Humans and Other Animals: Cultural Evolution and Social Learning

What is culture? Is it uniquely human, or do animals have culture too? From dolphins getting high on puffer fish, chimpanzees learning to crack nuts, and how human culture is changing the world around, hear this panel of experts explore the fascinating subject of cultural evolution.
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Are humans unique in their diverse and wide-ranging cultures? How much of the cultural difference we see can be attributed to the local environment? And what impact can the way societies behave have on the world around them?

Join a panel of experts to discuss how the environment might drive cultural evolution, what impact culture has on the environment, and whether humans are the only species with distinct cultures.

Andrew Whiten is Wardlaw Professor in the School of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of St Andrews and is the UK’s leading expert on non-human cultures. His most recent research focuses on social learning, traditions in humans and non-human primates with behavioural experiments.

Gaia Vince is a British science writer with experience in editing and writing for both science journals and popular science magazines, including Nature, New Scientist, Scientific American, and The Guardian. She has recently finished a trip around the world while writing a book called ‘Adventures In The Anthropocene’ in which she writes about the human-changed planet, human societies, ecosystems and our relationship with the natural world.

Ruth Mace is Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology in the Human Evolutionary Ecology Group at UCL, exploring human behaviour and life history as adaptations to local environments, including cultural evolution. Areas of interest include human reproductive scheduling, parental investment, human marriage, and the evolution of social institutions.

This event was recorded on 26 November 2014.

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Видео Humans and Other Animals: Cultural Evolution and Social Learning канала The Royal Institution