This is a brief post to write down the thought I had today regarding social learning in species in which mother takes care of the offspring but the father does not participate in the rearing of the kids and the association between the mates is not very close (they only meet during the mating period and perhaps share or do not share the same range).
Many Mustelids (except for badgers but not necessarily) and bears could be an example.
Within such polygamous mating systems, the female might encounter the male very briefly and every year she might conceive from the same male or from different males.
Her offspring would carry the genes (and their respective implied traits) from both parents.
Accordingly, the female would, in certain sense, get to know her mate not through sharing daily routines and spending time together – but through their offspring (e.g., through behaviours demonstrated by her offspring that stem either from her mate rather than from herself or from the unique combination created through their union).
Thusly, while the female is, of course, a mother to her offspring, in some respects, her offspring also represent an individual and his legacy who is a stranger to her (or perhaps whom she knows from a shared range but not too well).
It might follow that the female could learn new behaviours through her offspring – behaviours which arise from their specific genetic make-up interacting with their environment.
I wonder if some females might choose mates who are not only healthy and compatible, but who also provoke curiosity in the female so that she could ‘study them’ through their children.
In fact, this could promote mate changing in females who are less inclined to ‘rely on proven values’ (choosing a mate who lives nearby and who has already fathered healthy, vigorous offspring) and who might be interested in exploring a variety of individuals into whom her kids grow if her children have each time different fathers.
On one hand, choosing the same mate could be advantageous because, under such circumstances, the female already knows what to expect.
She does not have to learn how to raise her children with every new litter and she can rely that many traits and behaviours, and needs will be repeated if she combines her genes with a known mate.
On the other hand, some females (especially, in optimal habitats) might enjoy the social experience and the learning experience that comes with strikingly pronounced differences between each generation of offspring she produces.
Certainly, there are already differences within one litter fathered by one male.
However, there could be useful behaviours (/inclinations) that are inherited and that could even improve the female’s own fitness adding to her skill set, for example, if her offspring exhibited novel foraging strategies that stem from their father’s genetic legacy.
It is thought that the children learn from their parents, and in species such as otters and bears, offspring remains with their mothers for a long time – one of the reasons behind this extended maternal care being the necessity to acquire important life skills.
Of course, this suggests that many life skills are not inherited genetically but learned socially, and such skills might not themselves become manifested as inherent tendencies.
However, even if the individual learns, for example, how to fish from their mother, their genetics can also determine the way they move their bodies or apply their senses.
Thus, while their mother teaches them the technique, its unique execution is also up to the kid’s morphology, personality etc.
And therein lies the learning possibility also for the mother.
Perhaps mothers become more efficient not only because they are more experienced with time but because they learn new things from their own children and because they acquire flexibility due to the fact that their offspring are partly the ‘gifts from a stranger’ whom she has to get to know through their children.
Notes by Ieva 