Stressed young birds stop learning from their parents and turn to wider flock

This obviously occurs in humans, but not always. Eg., abused children usually do not abuse their own children, but they do have a larger proportion of abusers than those who were not abused in childhood.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-07/uoc-syb072115.php

Public Release: 23-Jul-2015
University of Cambridge

Highly-social zebra finches learn foraging skills from their parents. However, new research has found that when juvenile finches are exposed to elevated stress hormones just after hatching, they will later switch strategies and learn only from unrelated adult birds - ignoring their parents' way of doing things and instead gaining foraging skills from the wider network of other adult finches.

Researchers say that spikes in stress during early development may act as a cue that their parents are doing something wrong, triggering the young birds to switch their social learning strategy and disregard parental approaches in favour of acquiring skills exclusively from other birds in the flock.

This stress cue and subsequent behavioural change would then allow the juveniles to bypass a "potentially maladaptive source of information" - possibly the result of low-quality parental investment or food scarcity at birth - and consequently avoid a "bad start in life", say the researchers.

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