IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group - Digital Cat Library |
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| Higham, J.E.S. | |
| Wildlife social learning should inform sustainable tourism management | |
| 2012 Animal Conservation (15): 438-439 | |
Can wildlife learn harmful and maladaptive behaviours from each other? If so, insights into social learning among animal populations in response to anthropogenic stimuli are of wide interest and applicability. Donaldson et al. (2012) address social learning in human-wildlife interactions involving food provision. 'Food-conditioned' animals are subject to operant conditioning in which learning about anthropogenic food arises from repeated exposure to human stimuli, behavioural responses to those stimuli and reinforcement of behavioural responses because of food reward (Whittaker & Knight, 1998; Samuels & Bejder, 2004). In this paper, Donaldson et al. carefully negotiate the asocial/social learning dichotomy. The former arises from individual responses to the availability of anthropogenic food (e.g. in species that receive limited maternal care and are solitary as juveniles and adults). However, responses to provisioning may also arise through social learning in cases where individual animals are repeatedly exposed to the feeding behaviours of conspecifics that exploit anthropogenic foods. Operant conditioning describes a learning process that may be acquired individually or socially (Sargeant & Mann, 2009). Social learning involving responses to anthropogenic food may then be facilitative or supplementary. |
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