Hasil untuk "Animal culture"

R. Freshney

A. Whiten

We are not alone Before the mid-20th century, it was generally assumed that culture, behavior learned from others, was specific to humans. However, starting with identification in a few species, evidence that animals can learn and transmit behaviors has accumulated at an ever-increasing pace. Today, there is no doubt that culture is widespread among animal species, both vertebrates and invertebrates, marine and terrestrial. Whiten reviews evidence for animal culture and elaborates on the wide array of forms that such culture takes. Recognizing that other species have complex and varied culture has implications for conservation and welfare and for understanding the evolution of this essential component of animal societies, including our own. Science, this issue p. eabe6514 BACKGROUND Culture—the inheritance of an array of behavioral traditions through social learning from others—was once thought specific to humans. Recent and accumulating evidence has shown that, to the contrary, culture permeates the lives of a great diversity of animals, with far-reaching implications for evolutionary biology, anthropology, and conservation. Early evidence for animal culture emerged in the mid–20th century in the discovery of regional birdsong dialects and the spread of provisioned sweet potato washing in Japanese monkeys. Stimulated by these discoveries, long-term studies of wild chimpanzees and orangutans later in the century revealed complex cultures composed of multiple traditions spanning diverse aspects of apes’ lives, from tool use to social and sexual behavior. In part through the accumulation of further long-term field studies, the present century has witnessed an explosion in discoveries about social learning and culture, not only in primates but also in a rapidly growing range of animal species, from cetaceans to a diverse array of birds, fish, and even invertebrates. ADVANCES Novel experimental designs have rigorously demonstrated the cultural transmission and spread of behavioral innovations introduced by researchers, both in the wild and in labs. New statistical methods have detected the signatures of behavioral innovations as they spread through social networks, identifying culture in species (e.g., whales) for which experiments are impractical. Through these and other methodological advances, the reach of cultural learning is now known to encompass an unexpected range of species, with surprising new discoveries extending even to insects, from bees to fruit flies. The reach of culture has similarly been discovered to span diversity in behavioral domains, including foraging techniques, tool use, vocal communication, social customs and preferences for particular prey, migratory pathways, nesting sites, and mates. The revelation that cultural inheritance permeates many species’ lives is increasingly recognized to have profound implications for evolutionary biology at large, because it provides a second form of inheritance that builds on the primary genetic inheritance system, facilitating cultural evolution. The two inheritance systems may generate rich interactive effects, as they have in humans. A plethora of innovative experiments has further identified an array of cognitive processes involved in learning from others, ranging from simple and ubiquitous forms to specialized ones such as imitation and teaching. These forms of social learning have been shown to be further refined through a variety of selective biases, such as conforming to majorities or copying particularly skilled elders. OUTLOOK United Nations bodies operating under the aegis of international conventions have recently recognized the importance of all that has been discovered about animal cultures, for conservation policies and practices. Among sperm whales and chimpanzees, specific cultural entities, as opposed to genetically defined units, have been recognized as meriting conservation in their own right. This finding, in turn, urges a greater focus on understanding cultural phenomena in the wild. The task of rigorously identifying social learning has relied heavily on controlled experiments in captivity, but field experiments are increasingly carried out. These and other innovative methods to identify and trace animal cultures in the wild deserve to be developed and applied further to wild populations. The wealth of methodological advances and empirical discoveries about animal cultures in the present century provides an exciting foundation from which to explore deeper questions. Do animal cultures evolve, cumulatively, as human cultures have done so impressively over past millennia? How profoundly does the lifetime reach of culture in animals’ lives reshape our understanding of behavioral ecology and the fundamentals of evolution at large? How close are human and animal cultures now perceived to be, and where do the principal differences remain? Diversity in cultural species and behavioral domains. (A) After filial imprinting on the costumed human pilot of a microlight aircraft, young cranes followed the flight path of this surrogate parent, adopting it as a traditional migratory route. (B) Female fruit flies (left) that witness a male marked with one of two colors mating (top right) later prefer to mate with similarly colored males. This behavior is further copied by others, initiating a tradition. (C) Bighorn sheep translocated to unfamiliar locations were initially sedentary, but spring migration and skill in reaching higher-altitude grazing grounds expanded over decades, implicating intergenerational cultural transmission. (D) Groups of vervet monkeys were trained to avoid bitter-tasting corn of one color and to prefer the other. Later, when offered these options with no distasteful additive, both naïve infants and immigrating adult males adopted the experimentally created local group preference. (E) Young meerkats learn scorpion predation because adults initially supply live prey with stingers removed and later provide unmodified prey as the young meerkats mature. (F) A humpback whale innovation of slapping the sea surface to refine predation, known as “lobtail feeding,” spread over two decades to create a new tradition in hundreds of other humpbacks. For reference citations, see the full article. Photos: (A) Thomas Mueller, (B) Etienne Danchin, (C) istock.com/skibreck, (D) Erica van de Waal, (E) Alex Thornton, (F) Jennifer Allen Culture can be defined as all that is learned from others and is repeatedly transmitted in this way, forming traditions that may be inherited by successive generations. This cultural form of inheritance was once thought specific to humans, but research over the past 70 years has instead revealed it to be widespread in nature, permeating the lives of a diversity of animals, including all major classes of vertebrates. Recent studies suggest that culture’s reach may extend also to invertebrates—notably, insects. In the present century, the reach of animal culture has been found to extend across many different behavioral domains and to rest on a suite of social learning processes facilitated by a variety of selective biases that enhance the efficiency and adaptiveness of learning. Far-reaching implications, for disciplines from evolutionary biology to anthropology and conservation policies, are increasingly being explored.

