Not everything is passed down through genes. Many of our human actions result from cultural influences: “a collective adoption and transmission of one or more behaviors among a group” (from ScienceNOW).  The skills, knowledge, materials, and traditions that humans learn from each other help explain how we have come to dominate the globe as a species.

But we’re not the only species on our planet with culture. Scientists are discovering that more and more animals—from mammals to birds to fish—use cultural transmission for species survival. Studies in this week’s Science focus on two: humpback whales off the coast of Maine and vervet monkeys in South Africa.

Humpback whales around the world hunt small fish collectively by producing “bubble nets”—the whales blow bubbles around a school of fish while slowly advancing toward their next meal. In 1980, in Maine, one whale was observed hitting the water with its tail before producing the bubble nets. This innovation, called “lobtail feeding,” spread throughout the population over several decades. By 2007, nearly 40% were doing it.

Researchers believe that a crash in the herring population that these humpbacks fed upon drove them to new solutions to catch other fish, primarily sand lance.

Co-author of the study, Luke Rendell, of the University of St. Andrews, says, “Our study really shows how vital cultural transmission is in humpback populations—not only do they learn their famous songs from each other, they also learn feeding techniques that allow them to buffer the effects of changing ecology.”

St. Andrews researchers also found that vervet monkeys learned from each other in a changing environment. In the initial study, the scientists provided a group of monkeys in the wild with a box of corn dyed pink and another dyed blue. The blue corn was made to taste repulsive and the monkeys soon learned to eat only pink corn. Another group was trained in this way to eat only blue corn.

A new generation of vervet monkeys were later offered both colors of food—neither tasting badly—and the adult monkeys present appeared to remember which color they previously preferred.

Almost every infant copied the rest of the group, eating only the one preferred color of corn. The crucial discovery came when males began to migrate between groups during the mating season. The researchers found that of the ten males who moved to the group eating a different colored corn to the one they were used to, all but one switched to the new local norm immediately.

Erica van de Waal, lead author of the study, says, “The copying behavior of both the new, naïve infants and the migrating males reveals the potency and importance of social learning in these wild primates, extending even to the conformity we know so well in humans.”

Her colleague, co-author Andrew Whiten, agrees. “It may make sense in nature, where the knowledge of the locals is often the best guide to what are the optimal behaviors in their environment, so copying them may actually make a lot of sense… ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do.’”

Image: Erica van de Waal

That’s marine biologist Rochelle Constantine of the University of Auckland. And while much of the unknown marine life may be small organisms such as sponges and small fish, Constantine is talking about a very rare whale.

The spade-toothed beaked whale (Mesoplodon traversii), was never seen before. The species was only known by three partial skulls collected from New Zealand and Chile over a 140-year period.

Then, two years ago, a stranded mother and her male calf died on a New Zealand beach. The New Zealand Department of Conservation photographed the animals and collected measurements and tissue samples.

The whales were initially identified as much more common Gray’s beaked whales. But then the scientists conducted routine DNA analysis. “When these specimens came to our lab, we extracted the DNA as we usually do for samples like these, and we were very surprised to find that they were spade-toothed beaked whales,” Constantine says. “We ran the samples a few times to make sure before we told everyone.”

Their findings were published earlier this month in Current Biology.

The discovery serves as a reminder of just how little we still know about life in the ocean, the authors say. They are still unsure why the whales are so elusive. “It may be that they are simply an offshore species that lives and dies in the deep ocean waters and only rarely wash ashore,” Constantine says.

Image: New Zealand Government

The finding builds on research as early as the 1940s that found these whales sound like human children. In the 1970s, an animal at the Vancouver Aquarium was heard to say his own name, Lugosi.

This time, scientists at the National Marine Mammal Foundation (NMMF) conducted acoustic analysis of a beluga named NOC in their facility in San Diego. It all started in 1984 when staff began to notice some unusual sounds in the vicinity of the whale and dolphin enclosure. It sounded as though two people were conversing in the distance, just out of range of their understanding. They traced the sounds to NOC a bit later when a diver surfaced from the whale enclosure to ask his colleagues an odd question: “Who told me to get out?”

They recorded the whale’s sounds to reveal a rhythm similar to human speech and fundamental frequencies several octaves lower than typical whale sounds, much closer to that of the human voice.

In general, whales make sounds via their nasal tract, not in the larynx as humans do. But the scientists found that NOC had to vary the pressure in his nasal tract while making other muscular adjustments and inflating the vestibular sac in his blowhole—a tricky maneuver.

“Our observations suggest that the whale had to modify its vocal mechanics in order to make the speech-like sounds,” says Sam Ridgway of NMMF. “Such obvious effort suggests motivation for contact.”

Sadly, after 30 years at the National Marine Mammal Foundation, NOC passed away five years ago. But the sound of his voice lives on—listen here.

Image: Greg Hume/Wikipedia

Water on the Moon

NASA announced Thursday that not only did the LCROSS mission find water on the moon as was reported last fall, but it also found evidence that the lunar soil within shadowy craters is rich in useful materials, and the moon is chemically active and has a water cycle.

Some of the details from Universe Today:

The most abundant volatile in terms of total mass was carbon monoxide, then was water, the hydrogen sulfide. Then was carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, methane, formaldehyde, perhaps ethylene, ammonia, and even mercury and silver.

The silvery moon!

The crater examined contains more water than previously thought, too. From the New York Times:

If astronauts were to visit this crater, they might be able to use eight wheelbarrows of soil to melt 10 to 13 gallons of water. The water, if purified, could be used for drinking, or broken apart into hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel — to get home or travel to Mars.

The many results are featured in six papers published in today’s issue of Science.

Fish in the Water

Eating seafood is getting trickier and trickier these days. (Have you ever tried to order sustainable sushi? Monterey Bay Aquarium’s excellent Seafood Watch has a great mobile app that can help you navigate these extremely rough waters.) But here’s some good news! Ordering seafood may get easier! Scientists actually want you to eat invasive species like Asian carp and lionfish in order to protect native species. Recipes, videos and info can be found within an article published this week in the New York Times.

Poop in the Water

Finally, in case you missed this publication in PLoS ONE last week—researchers have found that whale poop acts as an important fertilizer for the world’s oceans.  Here’s the poop on the findings from LiveScience:

Whales, by virtue of their nutrient-rich feces, play an important role in transporting nutrients from where they feed, in deep waters, up to the surface, where they often do their business and fertilize tiny, floating plants called phytoplankton.

Kind of makes sense when you think about it, right?

What science news did you find fascinating this week? Let us know below!

Image credit: Brown University/Peter H. Schultz and Brendan Hermalyn, NASA/Ames Vertical Gun Range