Social learning affects object exploration and manipulation in keas, Nestor notabilis

Both the pattern of exploration and the manipulation efficiency of young keas attempting to open a complex food container proved to be influenced by the observation of an experienced group member. Five individuals were allowed to observe a trained conspecific that iteratively demonstrated several techniques to open a large steel box. The lid of the box could be opened only after several locking devices had been dismantled: a bolt had to be poked out, a split pin had to be pulled, and a screw had to be twisted out. The observers' initial manipulative actions were compared with those of five naive control subjects (nonobservers). Although the observers failed to open the box completely and thus to get the reward in their first attempts, they explored more, approached the locking devices sooner and were more successful at opening them. Although their initial attempts did not match the response topography or the sequence of the model's actions (movement or sequence imitation), their improved efficiency at unlocking the devices seemed to reflect the acquisition of some functional understanding of the task through observation (emulation learning). (C) 2001 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.