Karthikeyan Subbiahanadar Chelladurai, Jackson Durairaj Selvan Christyraj, Kamarajan Rajagopalan et al.

Fetal bovine serum (FBS) is a widely used growth supplement in the in vitro culturing of animal and human cells, tissues and organs, notably due to the occurrence of abundant micro- and macronutrients, along with growth factors. Over the years, increasing demand, high price, batch-to-batch variability in quality and composition, increasing ethical concerns lead to the search for an alternative to FBS. Several approaches have been suggested and employed in the past, but none is implemented as widely as FBS, and each supplement has its own disadvantages. In this review, we described the importance of FBS in cell culture, discussed the issues associated with FBS use and presented the efforts made in the recent past to reduce or replace FBS. The potential of four different alternative sources to FBS, namely, bovine ocular fluid, sericin protein, human platelet lysate and earthworm heat inactivated coelomic fluid was evaluated. In the end, we present the conceptual perspective using the Human Platelet Lysate (HPL) and earthworm Heat Inactivated Coelomic Fluid (HI-CF) combination to alternate FBS and its context in scientific and economic impacts.

B. Galef

Jacob Nielsen, Stine L. Beltoft, Peter Schneider-Kamp et al.

We introduce a new benchmark for Danish culture via cultural heritage, Daisy, based on the curated topics from the Danish Culture Canon 2006. For each artifact in the culture canon, we query the corresponding Wikipedia page and have a language model generate random questions. This yields a sampling strategy within each work, with a mix of central of peripheral questions for each work, not only knowledge of mainstream information, but also in-depth cornerstones defining the heritage of Danish Culture, defined by the Canon committee. Each question-answer pair is humanly approved or corrected in the final dataset consisting of 741 close-ended question answer pairs covering topics, from 1300 BC. archaeological findings, 1700 century poems and musicals pieces to contemporary pop music and Danish design and architecture.

Brooklyn L. Laubinger, Kelsey M. Harvey, William Isaac Jumper

Gastrointestinal nematodes (GINs) remain a significant challenge to productivity and sustainability in beef cattle systems in the United States, contributing to subclinical reductions in growth, reproductive performance, and overall herd health across production stages. Control programs have historically relied on routine anthelmintic use; however, increasing reports of anthelmintic resistance highlight the need for alternative management strategies. This narrative review synthesizes peer-reviewed literature identified through targeted searches of major scientific databases spanning approximately seven decades, with articles selected for relevance to GIN epidemiology, diagnostics, and control in beef cattle. Particular emphasis is placed on life stage-specific susceptibility, host immune development, and the role of diagnostic tools in guiding evidence-based interventions. The review further examines non-anthelmintic strategies such as grazing management, nutritional supplementation, selective breeding, and integrated parasite management practices adapted from small ruminant systems. Across studies, young and immunologically developing cattle experience the greatest productivity losses, while mature animals contribute disproportionately to pasture contamination, reinforcing the importance of targeted control measures. Overall, the literature supports a transition toward integrated, diagnostics-driven parasite control programs that sustain productivity and animal well-being while preserving long-term anthelmintic efficacy.

