will assist the northern spotted owls, which are threatened with extinction after a major loss of territory since the 1970s.

The agency’s preferred course of action calls for killing 3,603 barred owls in four study areas in Oregon, Washington and Northern California over the next four years. At a cost of $3 million, the plan requires a special permit under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which prohibits killing non-game birds.

“It’s a fair assessment to say that going after the barred owls is the plan we’d prefer to pursue,” Robin Bown, a federal wildlife biologist, told the Los Angeles Times.

The agency began evaluating alternatives in 2009, gathering public comment and consulting ethicists, focus groups and conduction scientific studies.

It will issue a final decision on the plan in 30 days.

…..

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Dolphins have unique whistle-names for each other

July 23, 2013
Mother and juvenile bottlenose dolphins head t...

Mother and juvenile bottlenose dolphins – Wikipedia

Dolphins it seems are not just self-aware but identify specific individuals with specific whistles. And that would mean not just having a sense of self-identity but also of having a “naming” convention and of communication. And if whistle-names exist then whistle-words and language are also already present or certainly not very far away. Researchers from the Sea Mammal Research Unit, School of Biology at the University of St. Andrews have just published a study of bottle-nosed dolphins.

Stephanie L. King and Vincent M. Janik, Bottlenose dolphins can use learned vocal labels to address each other, Published online before print July 22, 2013, doi:10.1073/pnas.1304459110 , PNAS July 22, 2013

Abstract: In animal communication research, vocal labeling refers to incidents in which an animal consistently uses a specific acoustic signal when presented with a specific object or class of objects. Labeling with learned signals is a foundation of human language but is notably rare in nonhuman communication systems. In natural animal systems, labeling often occurs with signals that are not influenced by learning, such as in alarm and food calling. There is a suggestion, however, that some species use learned signals to label conspecific individuals in their own communication system when mimicking individually distinctive calls. Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) are a promising animal for exploration in this area because they are capable of vocal production learning and can learn to use arbitrary signals to report the presence or absence of objects. Bottlenose dolphins develop their own unique identity signal, the signature whistle. This whistle encodes individual identity independently of voice features. The copying of signature whistles may therefore allow animals to label or address one another. Here, we show that wild bottlenose dolphins respond to hearing a copy of their own signature whistle by calling back. Animals did not respond to whistles that were not their own signature. This study provides compelling evidence that a dolphin’s learned identity signal is used as a label when addressing conspecifics. Bottlenose dolphins therefore appear to be unique as nonhuman mammals to use learned signals as individually specific labels for different social companions in their own natural communication system.

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Chimpanzees and orangutans have long term memories too

July 19, 2013

image The Telegraph

Interesting work in a new paper is published in Current Biology. It supports my view that life is a continuum from simple to complex with no place for – or any need to invoke – a “soul”. At what point the brain of a species is large enough and complex enough not only to be able to “save” memories but also to then access these data at a later time is also unknown. I have little doubt from the  dogs and cats that I have known that they can “remember” people and behaviour from many years before  – even if they are often  supposed to live only in the “now”. At what point in this continuum “self-awareness” emerges is not known but I suspect that it depends on the definition of “self-awareness” and some level of self-awareness lies very close to the “simple” end of the scale of life.

(Certainly the mosquito which got trapped in my study yesterday was not just “self-aware”, it was also maliciously aware of me. If it had a soul it has now been consigned to mosquito hell!!)

This work shows that chimpanzees and orangutans have the ability to “remember events that happened two weeks or three years ago, but also that they can remember them even when they are not expecting to have to recall those events at a later time” 

Gema Martin-Ordas, Dorthe Berntsen, Josep Call. Memory for Distant Past Events in Chimpanzees and Orangutans. Current Biology, 2013; DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2013.06.017

Highlights

  • First study addressing unexpected and cued recall of both general and unique events
  • Chimpanzees and orangutans recalled events that happened weeks and years earlier
  • Subjects also showed evidence of binding
  • Chimpanzees and orangutans share this form of autobiographical memory with humans

Summary

Determining the memory systems that support nonhuman animals’ capacity to remember distant past events is currently the focus an intense research effort and a lively debate. Comparative psychology has largely adopted Tulving’s framework by focusing on whether animals remember what-where-when something happened (i.e., episodic-like memory). However, apes have also been reported to recall other episodic components after single-trial exposures. Using a new experimental paradigm we show that chimpanzees and orangutans recalled a tool-finding event that happened four times 3 years earlier (experiment 1) and a tool-finding unique event that happened once 2 weeks earlier (experiment 2). Subjects were able to distinguish these events from other tool-finding events, which indicates binding of relevant temporal-spatial components. Like in human involuntary autobiographical memory, a cued, associative retrieval process triggered apes’ memories: when presented with a particular setup, subjects instantaneously remembered not only where to search for the tools (experiment 1), but also the location of the tool seen only once (experiment 2). The complex nature of the events retrieved, the unexpected and fast retrieval, the long retention intervals involved, and the detection of binding strongly suggest that chimpanzees and orangutans’ memories for past events mirror some of the features of human autobiographical memory.

