We believe we're seeing, in other animals, a process, or an attribute, that isn't fundamentally different from what we see in humans, so it seems to us to be spurious to call them different things. Now there are aspects of human culture that we don't find in animals, and that's really interesting, but there are also probably aspects of animal cultures that we don't find in humans, and that's really interesting.
Hal WhiteheadI don't like to be dismissive of whales speaking possibilities. There is a pretty New Age-y, poorly thought set of ideas about this going around. I also think these animals benefit most from us staying out of their way. I think we learn the most by being as passive as we can, so those are my biases, and I'm sort of against it from that perspective.
Hal WhiteheadWhat I mean by it, and roughly what most biologists who talk about culture mean by it, is either behavior itself, or information that leads to behavior. Information that is picked up through social learning - so, from being with, watching, being taught by others. It's a way that individuals behave or get information about how they will behave that comes directly from the behavior of others.
Hal WhiteheadThe 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."
Hal WhiteheadI never thought of that one, that linguistics could be driving cultural things. There are some thoughts that that does happen in humans, that languages have different characteristics and that influences in some ways how different groups behave, and I suppose it might in whales.
Hal WhiteheadHumans are particularly interesting; our culture is incredible, there's no doubt about that. In many respects, no other species matches ours. But in quite a few respects, they do, and that can help us, perhaps, to better understand our own culture. We look at the ways humans are similar to other animals, and at the ways they differ, rather than just saying, "We have culture and you don't."
Hal Whitehead