Philippa Brakes, L. Aplin, E. Carroll et al.

Social learning and animal culture can influence conservation outcomes in significant ways. Culture is a dynamic phenomenon; socially learned behaviours can be transmitted within and/or between generations and among populations, which can facilitate resilience, or in other circumstances generate vulnerability. Culture can be a driver of evolutionary diversification, population structure and demography, shaping sociality and influencing underlying biological processes such as reproduction and survival, affecting fitness. This theme issue synthesizes the current state of knowledge on cultural variation within major vertebrate taxa, offering practical insights on how social learning can interface directly with conservation interventions. It ranges over topics that include translocations, human–wildlife interactions and adaptation to anthropogenic change. Culture is complex; integrating cultural processes into conservation is challenging. No one-size-fits-all policy can be recommended. Instead, we aim to balance current understanding of underlying processes with a diversity of practical implementations in this nascent field, exploring and supporting developing pathways towards conservation efficiencies. Key themes that emerge include conserving cultural capacity, benefits of data sharing, along with the intrinsic value of animal cultures and the role of Indigenous Peoples and local communities. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Animal culture: conservation in a changing world’.

Eklavya Sarkar, Mathew Magimai. -Doss

Animal vocalizations contain sequential structures that carry important communicative information, yet most computational bioacoustics studies average the extracted frame-level features across the temporal axis, discarding the order of the sub-units within a vocalization. This paper investigates whether discrete acoustic token sequences, derived through vector quantization and gumbel-softmax vector quantization of extracted self-supervised speech model representations can effectively capture and leverage temporal information. To that end, pairwise distance analysis of token sequences generated from HuBERT embeddings shows that they can discriminate call-types and callers across four bioacoustics datasets. Sequence classification experiments using $k$-Nearest Neighbour with Levenshtein distance show that the vector-quantized token sequences yield reasonable call-type and caller classification performances, and hold promise as alternative feature representations towards leveraging sequential information in animal vocalizations.

Enmin Zhong, Carlos R. del-Blanco, Daniel Berjón et al.

Recently, there has been a surge of interest in applying deep learning techniques to animal behavior recognition, particularly leveraging pre-trained visual language models, such as CLIP, due to their remarkable generalization capacity across various downstream tasks. However, adapting these models to the specific domain of animal behavior recognition presents two significant challenges: integrating motion information and devising an effective temporal modeling scheme. In this paper, we propose AnimalMotionCLIP to address these challenges by interleaving video frames and optical flow information in the CLIP framework. Additionally, several temporal modeling schemes using an aggregation of classifiers are proposed and compared: dense, semi dense, and sparse. As a result, fine temporal actions can be correctly recognized, which is of vital importance in animal behavior analysis. Experiments on the Animal Kingdom dataset demonstrate that AnimalMotionCLIP achieves superior performance compared to state-of-the-art approaches.

Takehiro Furukawa, Fumihiro Yamane, Takuji Okumura et al.

Insulin-like androgenic gland factor (IAG) is considered a key regulator of male sexual differentiation and maturation in decapod crustaceans. In several species, <i>IAG</i> expression is thought to be negatively regulated by the eyestalk, as demonstrated by eyestalk ablation (ESA) experiments. In the kuruma prawn <i>Marsupenaeus japonicus</i>, however, the upstream regulatory mechanisms of <i>IAG</i> (<i>Maj-IAG</i>) remain largely unclear. In the present study, males of different body sizes were subjected to ESA to elucidate these mechanisms. Bilateral ESA induced upregulation of <i>Maj-IAG</i> expression from day 7 onward, whereas unilateral ESA did not. Moreover, enhanced development of male reproductive organs and hypertrophy of the androgenic gland were observed from day 7 after bilateral ESA. These findings indicate that <i>Maj-IAG</i> is regulated by eyestalk-derived factor(s), supporting the presence of an eyestalk–androgenic gland endocrine axis in <i>M. japonicus</i>. By contrast, the expression of <i>Maj-Dsx2</i>, a homolog of doublesex (<i>Dsx</i>) that has recently been proposed as an upstream regulator of IAG, did not show a consistent increase following bilateral ESA across all experiments, suggesting that the involvement of <i>Maj-Dsx2</i> in this axis remains unclear. Overall, this study provides fundamental insights into the regulatory mechanisms of decapod male reproduction.

