The development of social attention in orangutans: comparing peering behaviour in wild and zoo-housed individuals

Social learning is the cornerstone of all cultural processes and plays a pivotal role during the evolution of cognition. To understand how social learning evolved, we have to look at the immediate and developmental conditions affecting individuals’ tendencies to attend to social information. We compared peering behaviour (i.e., close-range and sustained observation of the activities of conspecifics) in wild and zoo-housed immature Sumatran orangutans ( Pongo abelii ) by analysing long-term data which included 3101 peering events collected at the Suaq Balimbing research site in Indonesia and at four European zoos on 35 immature individuals. Using Generalized-Additive-Mixed-Models, we tested for age-specific patterns in peering frequency, target, and context selection. We found similar age trajectories of peering in both settings but higher mean frequencies of peering in the zoos, even after controlling for varying social opportunities to peer. Wild immatures preferably peered at their mothers but zoo-housed immatures at non-mother individuals. In both settings, immatures preferred to peer at older individuals, and in learning-intense contexts. Our findings suggest a hard-wired component in the tendency to attend to social information and a considerable degree of ontogenetic plasticity - a combination that was likely foundational for the evolution of complex cultures, including human culture. Highlights We compared attendance to social information in wild and zoo-housed orangutans Immature orangutans peer in contexts where learning is expected Peering frequency develops similarly over age, suggesting hardwired propensities Peering target and context selection differs between the two settings Orangutans’ tendency to attend to social information shows plasticity