Animal Innovation - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198526210 ISBN 13: 9780198526216

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2003

Synopsis

In 1953 a young female Japanese monkey called Imo began washing sweet potatoes in water prior to eating, presumably to remove dirt and sand grains. Soon other monkeys had copied her behavior, and potato-washing gradually spread throughout the entire troop. When, three years after her first invention, Imo devised a second novel foraging behavior, that of separating wheat from sand by throwing mixed handfuls into water and scooping out the floating grains, she was almost instantly heralded around the world as a "monkey genius." Imo is probably the most celebrated of animal innovators. In fact, many animals will invent new behavior patterns, adjust established behaviors to a novel context, or respond in an appropriate and novel manner.

Innovation is an imporant component of behavioral plasticity, vital to the survival of individuals, and potentially of critical importance to those endangered or threatened species forced to adjust to changed or impoverished environments. Innovation may also have played a central role in avian and primate brain evolution. Yet until recently, animal innovation has been subject to almost complete neglect by behavioral biologists, psychologists, social learning researchers, and biologists.

This is the first ever book on "animal innovation." Bringing together leading scientific authoritities on animal and human innovation, this will be an important publication--one that will put the topic of animal innovation on the map, and heighten awareness of this developing field.

About this title

About the Author

Simon Reader is in the Department of Biology, McGill University, Montreal, Canada. Kevin Laland is at the Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, School of Biology, University of St Andrews.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0198526210
• ISBN 13: 9780198526216
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 354
• Editor: Reader Simon M., Laland Kevin N.