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Animal Innovation

Online ISBN:
9780191689406
Print ISBN:
9780198526223
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

Animal Innovation

Simon M. Reader (ed.),
Simon M. Reader
(ed.)
Department of Biology, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
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Kevin N. Laland (ed.)
Kevin N. Laland
(ed.)
Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, School of Biology, University of St Andrews, Scotland
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Published online:
22 March 2012
Published in print:
25 September 2003
Online ISBN:
9780191689406
Print ISBN:
9780198526223
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

In 1953 a young female Japanese macaque called Imo began washing sweet potatoes before eating them, presumably to remove dirt and sand grains. Soon other monkeys had adopted this behaviour, and potato washing gradually spread throughout the troop. When, three years after her first invention, Imo devised a second novel foraging behaviour, that of separating wheat from sand by throwing mixed handfuls into water and scooping out the floating grains, she was almost instantly heralded around the world as a ‘monkey genius’. Imo is probably the most celebrated of animal innovators. In fact, many animals will invent new behaviour patterns, adjust established behaviours to a novel context, or respond to stresses in an appropriate and novel manner. Innovation is an important component of behavioural flexibility, vital to the survival of individuals in species with generalist or opportunistic lifestyles, and potentially of critical importance to those endangered or threatened species forced to adjust to changed or impoverished environments. Innovation may also have played a central role in avian and primate brain evolution.

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