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Funk, M. S. (2002). Problem solving skills in young yellow-crowned parakeets (Cyanoramphus auriceps). Anim. Cogn., 5(3), 167–176.
Abstract: Despite the long divergent evolutionary history of birds and mammals, early avian and primate cognitive development have many convergent features. Some of these features were investigated with a series of tasks designed to assess human infant development. The tasks were presented to young parakeets to assess their means-end problem solving abilities. Examples of these early skills are: attaining and playing with objects, retrieving rewards through use of a stick or rake, or by pulling in rewards on supports or on the ends of strings. Twelve such tasks were presented to 11 young yellow-crowned parakeets ( Cyanoramphus auriceps) to investigate their natural abilities; there was no attempt to train them to do those tasks that they did not spontaneously perform. Six of the birds were parent-raised and five were hand-raised. The birds completed 9 of the 12 tasks, demonstrating all the Piagetian sensorimotor circular reactions, but they failed to hand-watch (“claw-watch”), to stack objects, or to fill a container. Their ordinality on the tasks differed from that of human infants in that locomotion to obtain objects occurred earlier in the avian sequence of development and the mid-level tasks were performed by the two groups of avian subjects in a mixed order perhaps indicating that these abilities may not emerge in any particular order for these birds as they supposedly do for human infants. The hand-raised group needed fewer sessions to complete these means-end tasks.
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Gácsi, M., Miklósi, Á., Varga, O., Topál, J., & Csányi, V. (2004). Are readers of our face readers of our minds? Dogs (Canis familiaris) show situation-dependent recognition of human's attention. Anim. Cogn., 7(3), 144–153.
Abstract: The ability of animals to use behavioral/facial cues in detection of human attention has been widely investigated. In this test series we studied the ability of dogs to recognize human attention in different experimental situations (ball-fetching game, fetching objects on command, begging from humans). The attentional state of the humans was varied along two variables: (1) facing versus not facing the dog; (2) visible versus non-visible eyes. In the first set of experiments (fetching) the owners were told to take up different body positions (facing or not facing the dog) and to either cover or not cover their eyes with a blindfold. In the second set of experiments (begging) dogs had to choose between two eating humans based on either the visibility of the eyes or direction of the face. Our results show that the efficiency of dogs to discriminate between “attentive” and “inattentive” humans depended on the context of the test, but they could rely on the orientation of the body, the orientation of the head and the visibility of the eyes. With the exception of the fetching-game situation, they brought the object to the front of the human (even if he/she turned his/her back towards the dog), and preferentially begged from the facing (or seeing) human. There were also indications that dogs were sensitive to the visibility of the eyes because they showed increased hesitative behavior when approaching a blindfolded owner, and they also preferred to beg from the person with visible eyes. We conclude that dogs are able to rely on the same set of human facial cues for detection of attention, which form the behavioral basis of understanding attention in humans. Showing the ability of recognizing human attention across different situations dogs proved to be more flexible than chimpanzees investigated in similar circumstances.
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Gauvin, S., & Giraldeau, L. - A. (2004). Nutmeg mannikins ( Lonchura punctulata) reduce their feeding rates in response to simulated competition. Oecologia, 139(1), 150–156.
Abstract: Group feeding animals experience a number of competitive foraging costs that may result in a lowered feeding rate. It is important to distinguish between reductions in feeding rates that are caused by reduced food availability and physical interactions among foragers from those caused by the mere presence of foraging companions that may be self-imposed in order to obtain some benefit of group membership. Starlings ( Sturnus vulgaris) reduce their feeding rates when in the company of simulated competitors located in an adjacent cage that cannot affect the food availability or interact with the forager. In the present study, we investigate whether the presence of simulated competitors in another species of passerine, nutmeg mannikins ( Lonchura punctulata), can result in self-imposed reductions in feeding rates. When feeding in the company of simulated competitors, mannikins spent more non-foraging time near them, fed more slowly, reduced travel times between patches, reduced their scanning time and pecked more slowly. These results provide evidence that simulated competitors induce a reduction in pecking rate: behavioural interference. These self-imposed responses to competitors may have resulted from attempts to remain close to the non-feeding companions. Such self-imposed reductions in feeding rates may be a widespread yet generally unrecognised foraging cost to group feeding individuals.
Keywords: Animals; *Feeding Behavior; Population Density; *Social Behavior; *Songbirds
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Goodwin, D. (1999). The importance of ethology in understanding the behaviour of the horse. Equine Vet J Suppl, (28), 15–19.
Abstract: Domestication has provided the horse with food, shelter, veterinary care and protection, allowing individuals an increased chance of survival. However, the restriction of movement, limited breeding opportunities and a requirement to expend energy, for the benefit of another species, conflict with the evolutionary processes which shaped the behaviour of its predecessors. The behaviour of the horse is defined by its niche as a social prey species but many of the traits which ensured the survival of its ancestors are difficult to accommodate in the domestic environment. There has been a long association between horses and man and many features of equine behaviour suggest a predisposition to interspecific cooperation. However, the importance of dominance in human understanding of social systems has tended to overemphasize its importance in the human-horse relationship. The evolving horse-human relationship from predation to companionship, has resulted in serial conflicts of interest for equine and human participants. Only by understanding the nature and origin of these conflicts can ethologists encourage equine management practices which minimise deleterious effects on the behaviour of the horse.
