A new study has revealed that young orangutans' learning styles significantly influence their ability to develop essential survival skills. Orangutan infants spend their first eight years with their mothers, learning from them. After this time, they must live independently and master a wide range of survival skills, especially feeding. Adult orangutans consume nearly 250 different food items from a vast selection in the rainforest, some of which can be harmful. Before becoming independent, young orangutans must learn how to process these foods and identify where and when to find them. Dr. Revathe Thillaikumar, a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, asked, "How do infants master this complex diet curriculum in those early years?" Humans offer a clue, as our species also had to learn many survival skills over a long period. These skills, such as knowing new food sources or hunting techniques, are often learned through a combination of social and individual learning. In a new study published in Science, Thillaikumar and her colleagues found that wild orangutans build their diverse diets through a combination of social and individual learning during their early years. This is the first study to show that multiple forms of learning interact over many years to help wild great apes develop crucial ecological skills. Researchers agree that many animals learn necessary survival skills, but there's debate about how much they learn from others versus by themselves. This is especially challenging to study in long-lived species like great apes. Dr. Caroline Schuppli, senior author of the study, explained that to understand how learning translates into actual skills, the researchers needed to link learning events with measurable outcomes, such as diet. Because orangutans develop slowly, there is a multiyear gap between learning and visible changes in behavior. To overcome this challenge, the researchers used long-term data collected from wild Sumatran orangutans at the Suaq Balimbing monitoring station in Indonesia. They examined data from 21 immature orangutans, observed over 4,700 hours, focusing on three key behaviors: social learning, individual exploration, and the variety of foods they could eat independently. By analyzing nearly 7,000 records of learning behaviors, the researchers found that young orangutans varied in how much they engaged in social versus individual learning. However, on average, they engaged in social learning five times more often than individual learning. Social learning, such as watching their mothers and other adults, appears to be a safer and more efficient way for young orangutans to learn, especially as they are still growing and can't afford to miss feeding opportunities. The study also found that social learning had a ripple effect, encouraging individual exploration for up to two and a half hours after each instance of watching others. When infants engaged in both high levels of social and individual learning, they ended up with the broadest diets as they became independent. In contrast, those who engaged in less of both types of learning had significantly narrower diets. This suggests that social learning can help compensate for limited individual learning, showing its importance in the development of survival skills. The study highlights the complex interplay of learning mechanisms that contribute to the cultural competence of great apes. It suggests that the sophisticated learning seen in humans may have deep evolutionary roots in our closest living relatives. The researchers now plan to explore whether increased learning also improves energy intake and survival, which can only be answered through long-term field studies. These studies provide a unique opportunity to understand how culture and survival have evolved together over time in orangutans.