Do animals have culture?

Culture is a construction that starts from shared life and that it is established in the form of "collective" acts and with a purpose. In general, it begins to be acquired in early childhood by the parents, but will continue to expand throughout adult life in different contexts. It endows individuals who share time and space with a sense of essential uniqueness, while at the same time underscoring the distances with those outside of it.

For many years it was thought that culture was an exclusively human property, requiring the support of a nervous system of enormous complexity that could only be found in our species. But in recent years, hypotheses have emerged that disprove such a belief, and that the scientific community is beginning to consider.

In this article we will address the question of culture in non-human animals, trying to answer unknowns that are formulated in the time of Aristotle and who slept on the unjust bed of scientific irrelevance until the middle of the s. XX. So that: Do animals have culture? We will explore this topic below.

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Can animals have culture?

The issue of culture in animals is one of the most controversial in current science, for the resonances that its acceptance would have on how we relate to other beings alive. It would mean recognizing them as creatures closer to our species than ever before., which would exceed the simple attribution of basic emotions that most grant them. It would surely be an incentive to promote laws by which to protect their legacy, in the same way that it is done with numerous human groups throughout this world.

Difficulties in reaching a conclusion in this regard arise from the vagueness of the word "culture" itself, since even we lack an epistemological space that protects it and allows it to advance in its understanding (and not only with regard to the animal human). Many of the traditional delimitations excluded in their own formulation everything that was beyond the reach of our species, although as it will be seen, this vision begins to be questioned to include other beings with whom we share the planet. Let's try to go a little deeper into all this.

What do we mean by "animal culture"?

The first studies on animal culture were carried out during the 1940s, and their purpose was to establish whether non-human living beings could "acquire" behaviors as a result of social learning, without these being explained through instincts. The development of these prospects was not easy, as it fought against deep convictions coming from religion, for which being human being would be designed in the image and likeness of his corresponding God (and to whom unique traits were attributed in the realm of the nature).

Culture has traditionally been thought to require complex brains, since it has been connected with writing and oral tradition, as well as with the symbolic properties that all this has in the case of the human being. Through its mediation, the reality of the moment could be shared among the individuals of the same group, and even verbally encoded to be transmitted to successive generations, strengthening the sense of consistency beyond the limited time available to a single subject to to live.

From this perspective, culture would be a uniquely human fact, and what was observed in animals would be no more than a more or less sophisticated mechanism for survival.

The fact that animals do not have communication systems of a complexity comparable to those of humans has led different authors to coin a specific term for them, that of "preculture", through which it is done an explicit distinction between the way in which they construct the traditions that make up their common life. On the other hand, there are researchers who postulate an absolute analogy, reconciling animal tradition with human culture and considering them interchangeable phenomena. The debate on this question remains open and unresolved.

Most of the work carried out so far is oriented towards what is known as imitative learning (or vicar), for which the observation of a behavior and its subsequent reproduction is required, although with obvious and tangible. In any case, it would be necessary that such patterns could not be explained by trial / error (the latter are much slower to consolidate in the basic behavioral repertoire) or by survival instinct (biology). At the same time, they should be deployed in one group (the same one in which it initially breaks in), and not reproduce spontaneously in others.

Besides by imitation, the culture acquired by teaching and language in animals has also received attention. Both imply the use of certain symbolic capacities that until now have only been described in humans, so their evidence has only been testimonial in contexts other than their own. Symbolization allows the human animal the accumulation of a very abundant culture at an intergenerational level, as well as its progressive enrichment and its persistence over the years.

In field studies aimed at evaluating this aspect (from a discipline that has been coined as "Animal Culture"), it has been observed that the most common is that a single individual carries out behaviors spontaneously (acting as a social model), and that with the passage of time they extend to those close to him and to the entire community. Those cases in which the impact of such learning exceeds the primary group and reaches different subjects, with whom there is no kinship relationship, are considered cultural.

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Examples

Almost all the works developed to date have focused on chimpanzees, due to their evolutionary proximity to the being human and for being one of the few species in which an intention aimed at teaching something has been described deliberately. Likewise, cetaceans and birds have shown to possess a more complex language than was believed just a few years ago. decades, so they have also captured the interest of many scholars of the disciplines involved in understanding the phenomenon. Let's look at some examples for each of these cases.

