Culture can be defined as all that is learned from others and is repeatedly transmitted in this way, forming traditions that may be inherited by successive generations. This cultural form of inheritance was once thought specific to humans, but research over the past 70 years has instead revealed it to be widespread in nature, permeating the lives of a diversity of animals, including all major classes of vertebrates. Recent studies suggest that culture’s reach may extend also to invertebrates—notably, insects. In the present century, the reach of animal culture has been found to extend across many different behavioral domains and to rest on a suite of social learning processes facilitated by a variety of selective biases that enhance the efficiency and adaptiveness of learning. Far-reaching implications, for disciplines from evolutionary biology to anthropology and conservation policies, are increasingly being explored.

文化可以定义为从他人那里学到的所有东西，并以此方式反复传播，形成了可以被后代继承的传统。这种文化传承形式曾经被认为是人类特有的，但过去70年来的研究却揭示了它在自然界中的分布广泛，渗透到包括所有主要脊椎动物类在内的多种动物的生活中。最近的研究表明，文化的影响范围也可能扩展到无脊椎动物，尤其是昆虫。在本世纪，已经发现动物文化的影响范围跨越了许多不同的行为领域，并依靠一系列社会学习过程，这些过程是由各种选择性偏见促进的，这些偏见提高了学习的效率和适应性。影响深远的是，