Maria Juliana Benitez Saldivar, Viviana Massoni

Nest attention has a strong effect on nestling survival and is essential for the reproductive success of the parents. Secondary cavity nesters compete intensively for access to cavities and face high risk of nest usurpation by conspecifics. We describe nest attention by both sexes in the Saffron Finch ( Sicalis flaveola pelzelni ), and compare rates of nest attention in response to experimental territorial intrusions of live male and female conspecifics. During the incubation and brooding periods, in response to intrusions by other females or males, both natural and experimental, the attending females arrived at the nest immediately. Females also stayed close to the nest during egg laying and “old” 8–9 days old nestlings’ periods, but never attacked the intruders. Attending males took more time to approach the nest but spent a lot of time close to it, during the egg laying, incubation, and “young” 4–5 days old nestling periods, especially during simulated intrusions by other males. Focal males kept intruders of both sexes at bay and physically attacked the male intruders. The observed responses could be elicited by the perceived risk of mate or cavity loss before raising a brood. This study on a multi-brooded subtropical obligate secondary cavity nester reveals sex differences of nest attention in response to the sex of conspecific intruders.

Philippa Brakes, E. Carroll, Sasha R. X. Dall et al.

A key goal of conservation is to protect biodiversity by supporting the long-term persistence of viable, natural populations of wild species. Conservation practice has long been guided by genetic, ecological and demographic indicators of risk. Emerging evidence of animal culture across diverse taxa and its role as a driver of evolutionary diversification, population structure and demographic processes may be essential for augmenting these conventional conservation approaches and decision-making. Animal culture was the focus of a ground-breaking resolution under the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), an international treaty operating under the UN Environment Programme. Here, we synthesize existing evidence to demonstrate how social learning and animal culture interact with processes important to conservation management. Specifically, we explore how social learning might influence population viability and be an important resource in response to anthropogenic change, and provide examples of how it can result in phenotypically distinct units with different, socially learnt behavioural strategies. While identifying culture and social learning can be challenging, indirect identification and parsimonious inferences may be informative. Finally, we identify relevant methodologies and provide a framework for viewing behavioural data through a cultural lens which might provide new insights for conservation management.

Jérémy Perez, Corentin Léger, Marcela Ovando-Tellez et al.

Research in cultural evolution aims at providing causal explanations for the change of culture over time. Over the past decades, this field has generated an important body of knowledge, using experimental, historical, and computational methods. While computational models have been very successful at generating testable hypotheses about the effects of several factors, such as population structure or transmission biases, some phenomena have so far been more complex to capture using agent-based and formal models. This is in particular the case for the effect of the transformations of social information induced by evolved cognitive mechanisms. We here propose that leveraging the capacity of Large Language Models (LLMs) to mimic human behavior may be fruitful to address this gap. On top of being an useful approximation of human cultural dynamics, multi-agents models featuring generative agents are also important to study for their own sake. Indeed, as artificial agents are bound to participate more and more to the evolution of culture, it is crucial to better understand the dynamics of machine-generated cultural evolution. We here present a framework for simulating cultural evolution in populations of LLMs, allowing the manipulation of variables known to be important in cultural evolution, such as network structure, personality, and the way social information is aggregated and transformed. The software we developed for conducting these simulations is open-source and features an intuitive user-interface, which we hope will help to build bridges between the fields of cultural evolution and generative artificial intelligence.

Ali Qorbani, Mohammad Khalili, Saeidreza Nourollahifard et al.

