Social conditions and ecological constraints of social learning in geese and ravens

One of the potential benefits of living in groups is that adaptive traditions may be formed. This allows individuals to profit from experiences others made before. However, this also poses the threat that even maladaptive behaviours may spread within groups. Known mechanisms of social learning are social facilitation, enhancement and imitation. However, relatively little was known about the ecological and social conditions (constraints) of social learning, hence our project P12472. Our series of observational and experimental investigations in the frame of P12472, with greylag geese, common ravens and Northern Bald ibis (Waldrapp) was till today published in 20 papers in peer-reviewed journals, was communicated in 36 contributions to mainly international congresses and hosted 4 PhD theses and 6 masters projects. Thereby, we could draw a rather comprehensive picture of the biology of social learning in birds. The Lorenzian "innate schoolmarm"-concept proofed wright. The attention of naive animals is indeed, not randomly distributed, but orientated, along social lines, towards the actions of the social companion or certain body parts thereof, for example, the beak of a greylag parent. With handraised goslings this can be simulated by a finger and indeed was, as an experimental tool investigating greylag gosling social attention, learning and motivation. Generally, we found enhancement as the most important (nearly ubiquitous) mechanism of social learning. A social model directs the attention of an observer towards a peculiar area or object and thereby, increases its motivation to start manipulating there. The learning process proper involves individual trial-and-error. Hence, social learning is indeed, socially supported individual learning. Whether or not individuals learn or rather profit from the skills of others depends mainly (but see below) on the profitability of either tactic, producer or scrounger. This we could show experimentally, thereby providing a fruitful base for modelling (mainly J. Fritz et al.). In contrast to widely held opinion, "true" motor imitation only seems to have a minor role in tradition forming (even in humans). Surprising as this seems, enhancement is the generally more adaptive mechanism, because it allows for individual optimisation of skills and generally reduces the risk that maladaptive traditions are formed. Mainly the work with local wild ravens (T. Bugnyar, M. Stöwe and others) showed the overwhelming importance of social learning in the social integration of juveniles into the group of subadults. Ravens are not only able to learn from group members, but have developed the ability to withold information from each others or even being able to (inentionally?) pass on misleading information. We conclude that "tactical deception", which is mainly used within the group in the context of foraging, was a major agent of the development of (Macciavellian) intelligence in ravens, which, indeed, would be a striking similarity to primates and humans. Experiments in progress will show whether ravens have a "theory of mind", i.e. are able to recognize and exploit, the mental states of conspecifics (T. Bugnyar). Finally, there was an unplanned, but nevertheless heuristically fruitful merge between this cognition project ant the parallel project P12914-Bio on learning, hormones and personality (coping styles). It showed, that not only ecological, phylogenetical and life history factors (constraints) determine the whats, wheres and whose of social learning. In addition, we found strong individual dispositions (parsonality traits) associated with the likelyhood of becoming an innovator/producer/model or an observer/scrounger and that social support is an important condition for facialitating learning (D. Frigerio et al.).