Category: Reviews

In 1896, the idea that learning can influence the evolutionary process was proposed by both Baldwin [1] (published in Nature Magazine) and Lloyd-Morgan [2] (published in Science Magazine), this was later named “The Baldwin Effect” by George Simpson in 1953 [3]. In the Baldwin Effect, the idea is an animal learns some skills, which later […]

“We are the Borg. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.” (The Borg, Star Trek TNG) The Hive wants YOU! Give up your pathetic notions of self-importance and join something greater. There will be no fear. There will be no unmet […]

Rachel Harrison gives an overview of Guillette, Scott and Healy, 2016, “Social learning in nest-building birds: A role for familiarity”.

Elena Miu gives an overview of Cantor, Whitehead, Gero & Rendell, 2016, “Cultural turnover among Galapagos sperm whales”.

Edith Invernizzi provides an overview of Fogarty, Wakano, Feldman & Aoki, 2016, “The Driving Forces of Cultural Complexity”.

Elisa Bandini gives an overview of Davis et al., 2016, “Foundations of Cumulative Culture in Apes: Improved foraging efficiency through relinquishing and combining witnessed behaviours in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)”

Nature presents a diversity of challenges that individuals can address through learning, and the best learning strategies to employ can depend on the type of challenge. Challenges can vary in how rewarding a given solution is, with respect to how closely it resembles some optimal ideal. In some cases, small incremental improvements toward the ideal provide adequate feedback between solution and reward for an individual to learn asocially (wide fitness landscape). By contrast, individuals have inadequate guidance for tracking an ideal solution and rely more on social learning when only some solutions are rewarded (narrow fitness landscape).

A review of the Cracked Podcast, by Stephen Heap.