Social transmission of novel foraging behavior in bats: frog calls and their referents. Page, R. A & Ryan, M. J Curr Biol, 16(12):1201-5, 2006.
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The fringe-lipped bat, Trachops cirrhosus, uses prey-emitted acoustic cues (frog calls) to assess prey palatability . Previous experiments show that wild T. cirrhosus brought into the laboratory are flexible in their ability to reverse the associations they form between prey cues and prey quality . Here we asked how this flexibility can be achieved in nature. We quantified the rate at which bats learned to associate the calls of a poisonous toad species with palatable prey by placing bats in three groups: (a) social learning, in which a bat inexperienced with the novel association was allowed to observe an experienced bat; (b) social facilitation, in which two inexperienced bats were presented with the experimental task together; and (c) trial-and-error, in which a single inexperienced bat was presented with the experimental task alone. In the social-learning group, bats rapidly acquired the novel association in an average of 5.3 trials. In the social-facilitation and trial-and-error groups, most bats did not approach the call of the poisonous species after 100 trials. Thus, once acquired, novel associations between prey cue and prey quality could spread rapidly through the bat population by cultural transmission. This is the first case to document predator social learning of an acoustic prey cue.
@Article{Page2006,
  author   = {Rachel A Page and Michael J Ryan},
  journal  = {Curr Biol},
  title    = {Social transmission of novel foraging behavior in bats: frog calls and their referents.},
  year     = {2006},
  number   = {12},
  pages    = {1201-5},
  volume   = {16},
  abstract = {The fringe-lipped bat, Trachops cirrhosus, uses prey-emitted acoustic
	cues (frog calls) to assess prey palatability . Previous experiments
	show that wild T. cirrhosus brought into the laboratory are flexible
	in their ability to reverse the associations they form between prey
	cues and prey quality . Here we asked how this flexibility can be
	achieved in nature. We quantified the rate at which bats learned
	to associate the calls of a poisonous toad species with palatable
	prey by placing bats in three groups: (a) social learning, in which
	a bat inexperienced with the novel association was allowed to observe
	an experienced bat; (b) social facilitation, in which two inexperienced
	bats were presented with the experimental task together; and (c)
	trial-and-error, in which a single inexperienced bat was presented
	with the experimental task alone. In the social-learning group, bats
	rapidly acquired the novel association in an average of 5.3 trials.
	In the social-facilitation and trial-and-error groups, most bats
	did not approach the call of the poisonous species after 100 trials.
	Thus, once acquired, novel associations between prey cue and prey
	quality could spread rapidly through the bat population by cultural
	transmission. This is the first case to document predator social
	learning of an acoustic prey cue.},
  doi      = {10.1016/j.cub.2006.04.038},
  keywords = {16782010},
}

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