Quite a lot of what we normally think of as human culture doesn't fit some definition. What are the values behind cuisine, which is a form of human culture? Does it have deep values? I don't know - I would say not. But maybe I'm not a foodie.

Culture is not usually one of the criterion for personhood, but it has been argued that culture is sort of a medium for a lot of these criteria, such as empathy, and so on.

Religion's pretty pervasive in humans. And why it's pervasive in humans is debated a lot. There are indications of things that look like religion in other animals, like chimps doing rain dances, and that sort of thing. Actually, I say that, but there's that and not much else.

Whales are cultural animals, and we're cultural animals, so although we shouldn't expect whales to do what we do, it doesn't seem unreasonable to hypothesize that we might share some of these things.

The real controversy comes with anthropologists - not all, but some - who see themselves as studying culture, and they then see culture from the perspective of humans, which is what they study. From their perspective, or, from some of their perspectives, it's sort of heresy to even talk about culture in any other animal. Others would say, "Yeah, you can talk about it, but our definitions of culture are so utterly different from yours and include things like values, and so on, which you've never shown to exist in any of these other creatures."

I don't think in biology it's very controversial at all. Whether certain behavior is culture or is not culture is argued. I think virtually all biologists would agree that some animal behavior is culture. Bird song is a good example.

What I mean is, if you look at the behavior of an animal and ask, "Well, why did it do that?" and then consider the alternatives, those alternatives probably wouldn't be as successful at getting its genes around.