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2.5 Learning from Others: Social Cognition and Learning 23

VetBooks.ir school of fish swim collectively together 2.5.2 Stimulus and Local
Enhancement
through coral reefs, you are likely observing
social facilitation.
Often highly adaptive, social facilitation is Social enhancement is an increase in the
not considered a type of social learning. First, tendency to interact with an object (stimulus
enhancement) or approach a location (local
the animal need not learn something new in enhancement) because of the presence
social facilitation. When all members of a and actions of another individual (Zentall
wildebeest herd flee from a predator on sight, and Galef 2013; see Figure 2.3). A very well‐
those individuals are not learning a new known and early example of this was in free‐
behaviour nor are they likely to be learning ranging ducks and noted by Austrian
any new information about the predator; wil- ethologist Konrad Lorenz. Lorenz (1935)
debeest, like many ungulates, are predis- observed that an individual duck was more
posed to recognise that predators signal the likely to escape from a pen through a hole in
threat of an attack, injury, or death. Although the fencing if that individual was in close
individuals in groups are less vigilant, group- proximity to another duck that happened to
ing makes it less likely that any individual will be passing through the hole as well. In social
be preyed upon (this is termed the dilution enhancement, it appears to be that other
effect). Field studies are rich with examples of conspecifics in close proximity to some ter-
social facilitation exhibited by animals in the minal goal increase an animal’s attentive-
wild. For example, eggs may hatch simulta- ness to that stimulus. You might imagine that
neously from the same clutch (Vince 1964), this behaviour is very reminiscent of large
sea turtle hatchlings follow one another in flocks of waterfowl foraging or preening in
their initial migration to the sea (Carr and bodies of water, and is especially clear when
Hirth 1961), and male tropical frogs’ mating incoming birds land in the same general area
choruses are strongly facilitated in leks as well.
(Brooke et al. 2000).

Figure 2.3 Young animals learn a great deal from their parents, like this gorilla infant who is learning what
should and shouldn’t be eaten through observation. Source: Sarel Kromer. https://commons.wikimedia.org/
wiki/File:Gorilla_mother_and_baby_at_Volcans_National_Park.jpg.