Abstract

Many animals emit calls in the presence of food, but researchers do not always know the function of these calls. Evidence suggests that adult golden lion tamarins (Leontopithecus rosalia) use food-offering calls to teach juveniles which substrate (i.e., microhabitat) to forage on, or in, for food. However, we do not yet know whether juveniles learn from this aspect of the adults’ behavior. Here we examine whether juveniles learn to associate food-offering calls with a foraging substrate, as a step toward assessing whether these calls qualify as teaching behavior. We compared the performance of four wild juvenile golden lion tamarins that were introduced to a novel substrate while exposed to playbacks of food-offering calls (experimental condition) to the performance of three juveniles that were exposed to the novel substrate without the presence of food-offering playbacks (control condition). We varied the location of the novel substrate between trials. We found that food-offering calls had an immediate effect on juveniles’ interactions with the novel substrate, whether they inserted their hands into the substrate and their eating behavior, and a long-term effect on eating behavior at the substrate. The findings imply that juvenile golden lion tamarins can learn through food-offering calls about the availability of food at a substrate, which is consistent with (but does not prove) teaching in golden lion tamarins through stimulus enhancement. Our findings support the hypothesis that teaching might be more likely to evolve in cooperatively breeding species with complex ecological niches.

Highlights

  • Teaching is one of many ways by which individuals transmit knowledge and skills to one another

  • We focused on the third criterion of Caro and Hauser’s definition and investigated whether juvenile golden lion tamarins can learn to associate food-offering calls with a novel foraging substrate

  • We compared the performance of wild juvenile golden lion tamarins that were introduced to a novel substrate while exposed to playbacks of food-offering calls to the performance of juveniles that were exposed to the novel substrate without the presence of food-offering playbacks

Read more

Summary

Introduction

Teaching is one of many ways by which individuals transmit knowledge and skills to one another. It is an important process in human development and cultural learning, and was regarded as a uniquely human behavior for a long time (Caro and Hauser 1992; Premack 2007). Evidence for teaching behavior comes from species where relatedness between teachers and pupils is high, and contexts in which the costs of learning from inadvertent social learning or asocial learning are high (e.g., solitary hunting) (Fogarty et al 2011; Thornton and Raihani 2008)

Methods
Results
Discussion
Conclusion

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call

Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.