Featured – Cultured Scene

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Dolphins mind the shell: About an innovative foraging strategy that spreads beyond the mother-calf bond

Being part of the ‘Dolphin Innovation Project’, Sonja Wild was privileged to study the fascinating behaviour of the Shark Bay dolphins in Western Australia. To Cultured Scene, Sonja provided some insight into her study on ‘shelling’, a novel foraging strategy that is transmitted via social learning. The whole study by Sonja and her colleagues has recently been published in Current Biology.

Posted On : August 6, 2020Published By : Stefanie Gierszewski

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Common cuttlefish learn to master the “prawn-in-the-tube” test by observing conspecifics

Eduardo Sampaio shared his newest findings on social learning in the mostly solitary common cuttlefish with Cultured Scene. The whole study has recently been published in Animal Cognition.

Posted On : July 28, 2020Published By : Stefanie Gierszewski

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Why experiments are stupid but we need more of them

Most of us are excited about social learning in the real world. How do the dolphins of Shark Bay learn to fish with sponges, do chimpanzee mothers teach their young how to crack open nuts, can starting moves in the board game Go or formations in football really be said to “evolve” – and what […]

Posted On : July 8, 2020Published By : Dominik Deffner

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Of sharks and their ability to learn from others

Catarina Vila Pouca spoke to Cultured Scene about her findings on social learning in juvenile Port Jackson sharks that have been published in Animal Behaviour earlier this year.

Posted On : May 13, 2020Published By : Stefanie Gierszewski

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A tribe of poets answered me

An unfortunate side effect of undertaking a PhD is that hobbies are often left by the wayside. We have every intention of carrying them with us on our long and winding academic roads, but somehow they fall from our pockets. By the time we have noticed, the hike back to them can appear too arduous to be worth the effort.

Posted On : May 12, 2020Published By : Beki Hooper

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The ‘art’ of keeping sane: a PhD caught in a pandemic

To think that a month ago, I lived happily amidst a few people, starting my days early in the sticky warmth of tropical sunshine, enjoying cups of chai, watching for birds, picking up and playing with wind-dispersed seeds. All of this in a small village in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands on the far east […]

Posted On : May 1, 2020Published By : Meenakshi Poti

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Fieldwork in times of Corona

Like everything about this global crisis, this winter’s field trip was two parts surreal, one part seemingly arbitrary decisions. The surreal yolk was, and is, the tension between reality and my lived experience, between daily news and my own comforts, posters advocating hand washing in areas with no running water, between stress and the dissolution […]

Posted On : April 30, 2020Published By : Natalia Fedorova

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The Single Body Problem

You might have heard of the Two Body Problem. In this essay, Dr Lauren Robinson discusses the challenges of the Single Body Problem.

Posted On : March 6, 2020Published By : Lauren Robinson

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Forager Child Studies: An Interdisciplinary Research Collective

Forager Child Studies is a research collective founded by early-career researchers. Cultured Scene interviewed some of its members to find out more about FCS’s goals and achievements.

Posted On : January 10, 2020Published By : Rachel Harrison

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The PanAf project: studying chimpanzee culture across Africa

Ammie Kalan tells us about her work on the PanAf project.

Posted On : November 1, 2019Published By : Alba Motes