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t 2 n w thi o re e s th ma were equally effective as demonstrators. Our experiments show that dogs are able to rely on information provided by human action when confronted with a new task. While they did not copy the exact path of the human demonstrator, they easily adopted the detour behaviour shown by humans to reach their goal. 2001 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour Social learning is likely to be particularly effective among animals living in groups. While in many cases competi-tion between individuals prevents social learning (Fritz & Kotrschal 1999), different techniques to obtain food can spread by individuals observing more experienced mem-bers of the group (great tits, Parus major: Hinde & Fische