1. Primates

Chimpanzees were the first animals in which the possible presence of a culture as such was studied, and to this day they continue to be the ones that accumulate the most evidence on this same point. These animals coexist in very complex societies, in which an evident hierarchy is appreciated, and It has been possible to verify how behaviors that started from a single individual (in the form of exemplary acts) were extended to the group as a whole progressively, without being explained by the action of biology.

The use of tools, such as rocks or sticks, is understood as culture among primates. The most studied have been in groups of great apes in arid environments, which learned to use thin, flexible rods for the extraction and ingestion of termites that would otherwise be inaccessible. Such learning is also accompanied by the exact procedure through which to carry out this action, which requires a specific rotation of the utensil. This form of collecting is believed to have arisen as a result of social learning, and has been culturally perpetuated by imitation of younger specimens.

This exact mechanism could explain other habits described in chimpanzees, such as washing fruits before eating. Some field work has observed the way in which certain hygiene / prophylactic habits have been transmitted both horizontally (between contemporaries) and vertically (between different generations) in very particular places in the world, related both to the feeding (washing food on the banks of rivers, for example) as with grooming (raising the arms of a partner to wash the armpits, e.g.).

Despite this, there are doubts about how human beings have been able to contribute with their influence to this acquisitions, since they are much more common in captivity (perhaps due to the involuntary reinforcement of these behaviors, e.g.).

Among apes it has been possible to verify how they are carried out deliberate attempts to teach other group members what has been learned through experience, especially in the form of warnings aimed at dissuading the youngest from accessing those areas that are considered dangerous, or to avoid attacking animals that are perceived as predators natural. Today it is known that this type of learning extends far beyond the immediate environment, being shared over time with descendants direct reports of those who once acquired them from their parents (forming a "shared account" of what is appropriate and what is not within an ecological framework concrete).

2. Cetaceans

Cetaceans are mammals adapted to marine life, although it is known that they originally roamed the land. It has been, without a doubt, the animal group that has received the most attention (along with primates) with regard to a possible common culture. Orcas, whales and dolphins stand out; all of them creditors of great intelligence, which includes the option of communicating through sounds (high or low) that hold meaning for the rest of the group members.

Culture has been considered in these animals, for example, the differential use of vocal tone in different groups; which allows them to recognize themselves as part of a larger group and protect themselves in the event that an invader appears on their territory. It is an imitation that, effectively, has the objective of increasing survival; and that ultimately supposes a behavior that is transmitted between generations and allows families or herds to be identified.

Orcas are also known to show their young how to hunt, through strategies that include group and individual offensive. In this case, it has been described that females (adults and older) they teach their young to deliberately strand themselves on the shores, to better access some of the prey that spend a lot of time on the beach. It is a behavior that is accessed by learning, and is never acquired by orcas in captivity or reared in isolation.

3. Birds

Birds are the third group, after primates and cetaceans, that has been studied the most in terms of culture. More specifically, it has been observed that some birds that live in specific areas (parks, for example) acquire the basic habits to benefit from these environments: go to places where it is possible to obtain food (such as the vicinity of terraces where people deposit their waste) or even open containers.

Thus, it has been seen that certain birds manipulate the feeders of poultry animals in order to access their desirable content, and that such behavior is subsequently dispersed among the rest of the birds that live in the surroundings.

The animal species included in the psittaciformes family (especially the parrots that live in America, Africa, Asia and Oceania) have been considered as beings endowed with an extraordinary intelligence. They are known to mimic the sounds they can hear very well, and in the case of human speech, there is evidence that they not only reproduce it, but also use it with a clear communicative intention (choosing the right words based on your needs).

When parrots learn a high number of words, they can build new ones using the grammar rules of the language (although they are not real terms or accepted by consensus Social). When they are useful for their purposes, they can "show" them to other birds with whom they share space (in case they are linked by a link of quality), becoming a behavior that goes beyond social learning and is usually conceived as a form of culture that deserves to be studied.

Bibliographic references:

• Galef, B. (2009). The Question of Animal Culture. Human Nature, 3, 157-178.
• Laland, K., Kendal, J. and Kendal, R. (2009). Animal culture: Problems and solutions. The Question of Animal Culture. 174-197.