Data from: The diffusion of cooperative and solo bubble net feeding in Canadian Pacific humpback whales

Animal culture, in which information and behaviours are acquired and
shared through social networks by social learning, is a form of
biodiversity with intrinsic and practical value. Cooperative foraging, a
mutualistic resource acquisition behaviour observed across diverse taxa,
is strongly connected to social networks via behavioural states, cues, and
often social learning, as it typically involves high interaction rates.
Understanding the distribution, diffusion and learning mechanisms of such
cooperative behaviours is an important but understudied aspect of nonhuman
culture. Bubble net feeding (‘bubble netting’) is a specialised foraging
technique practised by certain humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae)
populations globally. Over 20 years in the northern Canadian Pacific, we
observed the diffusion of two forms: social cooperative and independent,
or ‘solo’, bubble netting. Network-based diffusion analysis – a tool to
test for social learning – finds strong evidence for social learning of
bubble netting when the overall social network is used, even after
accounting for traits such as site fidelity and sex (10.6 x 103 to 35.4 x
103 times more support for social versus asocial learning; p <
0.0001). A homophily check using pre-acquisition association data returned
ambiguous results, likely due to the inherent sociality of this
cooperative foraging behaviour. Nonetheless, the rapid diffusion of bubble
netting is clearly important for population viability and should inform
conservation planning for this threatened population.