Animals show local behavioural traits

Culture isn't the sole preserve of humankind. Rats too have culture and so do killer whales, great apes and many other species. So argues Prof Richard Byrne of the University of St Andrews, who said that animals show dramatic local traditions in behaviour.

He was addressing a session of the BA Festival of Science in Glasgow.

The complex behaviours of birds and social insects are "hard wired", he said. They are born with these abilities, they are not learned.

The situation is different in certain animals, where behaviour can be learned to become part of the local culture. Rats living along the River Po in Italy have learned to dive for molluscs like an otter, he said.

Each generation learns the trick but rats that have not watched the practice are unable to use this food source.

A related learned behaviour was seen in rats living outside Jerusalem, he said. These animals had learned to dissect tough pine cones to get at the kernels inside.

Rats who had learned this always started at the blunt end, working around in a spiral fashion until the kernels were exposed. An uninitiated rat when given a pinecone usually started chewing at the pointed end and failed to get the kernels. "The transmission of these skills depends on high-quality learning," Prof Byrne said.

His particular expertise is in great apes and they too exhibit the transmission of "highly organised skills". Gorillas, for example, learn how to process food plants to make them palatable, for example thistles or nettles. "It seems they pick up the skills by watching," he said and not by being "taught" by a parent.

In fact, the parents "do almost nothing like teaching". The youngster learns the technique by watching and over time can repeat elements of the process in the correct order to complete the task.

Incorporating the skills is also more than simple imitation. The apes "extract the essentials from the task", he said, and can apply them afterwards, mixing them with other skills as the demands of a task vary.

Animal skills of this kind become part of the local lore and may be unknown or accomplished in a different way in other communities.