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A unified account of culture should accommodate animal cultures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2020

Andrew Whiten Open the ORCID record for Andrew Whiten [Opens in a new window]
Andrew Whiten*
Affiliation:
Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St AndrewsKY16 9JP, UK. a.whiten@st-andrews.ac.uk
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Abstract

Discoveries about social learning and culture in non-human animals have burgeoned this century, yet despite aspiring to offer a unified account of culture, the target article neglects these discoveries almost totally. I offer an overview of principal findings in this field including phylogenetic reach, intraspecies pervasiveness, stability, fidelity, and attentional funnelling in social learning. Can the authors’ approach accommodate these?

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 43 , 2020 , e118
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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