Whale songs echo from the ocean. What are the animals saying? A video of an ape utilizing specific tools for foraging crosses your social media feed. How do they know how to do that? Recent scientific and technological advancements may have started uncovering the significance of some behaviors for certain animals.
The sounds sperm whales make, for example, actually form distinct dialects unique to the social groups — or clans — in which they live. These clans can also differ in a whole range of other behaviors. As scientists observe these distinctions in other species, we are recognizing many animals exhibit something equivalent for them to human cultures.
What does culture look like for animals?
Not too long ago, the concept of other animals having cultures may have seemed far-fetched. Our understanding of animal cultures, however, has grown massively in recent years. We’re not saying you should expect to find orcas attending a ballet. Instead, think of animal cultures as specific behaviors passed on socially within groups. This is sometimes through vocal communication and other times through visual observations.
These socially learned behaviors can transmit specific traditions or help animals to migrate or find food. Some chimpanzee troops, for example, exhibit specific nut-cracking behaviors which individuals learn from observing other group members.
Although these types of behaviors have been more widely studied and perhaps publicized in mammals — especially cetaceans, or whales, dolphins and porpoises — they’ve also been documented in birds, reptiles, fish and even insects.
Why are animal cultures important?
Animal cultures represent more than just a fascinating scientific development — they have practical implications for conservation. Why? Because many of the species with documented cultures are also species of conservation concern.
Chimpanzees, sperm whales, grizzly bears, orcas and elephants are all listed under the Endangered Species Act and all have been shown to possess socially learned behaviors and cultures to varying extents. In fact, the more we learn about animal communication, it’s quite possible we’ll discover other highly social imperiled species — like gray wolves — also have distinct cultures.
Most importantly for conservation, these socially learned behaviors can contribute to survival and reproduction. They also influence species’ adaptability to changing environmental conditions, including interactions with humans and other animals.
Elephant matriarchs, for example, pass on information about the threats posed by other elephant groups and predators to help improve herd reproductive success. Knowledge about foraging strategies can influence sperm whale clan responses to oceanographic cycles like El Niño.
Our growing understanding of social learning in grizzly bears, like how mothers will teach their offspring the best places and ways to forage, could help to more effectively implement coexistence measures. Measures that could help ensure these bears don’t have access to human-related attractants including farm animals, fruit and garbage, to begin with.
How can we better protect animal cultures?
Defenders of Wildlife’s Center for Conservation Innovation has been contemplating how these cultures could be better protected through existing laws and policies, particularly through the ESA.
One way could be through listing distinct population segments. Distinct population segment listings are how the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service can assign or remove protections for certain populations of a particular species based on how significant and discrete that population is for the species as a whole. Endangered Southern Resident orcas, for example, are currently managed in this way because they are genetically and behaviorally distinct from other orca populations.
Distinct population segment listings could be used to protect animal cultures in situations where a geographically distinct population exhibits significant cultural behaviors unlike other members of their species, and consequently grant that population protections as a threatened or endangered species.
Another way to ensure protection of animal cultures through the ESA could more simply be to better integrate the science surrounding animal culture into recovery-related documents for species, including recovery plans, recovery outlines and five-year reviews.
To investigate this further, we analyzed how often FWS and NMFS have considered animal cultures when listing distinct population segments and the extent to which NMFS has considered the cultures of multiple, studied cetacean species in their recovery-related documents. In both circumstances, we found animal cultures were rarely discussed by FWS or NMFS.
Going forward, we hope FWS and NMFS will provide specific guidance on animal culture for practitioners, and where relevant, consider this important component of behavioral diversity more widely in future distinct population segment listings and species recovery-related documents. Doing so follows the ESA’s mandate to use the best available science in decision making processes.
Animal cultures have inherent value as part of our natural world. When listening to whales singing or wolves howling, it would be naive to think there isn’t more to their communication than what meets our ears. Conserving these dialects and other socially learned behaviors could be another crucial tool to help sufficiently protect and recover many imperiled species.
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