While social learning of predator recognition is well documented in meerkats, researchers have rarely examined how early developmental conditions influence this capacity. Recently, a counterintuitive pattern has surfaced: pups reared in small family groups respond more reliably to alarm calls than do pups reared in large groups. This inverts the conventional expectation that greater numbers of adult demonstrators should yield more opportunities for observational acquisition of survival behaviors.

To test that expectation directly, Osei and Lindqvist manipulated group size in captive meerkat clans, assigning weaned pups either to small groups of three to four adults or to large groups of ten to twelve. Pups in the small-group condition approached a trained adult demonstrator more readily and acquired the alarm-call discrimination task faster. The explanation appears to lie not in the quantity of demonstrators but in the quality of attention: in large groups, pups spent more time monitoring peers for competitive interactions over food and less time attending to adult signaling. High-density rearing may therefore teach pups that conspecifics are rivals rather than information sources. The broader implication is that the early social environment may shape not merely which behaviors are learned but the underlying propensity to learn socially at all.

Which of the following most accurately describes the passage's primary purpose?

(A) To identify a methodological weakness in a body of research
(B) To explain a surprising empirical result
(C) To reconcile two apparently conflicting studies
(D) To compare two rearing conditions in a particular species
(E) To argue for the revision of a longstanding theoretical model



Which of the following can be inferred about research on social learning in meerkats?

(A) Studies of social learning in meerkats have only recently begun to examine the role of conspecifics in the acquisition of adaptive behaviors.
(B) The finding regarding meerkat pups suggests that meerkats differ fundamentally from most other social mammals in how they acquire survival skills.
(C) Investigations of social learning in meerkats have generally concentrated on skills other than predator recognition.
(D) Research has documented social learning in meerkats without examining the developmental conditions under which it occurs.
(E) Social learning has been studied more extensively in meerkats than in other carnivores.



Which of the following can be inferred about the study by Osei and Lindqvist?

(A) It was designed to investigate a behavioral outcome rather than the learning mechanism that ultimately explained the result.
(B) It required researchers to track individual meerkats across multiple years of their lives.
(C) It demonstrated that group density has little bearing on the capacity for social learning in meerkats.
(D) It required observation of meerkats under conditions that closely approximated those of wild clans.
(E) It showed that meerkats reared in large groups acquire adaptive information more efficiently than do those reared in small groups.