Acquisition of predator knowledge from alarm calls via one-trial social learning in monkeys
Julián León,
Constance Thiriau,
Clémentine Bodin,
Catherine Crockford,
Klaus Zuberbühler
Affiliations
Julián León
Institute of Biology, University of Neuchâtel, 2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland; Taï Monkey Project, Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques, 01 BP1303 Abidjan 01, Cote d’Ivoire; Corresponding author
Constance Thiriau
Taï Monkey Project, Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques, 01 BP1303 Abidjan 01, Cote d’Ivoire
Clémentine Bodin
Taï Monkey Project, Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques, 01 BP1303 Abidjan 01, Cote d’Ivoire
Catherine Crockford
Institute of Cognitive Sciences Marc Jeannerod, CNRS, 69330 Lyon, France; Tai Chimpanzee Project, Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques, 01 BP1303 Abidjan 01, Cote d’Ivoire
Klaus Zuberbühler
Institute of Biology, University of Neuchâtel, 2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland; Taï Monkey Project, Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques, 01 BP1303 Abidjan 01, Cote d’Ivoire; School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St. Andrews, Saint Andrews, Scotland KY16 9JP, UK
Summary: How do animals learn to classify the world and what is the role of social learning during this process? Here, we show that young sooty mangabeys, Cercocebus atys, of Taï Forest, Côte d’Ivoire, learn to rapidly classify an unfamiliar predator by attending to others’ alarm calls and that such knowledge is retained over long periods. We experimentally exposed subjects to chimeric predator models with both snake- and leopard-like features, combined with playbacks of conspecific snake (N = 12) or leopard alarms (N = 13). Adults classified the chimeras as non-threatening but for juveniles, we found that one single alarm call exposure was sufficient to allocate the chimera to the snake or leopard category, suggesting plausibility judgments in experienced adults. We then retested N = 10 juveniles with the same models more than a year after their first experience and found that they continued to show their original response, indicating long-term retention of socially learned predator categorisation.
