Social learning about novel foods in young meerkats
Section snippets
Study Site and Population
Data were collected from December 2003 to April 2006 on meerkats in 13 groups of 6–41 individuals living in xeric savannah along the dry Kuruman River in the South African Kalahari (Clutton-Brock et al. 1998). The study was carried out with ethics approval from the University of Cambridge and the University of Pretoria, under a permit issued by the Northern Cape Conservation Authority, South Africa. Groups were located by radiotracking one radiocollared animal within each group. All work
Experiment 1: egg learning
None of the 61 pups tested ate egg the first time they were presented with it, but during the ‘helper’ treatment that followed, 30 pups ate egg once the helper began eating. In contrast, none of eight pups whose first exposure was followed by another exposure alone ate egg during either the first or second exposure. The presence of experienced helpers on the second exposure therefore significantly increased the probability that pups would eat egg (permutation test on pups whose second exposure
Discussion
Theoretical and empirical work suggests that social learning can allow individuals to acquire information of critical fitness value, reducing the need for costly asocial learning (Galef, 1995, Giraldeau and Caraco, 2000). Young animals may benefit from showing neophobia towards unfamiliar foods, particularly if potentially toxic items are present in the environment, and incorporating novel foods into their diet only after encountering them in the context of interactions with adults (Galef 1993
Acknowledgments
I thank Mr and Mrs H. Kotze for permission to work on their land. I am grateful for the support of the Mammal Research Institute at the University of Pretoria and for the help of T. Flower, N. Jordan, K. McAuliffe and N. Tayar. I thank T. Clutton-Brock for advice and access to the meerkats and M. Manser for technical support and discussion. D. Lukas and K. Moyes provided statistical advice and R. Almond, M. Bell, S. English, S. Hodge, N. Jordan, K. Laland, K. McAuliffe, N. Raihani and two
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