From Science Daily:

…. “Our data and other emerging evidence keep challenging the idea of non-human animals being stuck in time,” says Gema Martin-Ordas of Aarhus University in Denmark. “We show not only that chimpanzees and orangutans remember events that happened two weeks or three years ago, but also that they can remember them even when they are not expecting to have to recall those events at a later time.” ….. 

“I was surprised to find out not only that they remembered the event that took place three years ago, but also that they did it so fast!” Martin-Ordas says. “On average it took them five seconds to go and find the tools. Again this is very telling because it shows that they were not just walking around the rooms and suddenly saw the boxes and searched for the tools inside them. More probably, it was the recalled event that enabled them to find the tools directly.”

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Global cooling is killing off the birds and the bees

June 28, 2013

Humans have always looked to the birds and the bees for figuring out how to do it. But now we are doomed!

Whole populations of plants, bees, insects and even birds are already dying of cold. 

Those who deny that global cooling has set in and have their heads buried in the sand are still lost in the fantasy world of trying to “stop global warming” by cutting carbon dioxide emissions.  That horse has bolted and to make it worse they are trying to close the wrong stable door! In the meantime, the sun and the earth and the climate have moved on. Global warming is no longer fashionable. Global cooling is here – at least for the next 2 or 3 decades.

BBC: Winged insects including bees, moths and butterflies are suffering this year following the UK’s late, cold spring, a National Trust report has revealed.

The charity warns the drop in numbers of winged insects could lead to food shortages for birds and bats. The six-month review assessed the state of plants and animals in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and came up with a “winners and losers” list. 

Snowdrops, bluebells and daffodils are all on the winners’ list

Among the “losers”, butterflies have been “very scarce” this year, due to a combination of an unsettled spring and the last year’s extremely wet summer. Likewise, moth numbers have been driven down by cool, wet or windy nights over the past few months. Mason bees and mining bees also struggled to survive in poor weather in May, which may have a knock-on effect for plant pollination. “Insect populations have been really very low. Then when they have got going, they’ve been hit by a spell of cool, windy weather… so our environment is just not bouncing with butterflies or anything else,” said Mathew Oates, a naturalist at the National Trust, who worked on the report. …  

Birds on the “losers” list include martins, swifts, swallows and warblers, all of which rely on airborne insects to feed and may struggle to survive in the coming months.

Some seabird populations have been hard hit too. In March, windy weather along the coast of Scotland and northern England led to the apparent starvation of thousands of puffins along with guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes and shags.

However, a number of animals and plants have enjoyed a more fruitful year, earning a place on the list of “winners” of the first half of 2013. Snowdrops and daffodils had “amazingly long flowering seasons”, according to the charity, with daffodils flowering well into May and snowdrops appearing from January through to mid-April. ….

But the UK Government has been moved to urgent action. They have decided that the bee decline is not due to pesticides – which leaves only global cooling which can be blamed. The government has called an urgent  “bee summit to “carry out an “urgent and comprehensive” review of the decline of bees. The majority of the participants will not have any experience of keeping bees!

The bees themselves are not invited:

BBC again: The government is to announce it will carry out an “urgent and comprehensive” review of the decline of bees.

Minister Lord de Mauley will tell a bee summit, organised by Friends of the Earth, that the review will lead to a “national pollinator strategy”.

There is great concern across Europe about the collapse of bee populations and the European Commission wants to ban pesticides linked to bee deaths.

But the UK has opposed the move, saying that the science is inconclusive.

 

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100 Viking queens to be trapped and transported to England

May 1, 2013

It’s the first of May and May is when they emerge from hibernation and are most abundant in Skåne in southern Sweden. But for some of them the freedom they are enjoying will be short lived.

Trappers from the UK have been given permission to capture 100 queens, refrigerate them to induce an artificial hibernation for travel and then transport them to the UK to “rape and pillage” the country-side and hopefully repopulate parts of Kent. A programme was started in 2009 to reintroduce them to the United Kingdom with queens from New Zealand. However this was not a success as many of the queens died during hibernation. DNA analysis of the New Zealand queens showed they lacked genetic diversity.

The queens of the short-haired bumblebee, Bombus subterraneus, are the unfortunate creatures being hunted. It remains to be seen if the Viking queens fare any better than their Antipodean sisters.

Swedish Radio reports:

British scientists have been allowed to capture and bring home 100 Queens of the short-haired bumblebee, fairly common in Skåne but extinct in England. Bumblebees are needed to pollinate plants and vegetables, said Nikki Gammans from Natural England, who leads this unusual hunt, when she presented the project to a large press contingent  today outside Lund . When the British began this effort last year, it was not everybody who applauded, but the resistance was mainlydue to misunderstandings according to the provincial government in Skåne.

