Cited research: Curr. Biol. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2010.04.037 (2010)
A rare example of social learning in the wild has been found.
The banded mongoose (Mungos mungo) provides an unusual opportunity to study imitation and traditions in the wild because each pup pairs up with an older mongoose, known as an escort. Corsin Müller and Michael Cant showed that the pups imitate the foraging behaviour of their escorts.
The authors, then both based at the University of Exeter, UK, recorded film of wild mongooses in Uganda as the animals tried to eat an artificial food item: rice and fish contained in a plastic 'egg'. Pups that observed their escorts opening the eggs by holding them with their paws and biting into them tended to use this same technique months later. Meanwhile, pups whose escorts just hurled the eggs against something hard also adopted the brute-force approach. E.M.
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Animal behaviour: Mongoose traditions. Nature 465, 668 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/465668a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/465668a
