Аннотация:Experimental study of skills transmission in wild large-billed crows (Corvus macrorhynchos)
Tanya Obozova, Anna Smirnova, & Zoya Zorina (Lomonosov Moscow State University)
In this work we studied how new skills are transmitted between large-billed crows living wild on Shikotan Island. In order to find out whether crow youngsters are able to learn new skills from their parents, three parents (males) from different families were trained to get a bait opening a red box of four boxes differing in color (it took 8 and 10 trials). It
took 2 and 3 trials for their female partners to learn the skill. Each day (during one month) the youngsters flied with their trained parents and could see what the parents were doing to obtain food. The parents opened the red box and used the obtained food to feed their youngsters. When youngsters were 91 - 92 days old they started to open boxes and
obtained food without assistance from their parents. The other adult crows were around and could observe how the trained crows obtained food as well. In contrast, none of them tried to open boxes. On the basis of this study, we drew a conclusion that the special skills are transferred through the family only, i.e. from a trained crow’s male to its female
partner and then to their youngsters.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B48BTCh3iEgea0JSYXhfM1dHZUU/view?pli=1