Abstract Rickettsia occurs worldwide and rickettsiosis is recognized as an emerging infection in several parts of the world. Ticks are reservoir hosts for pathogenic Rickettsia species in humans and domestic animals. Most pathogenic Rickettsia species belong to the spotted Fever Group (SFG). This study aimed to identify and diagnose tick fauna and investigate the prevalence of Rickettsia spp. in ticks collected from domestic animals and dogs in the rural regions of Kerman Province, Southeast Iran. In this study, tick species (fauna) were identified and 2100 ticks (350 pooled samples) from two genera and species including Rhipicephalus linnaei (1128) and Hyalomma deteritum (972) were tested to detect Rickettsia genus using Real-time PCR. The presence of the Rickettsia genus was observed in 24.9% (95%CI 20.28–29.52) of the pooled samples. Sequencing and phylogenetic analyses revealed the presence of Rickettsia aeschlimannii (48.98%), Rickettsia conorii israelensis (28.57%), Rickettsia sibirica (20.41%), and Rickettsia helvetica (2.04%) in the positive samples. The results showed a significant association between county variables and the following variables: tick spp. (p < 0.001), Rickettsia genus infection in ticks (p < 0.001) and Rickettsia spp. (p < 0.001). In addition, there was a significant association between tick species and host animals (dogs and domestic animals) (p < 0.001), Rickettsia spp infection in ticks (p < 0.001), and Rickettsia spp. (p < 0.001). This study indicates a high prevalence of Rickettsia spp. (SFG) in ticks of domestic animals and dogs in rural areas of Kerman Province. The health system should be informed of the possibility of rickettsiosis and the circulating species of Rickettsia in these areas.

Michael L. Galyean, Luis O. Tedeschi

Predictions of microbial crude protein (MCP) synthesis for beef cattle generally rely on empirical regression equations, with intakes of energy and protein as key variables. Using a database from published literature, we developed new equations based on the intake of organic matter (OM) and intakes or concentrations of crude protein (CP) and neutral detergent fiber (NDF). We compared these new equations to several extant equations based on intakes of total digestible nutrients (TDN) and CP. Regression fit statistics were evaluated using both resampling and sampling from a simulated multivariate normal population. Newly developed equations yielded similar fit statistics to extant equations, but the root mean square error of prediction averaged 155 g (28.7% of the mean MCP of 540.7 g/d) across all equations, indicating considerable variation in predictions. A simple approach of calculating MCP as 10% of the TDN intake yielded MCP estimates and fit statistics that were similar to more complicated equations. Adding a classification code to account for unique dietary characteristics did not have significant effects. Because MCP synthesis is measured indirectly, most often using surgically altered animals, literature estimates are relatively few and highly variable. A random sample of individual studies from our literature database indicated a standard deviation for MCP synthesis that averaged 19.1% of the observed mean, likely contributing to imprecision in the MCP predictions. Research to develop additional MCP estimates across various diets and production situations is needed, with a focus on developing consistent and reliable methodologies for MCP measurements. The use of new meta-omics tools might improve the accuracy and precision of MCP predictions, but further research will be needed to assess the utility of such tools.

Aulia Puspita Anugra Yekti, Ismail Hasan, Hermanto et al.

This study aimed to evaluate the success of artificial insemination (AI) using frozen semen with different genetic qualities of Friesian Holstein Bull. In this research, the bulls came from the artificial insemination center of Singosari, consisting of Friesian Holstein bulls with proven bull certificates and the pure breed from embryo transfer. The frozen semen was produced by standard semen processing in the artificial insemination center of Singosari. The inseminated female totals were 56 head of Friesian Holstein crossbred in Pujon district, Malang, Indonesia. The females were divided into two groups: 28 cows receiving insemination from frozen semen of proven bull (T1) and 28 from pure breed FH bull from embryo transfer (T2). The females were chosen with purposive sampling with the criteria, have a Body Condition Score (BCS) of at least 2.5 (scale 1–5), have normal reproductive organs, and exhibit the clear estrus sign. Artificial insemination was performed with a single dose at the eight hour after estrus. Semen deposition was at the corpus uteri, while the thawing process was performed at 22–23°C for 60 seconds. The result showed that the non-return rate 1 (NRR-1), non-return rate 2 (NRR-2), and conception rate (CR) values for AI using frozen semen from a proven bull were 96%, 75% and 43%, respectively. In contrast, the percentage of AI success using pure breed FH bull from embryo transfer was 93%, 86%, and 64%. In conclusion, AI success using pure breed FH bull from embryo transfer was better than proven bull frozen semen.

