Culture at NN? You'd better believe it!

All of us at NN love BBC nature documentaries and last night's Winterwatch (BBC2) was no exception. The night time shots of the grey seal (Halichoerus grypus) population at Blakeney Point were amazing. We were transfixed, even little Sonny Tiger who could only speculate what the seals might taste like!! That boy!! His mind is always on food!

Chris Packham's commentary was hugely informative, as usual, especially when he pointed out the 'body slapping' the bulls indulge in, was a 'cultural' oddity restricted to the seal populations found on the East coast of the UK. But that one little word; culture, encompasses so much biologically and anthropologically speaking, that I was pushed to investigate the term further.

Interestingly, until very recently culture was deemed to be a specifically hu-man trait. Such is the hubris of mankind, but I digress.

According to Chambers, culture is defined (rather loosely) as 'the result of cultivation; refinement in manners, thought, taste, etc,' with the adjective cultured meaning 'well educated, esp in the arts,' indicating rather strongly, I would suggest, that only hu-mans can be cultured! 

However, in recent decades this rather narrow definition has undergone some 'refinement,' especially with regard to animal behaviour where it is now widely assumed that many animals (e.g. many primate species; chimpanzees [Pan trogoldytes], Japanese macaques [Macaca fuscata]; in birds; cowbirds [Molothrus ater], starlings [Sturnus vulgaris] ) possess culture, including apparently, the grey seals at Blakeney.

Hiya!!

But empirically, how does one go about proving that a particular animal species, or indeed a particular population of a species, possesses culture?  

Table 1, below, lists one train of thought where there are 8 conditions, each of which needs to be satisfied empirically (through experimentation) in order to demonstrate that a species has culture. The table is fairly self-explanatory, and since this isn't a scientific paper I shan't be running through a long-winded explanation of each condition individually, suffice to say that in order to satisfy each condition in turn may take many years of pain-staking research which can often end up being summarised in a single word, often missed, in a BBC documentary. That Chris Packham can describe the 'body slapping' of the bull seals as 'culture' would indicate to me that some scientist, somewhere has gone through the painful, time-consuming process of doing just that. As a Canine layman I would suggest that perhaps the hardest one to prove these days might be 'diffusion' since in the wild habitat fragmentation might limit the interaction between different groups, or populations, of the same species.

Looks like the Boss!

For example, a commonly accepted form of chimpanzee culture these days, and one that many TV naturalists would be familiar with, is termite fishing with sticks. Historically, chimpanzees ranged from the West coast of Africa to the East, but now due to hu-man intervention their range is much more localised and disparate, such that at Gombe, Tanzania in East Africa termite fishing can be observed, whilst in West African populations (such as that in the Tai forest, Ivory Coast) it is absent. Does that mean that this behaviour is not then a cultural innovation? I think not. I'm really just playing Devil's advocate to illustrate the potential difficulties a researcher might encounter in his/her quest to prove their hypotheses.

Table 1. Conditions of criteria for recognising cultural acts in non-hu-man species (from Kroeber, 1928; McGrew & Tutin, 1978)
Innovation	New pattern is invented or modified
Dissemination	Pattern acquired by another from innovator
Standardisation	Form of pattern is consistent & stylised
Durability	Pattern performed outwith presence of demonstrator
Diffusion	Pattern spreads from one group to another
Tradition	Pattern persists from innovators generation to the next
Non-subsistence	Pattern transcends subsistence
Naturalness	Pattern shown in absence of direct hu-man influence

All this begs the question, why on earth are going on about this on your blog?

Well, I'll tell you, shall I? That one word, culture, set me to thinking whether we at NN possess culture. We have no empirical data to prove this one way or the other. But I would suggest that we have anecdotal evidence that would indicate that us Manimals at NN are indeed cultured.  

This is Nacho. She is Mum to all but one of the Feline manimals here at NN. Sadly, Nacho is no longer with us but her legacy remains and Mini, Dijon and Rudi are all her progeny. Sonny came from, we're not sure where, but he just walked in our door looking for a job when he was no more than 6 or 7 weeks old!! Anyway, the point is that Nacho began a trend which the kidlets have continued. Us Canine manimals love a walk. Nothing new there, but after a time Nach started to come with us! A Feline manimal going for a walk....unheard of! But there she was. The habit then spread to her sis, S.B. (also sadly gone), and latterly to her kids, who now work with me at NN.

And now Sonny has taken up the baton as well. So when the Boss takes us for a walk now it's very often it's 4 doglet and 4 catlet manimals. Which is great for us, cos it means we don't have to look for anyone to chase as they're right there! What fun baby!

So, whilst the manimals at NN might not fit every one of the criteria listed above (Table 1) it comes pretty close. The only one which might be in some dispute is the last criterion, an absence of hu-man influence, and that's just because we're not sure if the Boss qualifies as a hu-man or not (see picture above of the chimpanzee)!

And finally, back on Winterwatch once again young Master Packham was holding an absolutely stunning Eagle owl. We live in Spain, as you may know, and as it happens we have an Eagle owl living in the forest just behind our house. At dusk it can be seen swooping low across the almond groves out front, it's resonant call sounding like a deep bass pan-pipe, and as beautiful as it may be (one morning it was there on our gate as we opened the front door) it is certainly deadly. The Boss thinks it is responsible for the loss of both Nacho and S.B., which it may well be because the hunters kill everything else and food must at a premium for a large predator such as this, which may explain why he's 'ordering off the normal menu.' So it just means that all of us watch our backs right now because we don't want to lose any more family!

That's all for now folks.