Cetacean culture: Still afloat after the first navalengagement of the culture wars

Abstract

Although the majority of commentators implicitly or explicitly acceptthat field data allow us to ascribe culture to whales, dolphins, andother nonhumans, there is no consensus. While we define culture asinformation or behaviour shared by a population or subpopulationwhich is acquired from conspecifics through some form of sociallearning, some commentators suggest restricting this by requiringimitation/teaching, human analogy, adaptiveness, stability acrossgenerations, progressive evolution (ratchetting), or specificfunctions. Such restrictions fall down because they either precludethe attribution of culture to nonhumans using currently availablemethods, or exclude parts of human culture. The evidence forcetacean culture is strong in some cases, but weak in others. Thecommentaries provide important information on the social learningabilities of bottlenose dolphins and some interesting speculationabout the evolution of cetacean cultures and differences between thecultures of different taxa. We maintain that some attributes ofcetacean culture are currently unknown outside humans. Whileexperimental studies, both in the laboratory and in the wild, havean important role in the study of culture in whales and dolphins(for instance in determining whether dolphins have aTheory-of-Mind), the real treasures will be uncovered by long-termobservational studies at sea using new approaches andtechnologies.