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Common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) do not utilize social information in three simultaneous social foraging tasks

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Abstract

Social foraging is suggested to increase foraging efficiency, as individuals might benefit from public information acquired by monitoring the foraging activities of other group members. We conducted a series experiments with captive common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) to investigate to what extent marmosets utilize social information about food location when foraging simultaneously with conspecifics. Subjects were confronted with dominant and subordinate demonstrators in three experiments which differed in the amount of information about food location available to the demonstrators. In all three experiments, the focal subjects’ performance in the social condition was not enhanced in comparison to a non-social control condition. Because we could rule out kleptoparasitism and aggressive displacements as explanations, we argue that the subjects’ tendency for scramble competition by avoiding others and dispersing over the foraging area seems to inhibit or mask the acquisition of social information about the location of rewarded patches.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a grant from the Austrian Academy of Science (DOC 21052) to Bernhard Voelkl. We thank the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, Altenberg for hospitality and Thomas Bugnyar, Claudia Kasper, the editor and three anonymous reviewers for valuable comments on the manuscript. EthoLog is a freeware computer program for real-time continuous recording of behavioural data provided by E. B. Ottoni, available at http://www.geocites.com/ebottoni/ethohome.html. The experiments comply with the Austrian laws regulating animal husbandry and animal experiments.

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  1. Department for Behaviour, Neurobiology and Cognition, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Vienna, Althanstr. 14, 1090, Vienna, Austria

    Bernhard Voelkl & Ludwig Huber

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  1. Bernhard Voelkl
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Correspondence to Bernhard Voelkl.

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Voelkl, B., Huber, L. Common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) do not utilize social information in three simultaneous social foraging tasks. Anim Cogn 10, 149–158 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-006-0053-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-006-0053-4

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