Finding Links between Culture and Disease
Learning and building upon ideas is perhaps the cornerstone of human civilization. Learning processes, such as innovation and social learning, are also observed in diverse animal species, including most, if not all primate species. The benefits of culture are many, as noted in countless books and articles. However, understanding the costs of these processes is necessary to understand how and why some animals rely so heavily on learning and behavior plasticity, while others do not. In a recent work, my coauthors and I proposed that one cost of learning is infectious disease.
![By 4028mdk09 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](img/culture2_res.jpg)