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Cetacean culture: Still afloat after the first naval engagement of the culture wars

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 September 2001

Luke Rendell
Affiliation:
Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada B3H 4J1 lrendell@is2.dal.ca
Hal Whitehead
Affiliation:
Forschungsstelle für Ornithologie der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, 82346 Andechs, Germanyhwhitehe@is.dal.ca http://is.dal.ca/~whitelab

Abstract

Although the majority of commentators implicitly or explicitly accept that field data allow us to ascribe culture to whales, dolphins, and other nonhumans, there is no consensus. While we define culture as information or behaviour shared by a population or subpopulation which is acquired from conspecifics through some form of social learning, some commentators suggest restricting this by requiring imitation/teaching, human analogy, adaptiveness, stability across generations, progressive evolution (ratchetting), or specific functions. Such restrictions fall down because they either preclude the attribution of culture to nonhumans using currently available methods, or exclude parts of human culture. The evidence for cetacean culture is strong in some cases, but weak in others. The commentaries provide important information on the social learning abilities of bottlenose dolphins and some interesting speculation about the evolution of cetacean cultures and differences between the cultures of different taxa. We maintain that some attributes of cetacean culture are currently unknown outside humans. While experimental studies, both in the laboratory and in the wild, have an important role in the study of culture in whales and dolphins (for instance in determining whether dolphins have a Theory-of-Mind), the real treasures will be uncovered by long-term observational studies at sea using new approaches and technologies.

Type
Author's Response
Copyright
© 2001 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This title was inspired by a talk given by W.C. McGrew at the Animal Social Complexity and Intelligence conference, Chicago, August 2000, entitled “Dispatches from the chimpanzee culture wars.”