Social learning and traditions in wild vervet monkeys

Social learning is the basis for allowing the transmission of specific behaviours inside a social unit, i.e. the formation of traditions. Early field studies suggested the existence of traditions in non-human animals, while more recent laboratory experiments have demonstrated social learning abilities in a variety of species. During my PhD, I established a unique bridge between these perspectives by conducting three different social learning experiments on six groups of wild vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus aethiops) at the Loskop Dam Nature Reserve, in South Africa. Using this approach, I investigated what mechanisms wild vervets use when they learn a task socially. Furthermore, theoreticians pointed out that social learning is only under positive selection under certain condition. Therefore, I investigated how important the identity of a model is for the occurrence of social learning and I tried to understand why some individuals are more copied then others from a functional perspective. Finally, by analysing the stability over time of the socially acquired behaviours, I could ask whether traits acquired through social learning may turn into arbitrary traditions.

Currently, I continue working on similar questions on a bigger vervet population in the Inkawu Vervet Project at Mawana private game reserve in Kwazulu Natal, in South Africa. I also test the same experiments on captive vervets in sanctuaries in South Africa.