Social learning is often portrayed as a passive process of copying and trusting others. This
view, however, does not fully capture what makes human social learning so powerful: social …

Explaining how animals respond to an increasingly urbanised world is a major challenge for
evolutionary biologists. Urban environments often present animals with novel problems that …

Cumulative technological culture (CTC) refers to the increase in the efficiency and
complexity of tools and techniques in human populations over generations. A fascinating …

The etymology above (adapted from https://www. etymonline. com/word/cognition) shows
that the word “cognition” has its origins in classical terms relating to the concept of knowing …

Cognitive gadgets are distinctively human cognitive mechanisms–such as imitation, mind
reading, and language–that have been shaped by cultural rather than genetic evolution …

Many animal species use tools, but human technical engagement is more complex. We
argue that there is coevolution between technical engagement (the manufacturing and use …

What is the likelihood that humans will ever determine if other animals engage in higher-
order thinking? In examining what has happened in the twenty years since the publication of …

Debates in animal cognition are frequently polarized between the romantic view that some
species have human-like causal understanding and the killjoy view that human causal …

It was thought that tool use in animals is an adaptive specialization. Recent studies,
however, have shown that some non-tool-users, such as rooks and jays, can use and …

Heyes's book is an important contribution that rightly integrates cognitive development and
cultural evolution. However, understanding the cultural evolution of cognitive gadgets …