illuminating science

In yet another example of how animals are often a lot smarter than we give them credit for, meerkat pups are taught how to hunt by elder meerkats, not necessarily their parents. The adults will bite the poisonous stinger of a scorpion, then give it to a “student” to kill and eat. If they don’t get it before it escapes, the adults round it up and push it back to give the youngster another go.

In particular, they stress that there’s a difference between teaching and just social learning (watching what others do and copying). They define teaching as:

• an individual (the teacher) modifies its behaviour only in the presence of a naive observer
• that the “teacher” gets no benefit from its actions and in fact may lose opportunities to forage itself
• the “student” learns more rapidly than it would have on its own

(And yes, meerkats might not be quite as cool as lemurs )