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We study social learning, cultural evolution and niche construction, integrating rigorous experimental work on primates, birds and fish with theoretical approaches.

Current projects include identifying evolved social learning strategies, developing methods to predict the diffusion and inheritance of behaviour, and exploring the evolution of intelligence.

Our findings are of significance to a broad range of researchers, including animal behaviourists, evolutionary biologists, neuroscientists and economists, and have implications for work on artificial intelligence, robotics and conservation.

Recent publications include:

Identification of the social and cognitive processes underlying human cumulative culture.
L.G. Dean, R.L. Kendal, S.J. Schapiro, B. Thierry and K.N. Laland. 2012. Science 335: 1114-1118.

Cause and effect in biology revisited: Is Mayr's proximate-ultimate dichotomy still useful?
K.N. Laland, K. Sterelny, F.J. Odling-Smee, W. Hoppitt and T. Uller. 2011. Science 334: 1512-1516.

Darwin in mind: New opportunities for evolutionary psychology.
J.J. Bolhuis, G.R. Brown, R.C. Richardson and K.N. Laland. 2011. PLoS Biology 9: e1001109.

Why copy others? Insights from the social learning strategies tournament.
L. Rendell, R. Boyd, D. Cownden, M. Enquist, K. Eriksson, M.W. Feldman, L. Fogarty, S. Ghirlanda, T. Lillicrap and K.N. Laland. 2010. Science 328: 208-213.

How nature has shaped the human genome: Bringing genetics and the human sciences together.
K.N. Laland, F.J. Odling-Smee and S. Myles. 2010. Nature Reviews Genetics 11: 137-148.

Do you study social learning?

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Do you want to use our Primate Dataset?

It can be found here.