Our researchers have studied wild monkeys problem-solving for food to better understand how social dynamics can influence behaviour and learning.
The research team, led by our Department of Anthropology, and in collaboration with University of São Paulo, studied two groups of wild bearded capuchin monkeys in Brazil’s Serra da Capivara National Park.
The researchers installed an experiment box in the park which contained food that the monkeys could access by either lifting a door or pulling a knob.
The team observed which monkeys learned how to access the food, and how that information then spread to the rest of their group.
The researchers specifically focused on the role played by social tolerance in the learning of the problem-solving behaviour.
Social tolerance determines who is allowed in proximity to whom and granted access to resources such as food or social information.
The study indicates that the monkeys mainly learned from others via direct observation, and strong social tolerance (e.g. amongst grooming partners) was found to be a good predictor of which monkeys would learn from each other.
Beyond the influence of social tolerance, naïve monkeys were more likely to observe, and potentially learn from, successful males in the group.
The research findings indicate that social tolerance enables social learning, which may be biased towards successful individuals.
This may shed light on the evolutionary forces involved in primate, including human, cultural abilities.
The research has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
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