Social learning about dangerous people by wild jackdaws.

Victoria E Lee,Noémie Régli,Guillam E Mcivor,Alex Thornton

doi:10.1098/rsos.191031

Victoria E Lee, Noémie Régli + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.191031

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Abstract

For animals that live alongside humans, people can present both an opportunity and a threat. Previous studies have shown that several species can learn to discriminate between individual people and assess risk based on prior experience. To avoid potentially costly encounters, it may also pay individuals to learn about dangerous people based on information from others. Social learning about anthropogenic threats is likely to be beneficial in habitats dominated by human activity, but experimental evidence is limited. Here, we tested whether wild jackdaws (Corvus monedula) use social learning to recognize dangerous people. Using a within-subjects design, we presented breeding jackdaws with an unfamiliar person near their nest, combined with conspecific alarm calls. Subjects that heard alarm calls showed a heightened fear response in subsequent encounters with the person compared to a control group, reducing their latency to return to the nest. This study provides important evidence that animals use social learning to assess the level of risk posed by individual humans.

Highlights

In changing environments, social information allows organisms to learn about novel threats without the need for potentially costly encounters [1]
Field studies carried out under natural conditions are urgently needed in order to establish how social information influences antipredator behaviour in real-world royalsocietypublishing.org/journal/rsos R
As socially-acquired predator avoidance is hypothesized to confer benefits when 2 predation risk varies in space and time [16], when new predators are encountered [17] or when community composition is altered [2], understanding how social environments shape antipredator responses is vital in predicting and mitigating the effects of environmental change [18]

Summary

Introduction

Social information allows organisms to learn about novel threats without the need for potentially costly encounters [1]. If potential predators vary in their level of threat, the ability to discriminate between individual predators of the same species is likely to be beneficial [12]. In this scenario, social learning may help prey to fine-tune their antipredator behaviour to avoid the costs of fleeing in response to benign encounters

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