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A unified account of culture should accommodate animal cultures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2020

Andrew Whiten*
Affiliation:
Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St AndrewsKY16 9JP, UK. [email protected]

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
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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