Department of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig 04103, Germany.
Biol Lett. 2021 Jul;17(7):20210327. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2021.0327. Epub 2021 Jul 14.
Material culture-that is, group-shared and socially learned object-related behaviour(s)-is a widespread and diverse phenomenon in humans. For decades, researchers have sought to confirm the existence of material culture in non-human animals; however, the main study systems of interest-namely, tool making and/or using non-human primates and corvids-cannot provide such confirmatory evidence: because long-standing ethical and logistical constraints handicap the collection of necessary experimental data. Synthesizing evidence across decades and disciplines, here, I present a novel framework for (mechanistic, developmental, behavioural, and comparative) study on animal material culture: avian nest construction.
物质文化——即群体共享和社会习得的与物体相关的行为——在人类中是一种广泛而多样的现象。几十年来，研究人员一直试图在非人类动物中证实物质文化的存在；然而，主要的研究系统——即制造和/或使用工具的非人类灵长类动物和鸦科动物——无法提供这样的确认证据：因为长期存在的伦理和后勤限制阻碍了必要实验数据的收集。在这里，我综合了几十年来不同学科的证据，提出了一个研究动物物质文化的新框架：鸟类筑巢。