E. Wooster, Kaitlyn M. Gaynor, A. Carthey et al.

Predator-prey ecology and the study of animal cognition and culture have emerged as independent disciplines. Research combining these disciplines suggests that both animal cognition and culture can shape the outcomes of predator-prey interactions and their influence on ecosystems. We review the growing body of work that weaves animal cognition or culture into predator-prey ecology, and argue that both cognition and culture are significant but poorly understood mechanisms mediating how predators structure ecosystems. We present a framework exploring how previous experiences with the predation process creates feedback loops that alter the predation sequence. Cognitive and cultural predator-prey ecology offers ecologists new lenses through which to understand species interactions, their ecological consequences, and novel methods to conserve wildlife in a changing world.

Levi Cai, Nathan E. McGuire, Roger Hanlon et al.

In-situ visual observations of marine organisms is crucial to developing behavioural understandings and their relations to their surrounding ecosystem. Typically, these observations are collected via divers, tags, and remotely-operated or human-piloted vehicles. Recently, however, autonomous underwater vehicles equipped with cameras and embedded computers with GPU capabilities are being developed for a variety of applications, and in particular, can be used to supplement these existing data collection mechanisms where human operation or tags are more difficult. Existing approaches have focused on using fully-supervised tracking methods, but labelled data for many underwater species are severely lacking. Semi-supervised trackers may offer alternative tracking solutions because they require less data than fully-supervised counterparts. However, because there are not existing realistic underwater tracking datasets, the performance of semi-supervised tracking algorithms in the marine domain is not well understood. To better evaluate their performance and utility, in this paper we provide (1) a novel dataset specific to marine animals located at http://warp.whoi.edu/vmat/, (2) an evaluation of state-of-the-art semi-supervised algorithms in the context of underwater animal tracking, and (3) an evaluation of real-world performance through demonstrations using a semi-supervised algorithm on-board an autonomous underwater vehicle to track marine animals in the wild.

Bishnu Adhikari, Alyson G. Myers, Chuanmin Ruan et al.

This study evaluated the effects of a <i>Bacillus</i> direct-fed microbial and microencapsulated calcium butyrate fed individually and in combination, as compared to an antibiotic growth promoter, on growth performance, processing characteristics, intestinal morphology, and intestinal microbiota of Ross 708 broilers reared from 0 to 47 d post-hatch. Dietary treatments included: (1) a negative control with no antimicrobial (NC), (2) a positive control diet containing bacitracin methylene disalicylate (PC), (3) a diet containing a <i>Bacillus</i> direct-fed microbial (CS), (4) a diet containing microencapsulated calcium butyrate (BP), and (5) a diet containing both CS and BP. Treatments were replicated with 10 pens of 20 birds each. From 0 to 15 d post-hatch, the FCR of broilers fed the PC, CS, BP, and CS + BP diets were lower (<i>p</i> < 0.05) than those fed the NC diet, but treatment effects (<i>p</i> > 0.05) were not observed on subsequent performance. BP supplementation improved (<i>p</i> < 0.05) total breast meat weight and yield at processing. Intestinal histology was not influenced (<i>p</i> > 0.05) by the treatment. Analysis of the jejunal microbiota collected at 15 d post-hatch revealed that the genus SMB53 was significantly lower for the CS group, and <i>Sporanaerobacter</i> was lower in the CS and CS + BP groups compared with the NC (<i>p</i> < 0.05). The jejunal microbiota from broilers in the CS + BP group had higher (<i>p</i> < 0.05) alpha and beta diversities compared with broilers fed the NC and CS diets. The results reflected synergistic effects between CS and BP in modulating the jejunal microbiota at 15 d that may have been related to enhanced feed efficiency (i.e., lower FCR) observed during this period.

S. Fitzpatrick, Kristin Andrews

Abstract Following recent arguments that cultural practices in wild animal populations have important conservation implications, we argue that recognizing captive animals as cultural has important welfare implications. Having a culture is of deep importance for cultural animals, wherever they live. Without understanding the cultural capacities of captive animals, we will be left with a deeply impoverished view of what they need to flourish. Best practices for welfare should therefore require concern for animals’ cultural needs, but the relationship between culture and welfare is also extremely complex, requiring us to rethink standard assumptions about what constitutes and contributes to welfare.