Making space for traditions

For quite some time, the question of continuity across species with respect to culture has been linked in the academic world with definitional issues: What is culture, and how we can identify culture in a nonverbal species?(1-4) Behavioral scientists agree that behavioral traditions are that aspect of culture we can study in nonhuman animals, and we recognize that traditions are widespread in the animal kingdom (reviewed in Fragaszy and Perry,(5) see Laland and Hoppitt(6)). However, confirming candidate traditions in nonhuman primates has proven frustratingly difficult. The difficulties experienced in identifying and studying traditions in nonhuman primates are correctable because they arise more from a combination of poor logic and conceptual confusion than from an inability to collect appropriate data. I argue that explicit evidence concerning social learning is necessary to evaluate the status of a behavioral practice as a tradition, and I suggest some ways that such evidence can be collected in natural settings using correlational methods and longitudinal designs. Clearer understanding of the social basis of traditions in nonhuman animals is essential to make headway in understanding their relation to human culture. No matter what else one includes in a definition of culture, a social basis for its existence is axiomatic.