SeminarPast EventBehavioral Ecology

LAB COGNITION GOING WILD: Field experiments on vervet monkeys'

Monday, March 15, 2021
11:00 UTC
Prof Erica van de Wall

Universite de Lausanne

Hosted by ICM Paris Brain Institute70 minutes

Abstract

I will present field experiments on vervet monkeys testing physical and social cognition, with a focus on social learning. The understanding of the emergence of cultural behaviours in animals has advanced significantly with contributions from complementary approaches: natural observations and controlled field experiments. Experiments with wild vervet monkeys highlight that monkeys are selective about ‘who’ they learn from socially and that they will abandon personal foraging preferences in favour of group norms new to them. The reported findings highlight the feasibility to study cognition under field conditions.

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