Mammalian Social Learning: Non-Primates

Social learning can be a major factor in mammals learning either arbitrary responses in the laboratory or behaviors critical to their survival and reproduction in natural habitat. Development of adaptive patterns of food selection, mate choice, predator avoidance, and communication are all facilitated by interaction with conspecifics. Consequences of such social learning are profound, allowing mammals to flourish in portions of the environment otherwise closed to them by, for example, learning socially to select valuable foods that would otherwise be ignored or to overcome the defense of potential prey that would otherwise prove impossible to ingest.