Birds conform to local 'traditions': study

Birds learn new foraging techniques by observing others in their social network, according to a study of how innovations spread and persist in wild great tits.

The study, published Wednesday in Nature, involved experiments with eight local populations of great tits in Oxfordshire, England. In five of the populations two male birds were trained to slide a puzzle box door either to the left or to the right. In three control groups two males were captured but not trained.

The birds were then released back into their original populations to act as "innovators", together with puzzle boxes that revealed a tasty mealworm reward when opened from either side.

Despite both methods working equally well, the team, led by Oxford University researchers, found that each experimental population strongly favored the puzzle-solving solution that had been introduced by the trained birds.

The preference for this arbitrary solution increased over time, forming a stable tradition. In the control populations, by contrast, it took much longer for birds to learn to solve the puzzle box.

The researchers were able to show that, even when birds discovered both ways of opening the puzzle-box, they were much more likely to use the behavior that was dominant in their local population; in other words, they conformed to the behavior in their local population.

"Our experiments suggest that birds can learn through observation and that this may help create arbitrary local 'cultural traditions'." Professor Ben Sheldon from Oxford University said: "Once a majority in a group adopt one way of doing things these cultural traditions are passed on to the next generation and may persist over years."