
Animal cultures: how we've only seen the tip of the iceberg - mpweiher
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/animal-cultures-how-weve-only-seen-the-tip-of-the-iceberg/2D9C2B4156E087ABC94A8AE99A6F0FAD
======
cobbzilla
I enjoyed this paper. I like the idea of a “bottom up” analysis of animal
culture.

Instead of assuming human culture is some kind of gold standard, we look
instead at what is the smallest thing that can be called culture, across a few
different axes, and build up from there.

In this minimalist view, any socially learned behavior has some cultural
component. They make a pretty good case.

------
Joakal
Lets assume dolphins are the smartest creatures on the planet.

How would they build an aqua farm? They can only hunt (or fish)

How could they paint? They can only nudge.

How could they do sign language? They can only squeak and flap.

They're stuck being nomads for life unless there's a better way to talk to
them?

See below:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25LYVxTUZhM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25LYVxTUZhM)

[https://thebark.com/content/dogs-can-sign-
too](https://thebark.com/content/dogs-can-sign-too)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wc3iz-I6SYQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wc3iz-I6SYQ)

~~~
yeahitslikethat
How would they build an aqua farm? They can only hunt (or fish)

Farming arose in response to scarcity. Dolphins live in abundance and only
take what they need. Humans horde.

How could they paint? They can only nudge.

In the sand.

How could they do sign language? They can only squeak and flap.

Why do they need to? Are any dolphins deaf? Regardless we don't know they
can't. Perhaps they can see many details in their physical movements than we
think are relevant.

~~~
Joakal
Farming allows focus on other activities such as tech development.

They can paint in the sand that easily disappears? I'm talking about permanent
pieces of art tho.

The point of understanding dolphins is so that they communicate in true
language. Now it is possible that they are, see youtube link above about
understanding rat squeaks.

------
cardamomo
> The complex and normative dimensions of culture seem unique to our species,
> but were most likely built upon a very broad, pre-existing cultural capacity
> that we inherited from our ancestors.

Not an expert here, but I am excited by the notion that this would also extend
to tool use. (Tools being part of an animal's culture, after all.)

~~~
cobbzilla
Absolutely yes. I’m excited too.

The hand axe dates back to 2.7 mya [1], which precedes homo sapiens (~350 kya)
by > 2 million years. Our ancestors were probably homo erectus at that point.

We were gathering around campfires, cooking meat and sharing a meal ~1.9 mya
[2], again likely homo erectus.

Lots of culture predates humanity, but humanity is such a gradient (thanks to
evolution). It’s like we need a different word, broader than humanity, to
describe our entire genetic history, all the way back to abiogenesis.

Then, instead of our identity being so homo-sapiens-centric, all about this
bipedal smarty-pants, we could additionally identify as having been fish, and
small scurrying mammals, and single celled organisms, and anything else our
ancestors have “been” along our path. Anyone know of such a word?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_axe#History_and_distribut...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_axe#History_and_distribution)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campfire#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campfire#History)

~~~
vanderZwan
> humanity is such a gradient

In general I think there is a lot of scientific insight to be gained from
gettting more comfortable with gradients, instead of insisting on distinct
categories. I remember a conversation with a biologists who was complaining
that with European bird subspecies the categories are more like a
representation of national boundaries and their institutions, masking a
gradient of change that happens across the continent.

Same with languages, especially before nation states were a thing.

------
est31
> Department of Anthropology, University of Zürich, Winterthurerstrasse 190,
> 8057 Zürich, Switzerland

I guess it's an unusal conclusion to draw from the paper, but I certainly have
learned something new, which is that there is a second university in Zürich
next to the ETH. And it even seems to have more students than ETH, the largest
in Switzerland in fact:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Zurich](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Zurich)

------
circlefavshape
_This_ is the research I wish I was involved in

------
crunchysupreme
Do we confidently know that a squirrel isn't an actor of grandiose squirrel
shenanigans but is actually just scraping around for food? Can we really
quantify the number of our own cultural traits in an unbiased way? Would an
alien observatory see us all just staring at blinking light screens, or would
it know some people are playing Wii tennis while others are committing crimes?

This sentence is probably a good summary:

"Detecting animal culture irrespective of geographic variation is challenging
and may not always be possible. "

Also:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative)

~~~
mrec
> _grandiose squirrel shenanigans_

Maybe not "grandiose", but squirrels are known to lie. They'll often pretend
to be burying nuts in order to reduce the chance of surreptitious squirrel
spies stealing the nuts they _actually_ bury.

~~~
b_tterc_p
Ah you made this click for me. I had always failed to understand why squirrels
would do this. Faking hiding a nut doesn’t feel like a productive use of
energy even if other squirrels are watching. But if it is mutually understood
that all squirrels are going to pretend to bury nuts n% of the time, it
becomes less valuable for other squirrels to spy on you to begin with!

I wonder if the squirrel burying meta changes across generations. That is,
when squirrels feel confident that nobody would bother spying, they waste less
time pretending to bury nuts, which over time leads to more advantage from
spying again, and thus requiring more deception.

------
zamazingo
Do we really want to see more of the iceberg and see how badly we keep hitting
it though the countless genocides and systems of torture?

I don't think so, no.

~~~
mises
I'm confused, to what "countless genocides and systems of torture" are you
referring?

I will acknowledge that there have been genocides and tortures against
practically every group of humans in the past, but I don't see how that is
relevant.

~~~
filoeleven
I’m guessing they’re talking about things like factory farming, habitat
destruction, hunting to extinction, etc. Genocide is the wrong word there and
probably responsible for the downvotes, but “systems of torture” is
depressingly accurate.

------
real_looper
from implicit assumptions to a cultural premise: a cambridge case study

