
Personality predicts social learning in wild monkeys: Bold or anxious baboons learn to solve tasks from other baboons

Baboons learn from other baboons about new food sources &amp;#8212; but only if they are bold or anxious &amp;#8212; according to a new study published in the journal PeerJ). The results suggest that personality plays a key role in social learning in animals, something previously ignored in animal cognition studies.

Studying animals at the Zoological Society of London&amp;#8217;s Institute of Zoology Tsaobis Baboon Project in Namibia, the researchers examined how personality influenced whether baboons solved foraging tasks and whether they then demonstrated to others how to solve the tasks. They found bolder baboons did both.
Over three years, the researchers performed two types of experiment in which the baboons could learn about a novel food source by watching another baboon with it.
According to lead author Dr Alecia Carter of the University of Cambridge: &amp;#8220;Though bolder baboons learnt, the shy ones watched the baboon with the novel task