CANBERRA, Feb. 19 (Xinhua) -- Researchers have found that Australian sea lion pups learn how to hunt from their mothers, marking the first evidence of social transmission of foraging behavior in these marine mammals.
Social information transfer is known in some mammals like sea otters, bottlenose dolphins and chimpanzees, which teach young to fish termites with sticks, but was previously undocumented in otariids ("eared seals"), the pinniped family of fur seals and sea lions, said a statement from Australia's Adelaide University on Thursday.
Using body-worn cameras and tracking devices, the researchers from Adelaide University and the South Australian Research and Development Institute (SARDI) recorded a mother-pup pair during an eight-hour foraging trip.
The study, published in the Australian Journal of Zoology, showed that the sea lion mother adapted her foraging behavior when accompanied by her pup, taking shorter dives and spending more time over macroalgae-rich reefs than when alone.
"There were also fewer prey attempts on the pup-accompanied trips, just three, as opposed to 172 attempts when the mother was by herself, and the mother's solo trips were also spent in deeper invertebrate-dominated reefs," said study lead author Nathan Angelakis from Adelaide University's Southern Seas Ecology Laboratories and SARDI Aquatic Sciences. ■
