Last Updated:
New research into animal behaviour is challenging old assumptions that civilisation, culture and collective memory belong only to humans.
Two North American beavers check out a dam. (IMAGE: AFP FILE)
For generations, humans have largely understood animals in simple collective terms — a herd of elephants, a murder of crows or a shoal of fish. But scientists are increasingly exploring a far more complicated question: can animal societies possess culture, memory and building blocks of civilisation?
Decades after linguist Steven Pinker popularised studies on vervet monkey alarm calls in discussions around language and cognition, researchers are increasingly examining whether animals possess not just communication systems, but also culture and collective memory.
Author Ryan Huling, in his book The Hidden Nations of Animalsargues that “humanity holds no monopoly on large-scale collaboration”. In an essay for Time titled “Do Animals Have Civilizations?“, Huling reflects on how humans have only recently begun to consider that complex and resilient societies may also exist among animals.
While animal behaviour and communication have been studied for centuries, researchers are increasingly moving beyond questions of instinct and survival to examine whether animals also maintain cultures — systems of learned behaviour, memory and cooperation passed across generations. Huling notes that the idea of “animal cultures” has gained growing acceptance within scientific circles, with some researchers even calling on organisations like UNESCO to protect them alongside human intangible heritage traditions such as ancient navigation techniques, festivals and oral storytelling.
The examples span species and continents. Forest elephants in the Congo Basin are believed to maintain extensive networks of semipermanent pathways whose knowledge is passed down across generations. Chimpanzee communities, meanwhile, have been observed using stone tools in distinct ways based on learned group behaviour.
Huling also recounts trekking with Indigenous guides through the forests surrounding Pakwaw Lake in Saskatchewan, part of North America’s “beaver belt” — a vast stretch of northern Canada home to some of the world’s longest beaver dams. High-resolution satellite analysis in the region has identified more than 2,700 beaver dams, believed to be among the densest concentrations on Earth.
According to Huling, while individual beaver families function as autonomous units, the wider population also forms loosely connected social networks shaped by shared genetics, communication techniques and occasional interactions between neighbouring groups.
The author also points to white-browed sparrow weavers, whose nests are built according to the “distinctive style” of their cultural groups, with different bird communities exhibiting their own architectural traditions.
Another striking example comes from Argentine ants, which use chemical signals to distinguish colony members from outsiders. Their highly coordinated social structure has helped create sprawling supercolonies stretching thousands of kilometres across Europe. Researchers studying these colonies have described them as among the largest cooperative systems ever observed in nature.
Read More
Source link
[ad_3]
