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A recent study discovered that wild Vervet monkeys have the ability to pick up on social cues and learn the adaptable behaviors within certain communities. Similarly to humans, the ability to change behaviors depending on the current society can help one survive and fit in. Based on another research study, this vital skill can also be observed in humpback whales. The study reported evidence that humpback whales living in the Gulf of Maine learn feeding behaviors and strategies from one another, which increases individual rates of survival.

The study, with co-author Luke Rendell, a marine biologist from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, looked particularly at the behavior known as lobtail feeding. Lobtail feeding, which was first discovered in 1980, is a type of bubble-net feeding, which is a technique that involves the whale blowing out bubbles to surround the prey before lunging in for the kill. Whales that incorporate lobtail feedings slap their tails one to four times before using the bubble-net method. The slapping motion is believed to prevent the prey from jumping up and out of the water, making it harder for the whales to catch it.

"I've been arguing for over a decade now that cultural transmission is important in cetacean societies," Rendell stated. In his study, he discovered that since 1980, 278 out of nearly 700 whales within the Stellwagen Bank have adopted this method by learning from one another. The researchers were able to track the speed of lobtail feeding and combined that data with previous statistics acquired from 1980 to 2007 by trained whale observers from the Whale Center of New England. The researchers observed that whales that did not appear to know about lobtail feeding learned it after they encountered other whales that used the method. Once whales learned the method, they were able to teach other whales how to do so as well.

The study was published in Science.