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Straub, A. (2007). An intelligent crow beats a lab. Science, 316(5825), 688.
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Gould, J. L. (2004). Animal cognition. Curr Biol, 14(10), R372–5.
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Pennisi, E. (2006). Animal cognition. Man's best friend(s) reveal the possible roots of social intelligence (Vol. 312).
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Pennisi, E. (2006). Animal cognition. Social animals prove their smarts (Vol. 312).
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Pennisi, E. (1999). Are out primate cousins 'conscious'? (Vol. 284).
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Crockford, C., Wittig, R. M., Seyfarth, R. M., & Cheney, D. L. (2007). Baboons eavesdrop to deduce mating opportunities. Anim. Behav., 73(5), 885–890.
Abstract: Many animals appear to monitor changes in other individuals' dominance ranks and social relationships and to track changes in them. However, it is not known whether they also track changes in very transient relationships. Rapid recognition of a temporary separation between a dominant male and a sexually receptive female, for example, should be adaptive in species where subordinate males use opportunistic strategies to achieve mating success. Dominant male baboons (Papio hamadryas ursinus) form sexual consortships with oestrous females that are characterized by mate guarding and close proximity. To assess whether subordinate males track temporary changes in the status of other males' consortships, we conducted playback experiments using a two-speaker paradigm. In the test condition, subjects heard the consort male's grunts played from one speaker and his consort female's copulation call played from a speaker approximately 40 m away. This sequence suggested that the male and female had temporarily separated and that the female was mating with another male. In a control trial, subjects heard another dominant male's grunts played from one speaker and the female's copulation call played from the other. In a second control trial, conducted within 24 h after the consortship had ended, subjects again heard the consort male's grunt and the female's copulation call played from separate speakers. As predicted, subjects responded strongly only in the test condition. Eavesdropping upon the temporal and spatial juxtaposition of other individuals' vocalizations may be one strategy by which male baboons achieve sneaky matings.
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Boice, R. (1981). Behavioral comparability of wild and domesticated rats. Behav Genet, 11(5), 545–553.
Abstract: The oft-repeated concern for the lack of behavioral comparability of domestic rats with wild forms of Rattus norvegicus is unfounded. Laboratory rats appear to show the potential for all wild-type behaviors, including the most dramatic social postures. Moreover, domestics are capable of assuming a feral existence without difficulty, one where they readily behave in a fashion indistinguishable from wild rats. The one behavioral difference that is clearly established concerns performance in laboratory learning paradigms. The superiority of domestics in these laboratory tasks speaks more to quieting the concerns of degeneracy theorists than to problems of using domestic Norway rats as subjects representative of their species.
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McClearn, G. E. (1971). Behavioral genetics. Behav Sci, 16(1), 64–81.
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McLean, A. N. (2001). Cognitive abilities -- the result of selective pressures on food acquisition? Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci., 71(3), 241–258.
Abstract: Locating and capturing food are suggested as significant selection pressures for the evolution of various cognitive abilities in mammals and birds. The hypothesis is proposed that aspects of food procuring behaviour should be strongly indicative of particular cognitive abilities. Experimental data concerning higher mental abilities in mammals and birds are reviewed. These data deal with self-recognition studies, rule-learning experiments, number concept, deceptive abilities, tool-use and observational learning. A Darwinian approach reveals: (1) the adaptiveness of particular abilities for particular niches, (2) that in complex foraging environments, increases in foraging efficiencies in animals should result from the evolution of particular cognitive abilities, (3) that phenomena such as convergent mental evolution should be expected to have taken place across taxonomic groups for species exploiting similar niches, (4) that divergence in mental ability should also have taken place where related species have exploited dissimilar niches. Experimental data of higher mental abilities in animals concur with a Darwinian explanation for the distribution of these cognitive abilities and no anomalies have been found. There are, as a consequence, significant implications for the welfare of animals subject to training when training methodology gives little or no consideration to the various mental abilities of species.
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Marino, L. (2002). Convergence of complex cognitive abilities in cetaceans and primates. Brain Behav Evol, 59(1-2), 21–32.
Abstract: What examples of convergence in higher-level complex cognitive characteristics exist in the animal kingdom? In this paper I will provide evidence that convergent intelligence has occurred in two distantly related mammalian taxa. One of these is the order Cetacea (dolphins, whales and porpoises) and the other is our own order Primates, and in particular the suborder anthropoid primates (monkeys, apes, and humans). Despite a deep evolutionary divergence, adaptation to physically dissimilar environments, and very different neuroanatomical organization, some primates and cetaceans show striking convergence in social behavior, artificial 'language' comprehension, and self-recognition ability. Taken together, these findings have important implications for understanding the generality and specificity of those processes that underlie cognition in different species and the nature of the evolution of intelligence.
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