Open AccessImmature wild orangutans acquire relevant ecological knowledge through sex-specific attentional biases during social learning
Author(s) -
Beatrice Ehmann,
Carel P. van Schaik,
Alison M. Ashbury,
Julia Mörchen,
Helvi Musdarlia,
Suci Utami Atmoko,
Maria A. van Noordwijk,
Caroline Schuppli
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
plos biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.127
H-Index - 271
eISSN - 1545-7885
pISSN - 1544-9173
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pbio.3001173
Subject(s) - biology , foraging , social learning , affect (linguistics) , context (archaeology) , observational learning , social environment , biological dispersal , developmental psychology , social cue , preference , ecology , psychology , demography , communication , population , pedagogy , paleontology , mathematics education , sociology , political science , law , economics , experiential learning , microeconomics
As a part of growing up, immature orangutans must acquire vast repertoires of skills and knowledge, a process that takes several years of observational social learning and subsequent practice. Adult female and male orangutans show behavioral differences including sex-specific foraging patterns and male-biased dispersal. We investigated how these differing life trajectories affect social interest and emerging ecological knowledge in immatures. We analyzed 15 years of detailed observational data on social learning, associations, and diet repertoires of 50 immatures (16 females and 34 males), from 2 orangutan populations. Specific to the feeding context, we found sex differences in the development of social interest: Throughout the dependency period, immature females direct most of their social attention at their mothers, whereas immature males show an increasing attentional preference for individuals other than their mothers. When attending to non-mother individuals, males show a significant bias toward immigrant individuals and a trend for a bias toward adult males. In contrast, females preferentially attend to neighboring residents. Accordingly, by the end of the dependency period, immature females show a larger dietary overlap with their mothers than do immature males. These results suggest that immature orangutans show attentional biases through which they learn from individuals with the most relevant ecological knowledge. Diversifying their skills and knowledge likely helps males when they move to a new area. In sum, our findings underline the importance of fine-grained social inputs for the acquisition of ecological knowledge and skills in orangutans and likely in other apes as well.