Elliot Howard-Spink

New paper out today w @dalmaijer.bsky.social @barbaraklump.bsky.social and @lucymaplin.bsky.social as part of the Phil Trans special issue doi.org/10.1098/rstb.... Over 2 years, we studied a population of cockatoos thought to be the source of the innovation of bin-opening.

Picture of front cover of Theme Issue entitled "Transforming cultural evolution research and its application to global futures." The image on the front cover is of a Yao honey hunter in Mozambique holding retrieved honeycomb.

Today sees the publication of the Theme Issue featuring the CES Transformation Fund grant scheme. Enjoy! royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/issue/3...
@durhamdcerc.bsky.social @durhamanthropology.bsky.social @cultevolfunding.bsky.social @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social

Sequence organization of mother–infant interactions in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) in the wild | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Sequence organization is a fundamental feature of human communication, shaping our interactions. This organization underlies interactions with and without language, appears early in human development ...

New Paper out in Proceedings of the Royal Society B! 🎉 Sequence organization of mother–infant interactions in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) in the wild. See the thread below for a quick explanation, and check out the paper: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Thanks Ani! :-)

Culture is critical in driving orangutan diet development past individual potentials - Nature Human Behaviour Howard-Spink et al. develop an empirically based model of orangutan diet development, which suggests that social learning is vital for orangutans to acquire varied diets.

In this study, Howard-Spink et al. develop an empirically based model of orangutan diet development, which suggests that social learning is vital for allowing orangutans to acquire varied diets.

New paper from the Schuppli group and colleagues!

Video summary 👉 youtu.be/W_eOg7vsL_M?...

Thanks so much Iuia! I hope you enjoy reading it :-)

Thank you Cedric!

Orangutans can’t master their complex diets without cultural knowledge A new study highlights how orangutans' dietary knowledge is culturally accumulated, essential for their independence and survival.

Also, read our official press release @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social, including a video summary of our study! www.ab.mpg.de/793308/news_...

Culture is critical in driving orangutan diet development past individual potentials - Nature Human Behaviour Howard-Spink et al. develop an empirically based model of orangutan diet development, which suggests that social learning is vital for orangutans to acquire varied diets.

For more details, check out our paper. A huge thank you to everyone who has collected data for this project at SUAQ, and to all collaborators! Also thank you to the SUAQ project for providing all images above. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This suggests that early hominin cultures were more expansive than can be predicted from surviving artifacts alone, including key information used for daily decision making.

Whilst accumulating culturally-dependent expanses of knowledge is a key facet of humans' generative and open-ended cultures, our results suggest that this capacity is likely ancestral to (at least) great-ape species.

In extension, we evidence that the breadth of cultural knowledge possessed by orangutans is likely more expansive than any one individual could produce independently (thus, a 'culturally-dependent repertoire').

We show that cultural transmission is essential for orangs to learn basic subsistence information in the wild. The repertoire of cultural information possessed by apes is likely to be far more expansive than social customs and highly technical skills, including simple info about 'what to eat'.

Preventing peering significantly slowed diet development, and removing enhancement effects on top of peering led to a larger stepwise reduction in diet size. Social enhancement (as well as maternally directed exposure to different foods) influence the majority of diet learning in orangutans.

Even when orangutans were presented with over 148,000 opportunities to interact with different food items over long-term development, orangs only developed adult-like diets (at least 90% adult repertoire) by adulthood if they also engaged in social learning.

Every single parameter of our ABM was estimated from wild data. When simulated orangs could engage in forms of social learning seen in the wild, the timings of diet development matched those observed in wild individuals (validating that our ABM captured wild orangs' learning from real-world inputs).

Leveraging over a decade of behavioral data collected in the wild, we constructed an agent-based simulation (ABM) of orangutan diet development between birth and adulthood (~15 years), focusing on individual exploration + social influences on exploration, e.g. exposure, enhancement and peering.

To answer these questions, we investigated whether social learning has important, long-term effects on the rate and outcomes of diet development in wild Sumatran orangutans. Moreover, we circumvent these methodological difficulties through running biologically relevant experiments ‘in-sillico’.

a close up of a man 's face with the words challenge accepted written on it ALT: a close up of a man 's face with the words challenge accepted written on it

However, answering this question just using observational data in the wild is almost impossible – it’s extremely difficult to estimate the total knowledge possessed by wild animals, and to attribute knowledge acquisition to specific social behaviours or instances of individual exploration.

This is a critical question to answer for understanding the evolution of humans’ expansive cultures, and for understanding the role of culture in other animals’ development, behavioural ecology, and evolution.

Whilst many animal species exhibit the capacity to socially learn, it is unclear whether animals’ social learning similarly leads to the development of knowledge repertoires which are broader than animals could construct individually.

Humans use social learning to accumulate repertoires of knowledge that are significantly broader than any one individual could produce through their own efforts (we term, culturally-dependent repertoires).

Culture is critical in driving orangutan diet development past individual potentials - Nature Human Behaviour Howard-Spink et al. develop an empirically based model of orangutan diet development, which suggests that social learning is vital for orangutans to acquire varied diets.

Our New Paper is out in Nature Human Behaviour: 🚨 Culture is critical in driving orangutan diet development past individual potentials! 🦧 www.nature.com/articles/s41.... See 🧵

Postdoc position in individual-level incentives, social
learning, and payoff-biased imitation shape group-level accuracy in complex prediction and decision-making tasks in Konstanz

files.newsletter2go.com/l3slzozn/s_i...

New research from #ProcB: A wide range of abiotic and biotic variables leaves most variation in bird nest architecture unexplained buff.ly/eRawojZ | #AnimalBehaviour #Ecology #Evolution

Abstract Submission The call for abstracts for Culture Conference 2026 is NOW OPEN! We call for submissions of abstracts of no more than 250 words, summarising the background, aims, methods and results of your work.&n…

📢 The Call for Abstracts for Culture Conference 2026 is officially OPEN! 📢
🗓️ Deadline: 8 Dec 2025

We welcome submissions from all career stages and relevant disciplines.
🔎Details & submission info: culture-conference.com/abstract-sub...

Keynote speakers & workshop details coming soon!

I have published a childrens book! 📚🦧

'The Rimba' is a lyrical tale about the rainforest’s guardian spirit, a wise orangutan named Rimba, who rises to protect her home and the creatures within it, from the impacts of deforestation for palm oil. 🌴

#NewBook #ChildrensBook #orangutan #conservation

New article just out in NBR, co-authored with some brilliant linguists I’m working with in the new @dfg.de-funded CRC “Common Ground” (link below)!
What can ambiguity in nonhuman communication teach us about the evolution of language? 🐵🗣️🐘

This is why we fund scientists to study things like oyster slobber even if you don’t think it sounds important