Abstract
Habituation to human observers is an essential tool in animal behaviour research. Habituation occurs when repeated and inconsequential exposure to a human observer gradually reduces an animal’s natural aversive response. Despite the importance of habituation, little is known about the psychological mechanisms facilitating it in wild animals. Although animal learning theory offers some account, the patterns are more complex in natural than in laboratory settings, especially in large social groups in which individual experiences vary and individuals influence each other. Here, we investigate the role of social learning during the habituation process of a wild chimpanzee group, the Waibira community of Budongo Forest, Uganda. Through post hoc hypothesis testing, we found that the immigration of two well-habituated, young females from the neighbouring Sonso community had a significant effect on the behaviour of non-habituated Waibira individuals towards human observers, suggesting that habituation is partially acquired via social learning.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the Waibira chimpanzee field assistants, Simon Lokuyu, Gerald Mayanga, Gideon Atayo and Robert Eguma, and the group of international habituation volunteers; as well as to all the staff of the Budongo Conservation Field Station, the Uganda National Council for Science and Technology, the President’s Office, the Uganda Wildlife Authority, and the National Forestry Authority. We thank Naomi Paz for her assistance in proofreading the manuscript. We also thank two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and helpful comments and one in particular for the discussion point that larger groups may dilute the effect of the habituated females. Fieldwork of CH and LS was funded by grants from the British Academy and a Leverhulme Trust’s Research Leadership Award.
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Samuni, L., Mundry, R., Terkel, J. et al. Socially learned habituation to human observers in wild chimpanzees. Anim Cogn 17, 997–1005 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-014-0731-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-014-0731-6