on culture

In the latest issue of PLoS Biology, Robert Sapolsky and Lisa Share present their research on A Pacific Culture among Wild Baboons: Its Emergence and Transmission:

Reports exist of transmission of culture in nonhuman primates. We examine this in a troop of savanna baboons studied since 1978. During the mid-1980s, half of the males died from tuberculosis; because of circumstances of the outbreak, it was more aggressive males who died, leaving a cohort of atypically unaggressive survivors. A decade later, these behavioral patterns persisted. Males leave their natal troops at adolescence; by the mid-1990s, no males remained who had resided in the troop a decade before. Thus, critically, the troop's unique culture was being adopted by new males joining the troop.

An interesting report as the study of "culture" among animal behaviorists is an increasingly popular and challenging topic. The study of culture, and social culture specifically, is especially trick for animal behaviorists because it invokes the old nature/nuture debate, and serious questions about our own human bias. Frans de Waal's Peace Lessons from an Unlikely Source is an excellent and accessible introduction to the study of culture in primates and Sapolsky and Share's new research.

Related: Sapolsky's A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons is an enlightening and humorous read about Sapolsky's twenty-one years spent doing field research on a troop of Kenyan baboons. I recommend it.