Alex Thornton

TL;DR: In providing the first experimental demonstration of conformity in a wild non-primate, and of cultural norms in foraging techniques in any wild animal, the results suggest a much broader taxonomic occurrence of such an apparently complex cultural behaviour.

TL;DR: Using observational and experimental data, it is shown that wild meerkats teach pups prey-handling skills by providing them with opportunities to interact with live prey, thus accelerating learning without the use of complex cognition.

TL;DR: This review aims to introduce animal behaviourists unfamiliar with machine learning (ML) to the promise of these techniques for the analysis of complex behavioural data and illustrate key ML approaches by developing data analytical pipelines for three different case studies that exemplify the types of behavioural and ecological questions ML can address.

TL;DR: It is shown that cognitive performance is influenced by age, sex, rearing conditions and previous experience, which limits the validity of comparative analyses unless developmental histories are taken into account, and complicate attempts to understand how cognitive traits are expressed and selected under natural conditions.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors make the case for an evolutionary perspective that treats teaching as a form of cooperative behavior which functions to promote learning in others, and suggest that natural selection is likely to favour different forms of teaching, depending on whether it serves to promote the learning of procedural or declarative information.