Social learning in animals

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Example of the two-action task paradigm. An individual can solve the task either by lifting the lever and sliding the food out, or turning the lever at the top and stabbing the food out with a stick.

Adaptive behavior in animals is often explained by natural selection on genes, however natural selection on the ability to learn socially may also be an important adaptive strategy, for various reasons. Unlike behaviour driven by genes, social learning allows individuals to learn information at a far more rapid pace. Unlike indicidual learning, social learning can be far less dangerous, as is the case with learning about new predators.  Social learning has been quite broadly defined as: " ...any incidence in which individuals acquire new behaviour or information about their environment via observation of, or interaction with, other animals or their products". Clearly, social learning does not refer to a single ability or mechanism, but a wide range of ways by which information may be derived from the environment. Various types of social learning have been proposed.

Some forms of "social" learning may simply involve no special mechanisms. An example is the learning of new predators in fish through associating the alarm behaviour of other fish with a novel chemical (see below). Another example is the phenomena of social facilitation. 

Term	Description
Copying	Individuals may copy different components of another's behaviour. "Imitative" copying involves copying the form of action, wheras "end-state/goal emulation" involves copying only the environmental outcome of an action. "Sequence-centred social learning" is defined as being able to copy the shape and order of a series of actions.
Observational Learning	Learning how to responds to a stimulus via watching a demonstrator react to a stimulus   Like emulation, the observer learns through watching the outcome of an action, however in obersvational learning the mechanism by which this happens is not defined (unlike in copying).
Affordance learning	Learning the about the operating chatacteristics of objects or the environment via social interactions
Enhancement	Focusing attention on part of the environment
Guided Learning	Following a more experienced animal, and consequently learning something individually from the environment
Social/Response facilitation	Social 'facilitation is when a conspecifics behaviour motivates the individual to engage in similar behavior, , or generally incrase the motivation of an animal to perform a task. Aditiionally, some researchers posit that the behavior facilitated must already be in the individual's repertoire. However, some researchers would rather classify this form of "learning" as social influence, since no new behaviour is learnt.  However, the increased motivation to perform a certain action may direclty lead to individual learning.

Experimental Methods

Many experiments have been designed to establish the existance of social learning and to differentiate between which mechanisms animals are using. 

Term	Social Learning methods	Experimental manipulation
Two-action task	Emulation vs. Imitation	Where a learning task can be solved two ways (often to get a reward). If observers copy the demonstrators method, then imitation is implied, however if the observers are equally likely to use both methods and are equally likely to solve the task, then goal emulation is implied, as only the outcome is copied.
Ghost control tasks	Emulation vs. Imitaton	The observer sees the environmental changes normally caused by a model, however without a model causing the effect. Similar to other observational learning tasks, however the model is removed.
Do-as-I-Do	Imitation	Animal (normally performed with primates) has to copy the bodily actions of a human, such as gestures, facial expressions or actions.

Some reseachers have assumed that vertebrates, especially primates, are the only animals which are especially adapted for social learning. However, forms of social learning have been identified in a wide range of taxa.

Social Learning in Vertebrates (excluding p​rimates)

Fish use social infomation in a variety of contexts, including: antipredator behavior, migration, foraging and mate choice. One form of social learning is the fright response of fish in response to predators. When one member of a group is startled, the rest of the shoal respond, and this reaction can be driven by both by visual infomation, and also chemical alarm substance in fishes of the superorder Ostariophysi. Naive fish can also learn to associate a new predator with the visual fright response of more experienced fish, clearly illustrating the adaptive value of such behavior.   These kinds of social learning, however, can be seen as little more than simple learning mechanisms in a social context. Some more complex forms of social learning, such as imitation, have not such been shown in fish.  

Despite their large brain sizes, there is little non-anecdotal evidence for any sort of social learning in the elephant family, although this can mainly be attributed to the difficulty in creating experimental tasks appropriate for this species. African bush elephants recently failed a test of bodily imitation using the two-action task paradigm (see imitation above).

Various studies of birds have positied social learning abilties. Bird song is a good example. Whilst bird song is affected by biological factors such as hormones and maturation, birds in different regions have different "dialects" which are explainable by social learning. Genetic explanations like differences caused by genetic drift or selection have been ruled out by studies which transfer young chicks to different regions, which then pick up the dialect of the environment. It has been shown that birds have a sensitive period (which varies across species) where the relocation of birds has an effect. Some have argued that this represents a "special" form of social learning which is constrained, and therefore imitation of songs is functionally seperate to other forms of bodily imitation.  

The famous phenomena of blue tits opening milk bottles left outside houses suggests a possible social learning explanation. However, naive chickadees (Parus atricapillus) have been shown to individual learn this ability relatively often (4/16 birds opened similar bottles without social learning),

Social Learning in Invertebrates

There is the least evidence of social learnining in this group, however this is largely to do with a lack of research. Cephalopods are relatively well studies, and we know that the common octopus (Octopus Vulgaris) shows "observational learning" when watching a demonstrator being rewarded for picking a specific ball, observers are much more likely to do the same. Social learning in the antipredator of Wood Crickets (Nemobius sylvestris) behavior has also been studied, showing that when crickets will copy the hiding behaviour of others, however it is questionable whether some unknown alarm chemical could also cause hiding in other crickets.

Eusocial insects have also been shown to learn socially from each other. 

Social learning in Great Apes

The greater apes consist of: chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans. In the 1990s, research questions shifted from asking whether "do primates copy" to "how do primates copy "?  The do-as-I-do task (see above)  has established that chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans imitate bodily actions, and gorillas have been shown to have similar abilities using a different task. 

See also

• Animal cognition
• Animal culture