From Natural England:

Short-haired bumblebee (c) Nikki Gammans

Short-haired bumblebee (c) Nikki Gammans

After months of careful planning and negotiations, a team of experts led by Dr Nikki Gammans have embarked on a special mission to bring short-haired bumblebee queens back to the UK from the south of Sweden.

After a period of quarantine, It is hoped the bees can then be released on the RSPB Dungeness reserve in May 2012 and eventually colonise the surrounding area – see press release. …..

…. The Short-haired bumblebee, Bombus subterraneus, was last seen at Dungeness in Kent in 1988 and was officially declared extinct in 2000 after many repeated searches. We believe this bee species along with the other threatened bumblebee species have suffered due to the loss of flower-rich habitats such as meadows.

Over the last 60 years, the UK has lost over 97% of its wild flower meadows due to intensifying agricultural practices. It is also likely that the removal of hedgerows from the UK may have reduced the available nesting and hibernation sites for short-haired bumblebees.

While I can see that such a project could be fascinating and challenging, the purpose of the exercise as described by Natural England is rather vague and fuzzy and well-meaning and not at all very convincing. Vague claims of being “critical” to our farming economy read like a sales pitch. These bumblebees failed to adapt / evolve to survive in the UK. Yet they are being  re-introduced without any actions to make the species more likely – genetically – to survive in its new environment. All that has been done is to create some protected habitat (flower corridors). It seems to me that the “conservation” movement is far too backward-looking and must focus more on helping threatened species to evolve genetically rather than trying to prevent the changes to habitat which are inevitable:

Bumblebees pollinate many important agricultural crops and are critical to our farming economy. More bumblebees = better crop pollination – there is evidence that the shortage of pollinators is reducing crop yields. By creating corridors of flower-rich habitat across Romney Marsh area, we have seen an increase and spread in the numbers of bumblebee species in Kent. Five threatened species, which include England’s rarest bumblebee the shrill carder bee, have all increased their geographic range in this area after decades of decline.

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Monkeys – except the top monkey – switch behaviour to conform to local customs

April 29, 2013

Where humans are in a subordinate position in a new society (new immigrants for example) they usually conform to avoid attracting attention which could be dangerous. They observe, they copy behaviour to try to fit in and thereby ensure their own security in the new environment. All driven no doubt by the instinct to survive. But a conquering human does not bother to conform to local customs – he imposes his own. All humans are clearly capable of both types of behaviour. Whether to conform or not is then entirely dependent upon the individual’s position in the society he finds himself in.

And monkeys are – it seems – no different.

I suspect this holds true for many more species than just humans and primates and am a little surprised that the researchers are surprised at this behaviour.

A new paper: E. van de Waal, C. Borgeaud, A. Whiten. Potent Social Learning and Conformity Shape a Wild Primate’s Foraging Decisions. Science, 2013; 340 (6131): 483 DOI:10.1126/science.1232769

From University of St. Andrews press release:

Noha group feeding on pink corn

Noha group feeding on pink corn

….. In the initial study, the researchers provided each of two groups of wild monkeys with a box of maize corn dyed pink and another dyed blue. The blue corn was made to taste repulsive and the monkeys soon learned to eat only pink corn. Two other groups were trained in this way to eat only blue corn. A new generation of infants were later offered both colours of food – neither tasting badly – and the adult monkeys present appeared to remember which colour they had previously preferred. Almost every infant copied the rest of the group, eating only the one preferred colour of corn.

The crucial discovery came when males began to migrate between groups during the mating season. The researchers found that of the ten males who moved to groups eating a different coloured corn to the one they were used to, all but one switched to the new local norm immediately.

The one monkey who did not switch, was the top ranking in his new group who appeared unconcerned about adopting local behavior.

Dr van de Waal conducted the field experiments at the Inkawu Vervet Project in the Mawana private game reserve in South Africa. She became familiar with all 109 monkeys, making it possible for her to document the behaviour of the males who migrated to new groups.

She said, “The willingness of the immigrant males to adopt the local preference of their new groups surprised us all. The copying behaviour of both the new, naïve infants and the migrating males reveals the potency and importance of social learning in these wild primates, extending even to the conformity we know so well in humans.”

Commenting on the research, leading primatologist Professor Frans de Waal, of the Yerkes Primate Center of Emory University, said that the study “is one of the few successful field experiments on cultural transmission to date, and a remarkably elegant one at that.”

Abstract: Conformity to local behavioral norms reflects the pervading role of culture in human life. Laboratory experiments have begun to suggest a role for conformity in animal social learning, but evidence from the wild remains circumstantial. Here, we show experimentally that wild vervet monkeys will abandon personal foraging preferences in favor of group norms new to them. Groups first learned to avoid the bitter-tasting alternative of two foods. Presentations of these options untreated months later revealed that all new infants naïve to the foods adopted maternal preferences. Males who migrated between groups where the alternative food was eaten switched to the new local norm. Such powerful effects of social learning represent a more potent force than hitherto recognized in shaping group differences among wild animals.

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