School of Biology, University St Andrews, St Andrews, KY16 9TH, UK.
School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland.
Primates. 2021 Jan;62(1):207-221. doi: 10.1007/s10329-020-00835-0. Epub 2020 Jun 24.
Callitrichidae is a unique primate family not only in terms of the large number of food transfers to infants but also for the prevalence of transfers that are initiated by the adults. It has been hypothesized that, as well as provisioning infants, callitrichid food transfers might function to teach the receiver what food types to eat. If food provisioning has a teaching function, we would expect successful food transfers to be more likely with food types that are novel to the juveniles. We would also expect juveniles to learn about foods from those transfers. We introduced different types of food (some familiar, some novel) to wild groups of golden lion tamarins (Leontopithecus rosalia). While novel foods were not more successfully transferred than familiar food in the experiment, transfers were more successful (i.e., the receiver obtained food) when the donor had previous experience with that food. Moreover, we found evidence suggesting that food transfers influenced the future foraging choices of juveniles. Our findings are consistent with the first and third criteria of the functional definition of teaching, which requires that tutors (the adults) modify their behavior in the presence of a naïve individual (a juvenile), and that the naïve individual learns from the modified behavior of the demonstrator. Our findings are also consistent with the provisioning function of food transfer. Social learning seems to play an important role in the development of young tamarins' foraging preferences.
狨科不仅在向婴儿转移大量食物方面具有独特性，而且在由成年人发起转移的情况也很普遍。据推测，狨猴的食物转移除了为婴儿提供食物外，还可能起到教导接收者吃哪些食物类型的作用。如果食物供应具有教学功能，我们预计与青少年来说比较新颖的食物类型的成功转移的可能性更高。我们还期望青少年能够从这些转移中了解食物。我们向野生金狮狨猴（Leontopithecus rosalia）的群体引入了不同类型的食物（有些是熟悉的，有些是新颖的）。虽然在实验中新颖的食物并没有比熟悉的食物更成功地转移，但当供体之前有过这种食物的经验时，转移就更成功（即接收者获得了食物）。此外，我们发现有证据表明食物转移影响了青少年未来的觅食选择。我们的研究结果与教学的功能定义的前两个标准一致，即要求导师（成年人）在有天真个体（青少年）的情况下改变其行为，并且天真个体从示范者的行为中学习。我们的研究结果也与食物转移的供应功能一致。社会学习似乎在年轻狨猴觅食偏好的发展中起着重要作用。
