Teachers in the wild: some clarification

Abstract

In a Research Focus article published in the March 2007 issue of Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Csibra [1] highlights recent work on teaching in non-human animals [2,3] and examines its role in the transfer of cultural information. We welcome a greater integration between human and non-human research and feel that more open discussion between the two fields would be highly productive. However, we would like to clarify three issues. First, Csibra begins by reviewing work on pied babblers, Turdoides bicolor, by Radford and Ridley [4], noting that Rapaport [5] has interpreted it as providing evidence for teaching.