Study

Social learning in juvenile lemon sharks, Negaprion brevirostris

Guttridge, Tristan L.; van Dijk, Rachel E.; Stamhuis, Eize J.; Krause, Jens; Gruber, Samuel H.; Brown, Culum

Animal Cognition, 2013

Peer-reviewedcontrolled laboratory experimentcaptive

What they did

Juvenile lemon sharks were given a task requiring them to swim into a target zone for a food reward. Some were paired with a trained demonstrator that already performed the task; others were paired with equally naive partners.

Studied in: Negaprion brevirostris
Sample size: juvenile lemon sharks paired with trained demonstrators or naive controls

What they found

Sharks paired with trained demonstrators learned the task faster and performed it more reliably than those paired with naive partners, and retained the behaviour when tested alone.

What it means

The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.

How the authors put it

Juvenile lemon sharks acquire novel foraging behaviour socially, from observing conspecifics.

How NatureHQ reads it

Sharks are routinely described as reflexive eating machines, and social learning is precisely the capacity that framing excludes. The naive-partner control matters: a shark simply following another shark around would look the same, and it is the difference between the two conditions that shows information passing rather than company being kept. This is one species, in captivity, on an artificial task — a demonstration that the capacity exists, not a description of how wild sharks live.

Limitations

Captive juveniles of one species on a contrived task.
Whether wild sharks transmit foraging behaviour socially is untested.
Local enhancement — being drawn to a place rather than learning an action — is difficult to exclude entirely.