interacted, the researchers tagged almost all the tits in the area with
automated tracking devices. ‘We could get real-time information
about how and when individuals acquired knowledge,’ Aplin said.
‘The automated data-collection also meant we could let the process
run without disturbance.’[32]
The birds grouped together into several different sub-populations;
in five of these populations, the researchers taught a couple of birds
how to solve the puzzle. The technique spread quickly: within twenty
days, three in every four birds had picked up the idea. The team also
studied a control group of birds, which hadn’t been trained. A few
eventually worked out how to get into the box, but it took much longer
for the idea to emerge and spread.
In the trained populations, the idea was also highly resilient. Many
of the birds died from one season to the next, but the knowledge
didn’t. ‘The behaviour re-emerged very quickly each winter,’ Aplin
said, ‘even if there were only a small number of individuals that were
alive from the previous year and had knowledge of the behaviour.’
She also noticed that transmission of information between birds had
some familiar features. ‘Some general principles are similar to how
disease spreads through populations, for instance more social
individuals being more likely to encounter and adopt new behaviours,
and socially central individuals can act as “keystones” or “super-
spreaders” in the diffusion of information.’
The study also demonstrated that social norms could emerge in
wild animals. There were actually a couple of ways to get into the
puzzle box, but it was the solution the researchers had introduced
that became the accepted method. Such conformity is even more
common when we look at humans. ‘We’re social learning specialists,’
Aplin said. ‘The social learning and culture we observe in human
societies is of a magnitude greater than anything we observe in the
rest of the animal kingdom.’
W with people we know, from
health and lifestyle choices to politicial views and wealth. In general,
there are three possible explanations for such similarities. One is
social contagion: perhaps you behave in a certain way because your