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Gruter, C. C. (2004). Conflict and postconflict behaviour in captive black-and-white snub-nosed monkeys (Rhinopithecus bieti). Primates, 45(3), 197–200.
Abstract: Black-and-white snub-nosed monkeys (Rhinopithecus bieti) have almost never been the subject of any behavioural observations in captivity. This study was aimed at providing preliminary information about agonistic and reconciliation behaviour in a group kept at the Kunming Institute of Zoology in China. Established procedures were used for this investigation (i.e., the postconflict/matched-control method and the time-rule method). Intra-group aggression rates were quite low. Postconflict affiliation as well as selective attraction of former opponents to each other following conflicts was demonstrated. Former opponents contacted each other earlier in postconflict periods than in matched-control periods. The average conciliatory tendency of all focal individuals combined was 54.5%. After an agonistic interaction, the first affiliative contact between former aggressors usually took place within the first minute. The behaviours most often shown as first affiliations after a conflict were body contact, mount, touch, and “hold-lumbar”, of which the latter is an explicit reconciliatory gesture. Furthermore, the adult male intervened non-aggressively in 84% of all conflicts (n=25) among the adult females. Overall, the patterns of aggression and reconciliation observed in R. bieti bear many of the traits that characterise tolerant primate species.
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Harcourt, J. L., Ang, T. Z., Sweetman, G., Johnstone, R. A., & Manica, A. (2009). Social feedback and the emergence of leaders and followers. Curr Biol, 19(3), 248–252.
Abstract: In many animal groups, certain individuals consistently appear at the forefront of coordinated movements [1-4]. How such leaders emerge is poorly understood [5, 6]. Here, we show that in pairs of sticklebacks, Gasterosteus aculeatus, leadership arises from individual differences in the way that fish respond to their partner's movements. Having first established that individuals differed in their propensity to leave cover in order to look for food, we randomly paired fish of varying boldness, and we used a Markov Chain model to infer the individual rules underlying their joint behavior. Both fish in a pair responded to each other's movements-each was more likely to leave cover if the other was already out and to return if the other had already returned. However, we found that bolder individuals displayed greater initiative and were less responsive to their partners, whereas shyer individuals displayed less initiative but followed their partners more faithfully; they also, as followers, elicited greater leadership tendencies in their bold partners. We conclude that leadership in this case is reinforced by positive social feedback.
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Hare, B., Brown, M., Williamson, C., & Tomasello, M. (2002). The domestication of social cognition in dogs. Science, 298(5598), 1634–1636.
Abstract: Dogs are more skillful than great apes at a number of tasks in which they must read human communicative signals indicating the location of hidden food. In this study, we found that wolves who were raised by humans do not show these same skills, whereas domestic dog puppies only a few weeks old, even those that have had little human contact, do show these skills. These findings suggest that during the process of domestication, dogs have been selected for a set of social-cognitive abilities that enable them to communicate with humans in unique ways.
Keywords: Animals; *Animals, Domestic; *Behavior, Animal; *Cognition; *Cues; *Dogs; Food; Humans; Memory; Pan troglodytes; *Social Behavior; Species Specificity; Vision; Wolves
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Hare, B., Plyusnina, I., Ignacio, N., Schepina, O., Stepika, A., Wrangham, R., et al. (2005). Social cognitive evolution in captive foxes is a correlated by-product of experimental domestication. Curr Biol, 15(3), 226–230.
Abstract: Dogs have an unusual ability for reading human communicative gestures (e.g., pointing) in comparison to either nonhuman primates (including chimpanzees) or wolves . Although this unusual communicative ability seems to have evolved during domestication , it is unclear whether this evolution occurred as a result of direct selection for this ability, as previously hypothesized , or as a correlated by-product of selection against fear and aggression toward humans--as is the case with a number of morphological and physiological changes associated with domestication . We show here that fox kits from an experimental population selectively bred over 45 years to approach humans fearlessly and nonaggressively (i.e., experimentally domesticated) are not only as skillful as dog puppies in using human gestures but are also more skilled than fox kits from a second, control population not bred for tame behavior (critically, neither population of foxes was ever bred or tested for their ability to use human gestures) . These results suggest that sociocognitive evolution has occurred in the experimental foxes, and possibly domestic dogs, as a correlated by-product of selection on systems mediating fear and aggression, and it is likely the observed social cognitive evolution did not require direct selection for improved social cognitive ability.
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Hare, B., & Tomasello, M. (2005). Human-like social skills in dogs? Trends. Cognit. Sci., 9(9), 439–444.
Abstract: Domestic dogs are unusually skilled at reading human social and communicative behavior--even more so than our nearest primate relatives. For example, they use human social and communicative behavior (e.g. a pointing gesture) to find hidden food, and they know what the human can and cannot see in various situations. Recent comparisons between canid species suggest that these unusual social skills have a heritable component and initially evolved during domestication as a result of selection on systems mediating fear and aggression towards humans. Differences in chimpanzee and human temperament suggest that a similar process may have been an important catalyst leading to the evolution of unusual social skills in our own species. The study of convergent evolution provides an exciting opportunity to gain further insights into the evolutionary processes leading to human-like forms of cooperation and communication.
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Hare, J. F., Sealy, S. G., Underwood, T. J., Ellison, K. S., & Stewart, R. L. M. (2003). Evidence of self-referent phenotype matching revisited: airing out the armpit effect. Anim. Cogn., 6(1), 65–68. |