Crows May Use Social Learning Like Humans

Being able to teach our children how to use tools helps improve technology generation to generation. But while humans are adept at this technique, other animals fall short. Now, though, researchers have found that crows may also display this type of social learning.

In this case, the researchers looked at the New Caledonian crow. This extremely smart corvid is actually the only non-human species thought to possess its own cumulative technological culture.

"We don't know whether the crows have cumulative technological culture, and one of the reasons is that we don't know how they learn," said Corina Logan, one of the researchers, in a news release. "There's a hypothesis that says in order for cumulative technological culture to occur you need to copy the actions of another individual. And we don't know whether the crows are paying attention to the actions of others when they learn from someone else."

Interestingly, the crows have been seen using tools that they've made out of long, narrow, palm-like Pandanus leaves. The leaf has a serrated edge, and the crows cut into one side of the leaf, then make another cut farther down and then rip off the part in between.

"It's thought that in order for tool shapes to be transmitted, one bird would have to watch another cutting the leaf and then mimic that bird's actions," said Logan. "That would require imitation or emulation."

Interestingly, the researchers found strong evidence of social learning. If one crow saw a companion interacting with a particular area of the apparatus, the former is more likely to try that same action.

"It's called stimulus enhancement," said Logan. "That's the social learning mechanism they're using. But there's another interesting aspect: Once they see another bird interact with the door, they go to that door and then begin to solve the problem on their own. And now they completely ignore social information and they just use trial and error learning to open the door and extract the food."

The researchers found that similar to stimulus enhancement, parent crows could draw their children's attention to the tools to make them more likely to interact with the tools.

"We're suggesting it could be that they're copying the end result of another crow's action, but they're not copying the actual actions of the other crows," said Logan. "It's actually a form of emulation but it doesn't involve the copying actions that were hypothesized previously."

The findings are published in the journal Learning & Behavior.

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