When animals go to school

Speaking of monkeys, can you please debunk the "100th monkey" theory? Where does this idea have its genesis, and what does it really mean?

This is this great story that has been told different ways by different people. Basically, there are Japanese primatologists on an island studying the wild macaques. And in order to get good looks at the macaques they had gotten the macaques used to their presence, and one of the ways they did this was with bribes -- by putting out food on the beach -- so the monkeys would come to get the food and the primatologists could spy on them.

So the monkeys stared coming down to the beach to get food, and the primatologists started putting out sweet potatoes. And as you know if you've ever had a lovely picnic at the beach, sand gets on your food, and it's very annoying. After a while, one of the monkeys, a young female named Imo, started taking her sweet potatoes to the stream that ran down the beach and rinsing them off.

And her playmates learned this from her. And then her mother learned this from her. And her mother's friends learned it from her. And the information gradually spread throughout the troop. The kids who were Imo's age learned it first. And then the mothers learned it. And then the older males who didn't hang around with the women and children that much learned it last. Gradually they stopped taking them to the stream, but washing them in the ocean instead, allegedly for the salty flavor.

Then, later, the primatologists offered the monkeys grain, which they threw on the sand. And of course you get a lot of sand when you scoop up grain off the sand and try to eat it. So, Imo -- the same monkey -- developed the custom of taking up a handful of grain and sand and throwing it in the water. The sand would sink, the grain would float, she'd scoop it off the water and eat it. And the other monkeys copied this from her.

This was a very well-documented and interesting case of cultural learning, of imitation. Some scientists came up with various arguments for why it wasn't as smart as it looked. And other people celebrated Imo as a monkey genius. Imo was apparently a smart monkey and an innovator, but the stuff she invented was not that hard for macaques. And other macaques are capable of inventing it. And, in fact, some of the macaques on the other nearby islands also came up with these ideas.

Then a book was written called "The Hundredth Monkey" [by Ken Keyes Jr.]. And this book -- which is, I believe the technical description is woo-woo -- postulated that once a certain number of monkeys had learned techniques like washing sweet potatoes or throwing sandy grain in water, that all of a sudden all the monkeys knew.The theory was that the monkeys on the other islands didn't get to see Imo and the others doing it, so they must have learned it, like, through ESP or infinite race memory or something like that. So the idea was that if enough monkeys knew something then all the monkeys knew it. And just for fun, they took the number 100. If 100 monkeys slowly and laboriously learned something, then suddenly all the monkeys would magically know.

And the way that this was extended to humans is that if enough of us became enlightened and good and sweet and un-warlike and so forth, if enough of us were really nice people, then suddenly all of us would be really nice people, which is a really easy, relaxing way to effect social change.

Because all you have to do is get your 99 best friends to also be really nice?

Exactly. And it's not true about monkeys, and I'm pretty sure it's not true about people.

Why are juvenile or younger animals, like Imo, often innovators who invent new ways of doing things?

Well, this is the period in life when they have to learn a lot. So it is the period when they are inclined to learn a lot, when they are interested, when they are curious, when they have an insane amount of energy, when they're not busy making a living because their mothers and fathers are feeding them and protecting them. So they have lots of spare time and lots of interest.

Scientists used to think that certain practices separated humans from animals, like the ability to use tools. But now we know that's not a true distinction. Do you think it's just hopeless to try to draw these lines in the sand like that? Or is the difference between humans and animals more of a question of degree?

That's my hypothesis: that it's quantity, not quality. As you say: "Man uses tools." OK. "Man makes tools." OK. "Man, uh, teaches others to use tools. Oh wait."

It's always possible that there is some behavior that we've got and no other animals have, even one little bit. But so far I haven't seen any evidence of it. It mostly seems to be a matter of degree. They've got the same stuff that we have, but we've got a lot more of it.

How can animals be superstitious?

Animals develop superstitions the same way that we do, which is to say that they do a behavior, and it's followed by something rewarding or something negative. And we assume that there is a cause and effect. If you wash your car, that doesn't really make it rain. But if you wash your car and then it immediately rains, that's extremely noticeable. You, the human, are developing a superstition.

My dogs bark hysterically every time the package delivery truck comes. This has gotten more extreme with the years. Basically, they have a superstition, which is, if they bark loudly enough they will scare away the guy in the package delivery truck, and he will leave. Sure enough, he comes. They bark. After a while, they scare him badly enough that he leaves. They don't realize that he is just leaving because he delivered a package. They're not scientists. They never do the control experiment and say, "Oh, what happens if we don't bark?"

Are species that survive the loss of their natural habitat especially good learners? I think about raccoons and coyotes and crows and ravens, animals that do well in cities. Or does that have more to do with being willing to eat a lot of different foods?

Well, certainly the animals that survive in different habitats and changing environments tend to be generalists. And a lot of the generalists are smart: coyotes, jays, ravens, crows, raccoons and rats. But they're not all smart. I was very fond of my possums, but they're not real bright. An opossum will eat rotten fruit, kibble that it finds on your back porch, and anything it finds in the dumpster. So, while lots of learning ability is really helpful if you're a generalist, it isn't mandatory.

What did you learn about teaching from studying animal learning?

In all these cases where we're trying to teach things to animals, it turns out we're actually not very good at teaching things to animals. We make a lot of mistakes. We're always trying to drill them and give them lessons and lectures, and show them educational films. It works terribly.

One simple example that really impresses me is with baby zebra finches who have been raised in isolation by humans who tried to teach them zebra finch song by playing them tapes. And they didn't learn. Who likes to listen to educational tapes? They found if they let the baby finches press the buttons on the tape recorder themselves it made all the difference. They would play the songs. They would flutter up and down in front of the loudspeaker like somebody dancing in front of the amp at a rock concert, and they would learn, because they had some control.

It causes me to wonder if we're not really bad at teaching things to people. I think if kids get to push the buttons -- it works for animals, and it seems like common sense that it works for people.

There's no wildlife equivalent to the eight-hour classroom day?

No, in the forest there are no blackboards. Oftentimes, animal parents teach by letting their children watch or by providing learning opportunities. The mother animal will bring a prey antelope to her cubs and let the cubs try to deal with it. A father bat-eared fox will catch a sun scorpion, and put his foot on it, and then take his foot off, and let his cubs try to catch it themselves. There are killer whales that ride onto shore and catch seals, and demonstrate it for the young ones.

There's also a tremendous amount of eavesdropping that goes on in the wild. Wild animals are always spying on other animals to see what they're doing, even when the other animals aren't trying to teach them. It's a survival mechanism. It's good to know what is going on.

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