Teaching has long been considered an exclusively human trait, like toolmaking, a notion refuted by Jane Goodall. There are two main reasons. The first is that ethology is a very young discipline. Although humans have always observed animal behavior, and there are records of its study dating back to Aristotle, modern science has been taking this field seriously for less than a century. Therefore, at the beginning of the 2000s, hardly any animal behaviors reminiscent of teaching had been documented.

The second obstacle is more philosophical: defining what “teaching” means. Some authors took a mentalist approach. They believed that the teacher should have the intention for the student to learn. But how can we know for sure what an animal’s intention is? This way of defining teaching, although intuitive for humans, makes it difficult to scientifically prove that other animals also do it.

That’s why, in 1992, researchers Tim Caro and Marc Hauser proposed a more practical definition: “functionalist.” Instead of focusing on what goes on in the teacher’s mind, this perspective focuses on observable outcomes: teaching, they say, is a behavior that has evolved to facilitate the learning of others.

According to this proposal, for us to speak of teaching, three conditions must be met: an experienced individual (the teacher) must modify their behavior only when an inexperienced individual (the student) is present; this must involve a cost or provide no immediate benefit to the teacher; and, thanks to this interaction, the student must learn something they would not have learned on their own, or at least learn it more quickly or effectively.

This new way of understanding teaching opened the door to studying the phenomenon in other species. Below, we examine four animal teachers.

The cheetah dilemma

In 1994, biologist Tim Caro published a book describing a fascinating behavior: cheetah mothers appeared to be teaching their cubs to hunt. They caught young gazelles, without killing them, and released them so the cubs could practice bringing them down. If the prey escaped, the mother would retrieve it and repeat the process. This behavior, which clearly entailed a cost to the mother, indicated a deliberate modification of her usual hunting style.

This case raised a scientific dilemma: although the mother’s actions strongly resembled a form of teaching, Caro hesitated to affirm this definitively because it didn’t demonstrate that the cubs directly improved their hunting skills as a result of these practices. Still, he acknowledged that the mothers displayed many of the qualities we associate with a good teacher.

This discovery showed how complicated it can be to test teaching in nature.

Ants: teaching is not a matter of intelligence

In January 2006, researchers Nigel Franks and Tom Richardson provided the first solid evidence of teaching in a non-human species. You might expect it to be an ape, a cetacean, or some other animal known for its intelligence, but it was an ant.

Temnothorax albipennis is a European ant that builds simple nests in rock crevices and encloses them with walls made of small pebbles and sand. When foraging, the more experienced ant goes ahead, and the inexperienced ant follows, touching it with its antennae. If it falls behind, the master slows down or stops to wait for it. This slow pace comes at a cost to the guide, as it would arrive much faster alone, but it allows the apprentice to memorize the path.

This discovery was revolutionary, as it demonstrated that teaching could occur even in species with relatively simple cognitive abilities. Furthermore, this form of teaching is surprisingly refined: there is constant communication between the two. The teacher only advances if it feels the other is in touch, which implies an active response to its apprentice’s progress.

Meerkats: The demons of cooperative breeding

Just a few months later, in July 2006, the meerkats arrived with a bang and took the teaching spotlight away from the ants. These animals stand on two legs, doze in the sun, and lose their balance. You might call them adorable if it weren’t for the fact that they live in a violent totalitarian society where the dominant female frequently kills and devours her own grandchildren. She is the only one who can become pregnant; if another female breaks the rule and has children, they will be killed, regardless of their relationship to the matriarch.

It’s a true society of terror, but through tyranny, meerkats achieve something essential for survival in the Kalahari Desert: cooperation. The entire pack collaborates in surveillance, maintaining the burrow, and caring for the dominant female’s young, including nursing and teaching them.

Meerkats feed on scorpions, a very dangerous prey species due to their venom. Because this type of hunting involves risks, the adults don’t just let the pups learn on their own: they guide them step by step. First, they give them dead scorpions to familiarize themselves safely. Then, they introduce them to live, stingless scorpions, allowing them to practice with a controlled threat. Finally, they give them the intact scorpions. Throughout the process, the adults closely supervise, adjust the prey type according to the pup’s age, and, if necessary, intervene to encourage or correct them.

Chickens: excellent dining room monitors

But 2006 brought even more surprises, because in October the teacher hens arrived. A researcher at the University of Bristol named Christine Nicol published a paper describing how these birds teach their chicks to distinguish between good and bad food.

During the first few days of life, chicks don’t learn well through trial and error, so they rely on their mother’s behavior to determine what’s edible. Hens use a combination of high-pitched calls and ground pecks to attract their young to profitable food. When high-quality food is available, they intensify and lengthen these signals, which guides the chicks toward the best options.

Furthermore, hens are sensitive to their offspring’s behavior: if they observe a chick feeding on something they know is unhealthy, they increase their activity (pecking more, digging, and dropping bits of food) to redirect the chick’s attention to a more suitable food. This change in maternal behavior, which only occurs in the presence of chicks, represents a cost in time and energy for the mothers, and the chicks learn to eat more quickly, thus meeting the criteria that define animal training.

We must abandon the idea that we will only find behaviors we consider “advanced” in intelligent species. Each animal develops the behaviors it needs to survive in its environment, and we cannot expect evolution to conform to our anthropocentric prejudices.

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