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Scheumann, M., & Call, J. (2004). The use of experimenter-given cues by South African fur seals (Arctocephalus pusillus). Anim. Cogn., 7(4), 224–230.
Abstract: Dogs can use a variety of experimenter-given cues such as pointing, head direction, and eye direction to locate food hidden under one of several containers. Some authors have proposed that this is a result of the domestication process. In this study we tested four captive fur seals in a two alternative object choice task in which subjects had to use one of the following experimenter-given cues to locate the food: (1) the experimenter pointed and gazed at one of the objects, (2) the experimenter pointed at only one of the objects, (3) the experimenter gazed at only one of the objects, (4) the experimenter glanced at only one of the objects, (5) the experimenter pointed and gazed at one of the objects but was sitting closer to one object than to the other, (6) the experimenter pointed only with the index finger at one of the objects, (7) the experimenter presented a replica of one of the objects. The fur seals were able to use cues which involved a fully exposed arm or a head direction, but failed to use glance only, the index finger pointing and the object replica cues. The results showed that a domestication process was not necessary to develop receptive skills to cues given by an experimenter. Instead, we hypothesize that close interactions with humans prior to testing enabled fur seals to uses ome gestural cues without formal training. We also analyzed the behavior of the seals depending on the level of difficulty of the task. Behavioral signs of hesitation increased with task difficulty. This suggests that the fur seals were sensitive to task difficulty.
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Schwab, C., & Huber, L. (2006). Obey or not obey? Dogs (Canis familiaris) behave differently in response to attentional states of their owners. J Comp Psychol, 120(3), 169–175.
Abstract: Sixteen domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) were tested in a familiar context in a series of 1-min trials on how well they obeyed after being told by their owner to lie down. Food was used in 1/3 of all trials, and during the trial the owner engaged in 1 of 5 activities. The dogs behaved differently depending on the owner's attention to them. When being watched by the owner, the dogs stayed lying down most often and/or for the longest time compared with when the owner read a book, watched TV, turned his or her back on them, or left the room. These results indicate that the dogs sensed the attentional state of their owners by judging observable behavioral cues such as eye contact and eye, head, and body orientation.
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Scordato, E. S., & Drea, C. M. (2007). Scents and sensibility: information content of olfactory signals in the ringtailed lemur, Lemur catta. Anim. Behav., 73(2), 301–314.
Abstract: The function of olfactory signalling in social species is less well understood than in asocial species. Consequently, we examined olfactory communication in the ringtailed lemur, a socially complex primate that retains a functional vomeronasal organ, has well-developed scent glands and shows a suite of scent-marking behaviour. To assess the information content of different types of scent gland secretions, we decoupled olfactory cues from the visual and behavioural modalities with which scent marking is normally associated. We presented male and female subjects (signal receivers) with a series of choice tests between odours derived from conspecific donors (signal senders) varying by sex, age, social status and reproductive condition. We additionally examined the influence of the receivers' reproductive state and familiarity with the signaller. The reproductive condition, social status and familiarity of senders and receivers affected signal transmission; specifically, male receivers attended most to the odours of conspecifics in breeding condition and to the odours of familiar, dominant animals. By contrast, females varied their responses according to both their own reproductive state and that of the sender. Based on male and female patterns of countermarking, we suggest that scent marking serves a function in intergroup spacing and intrasexual competition for both sexes, as might be expected in a female-dominant species. By contrast, minimal female interest in male odours counters a female mate choice function for scent marking in this species. Nevertheless, scent marks are critical to male-male competition and, therefore, may be subject to sexual selection.
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Seyfarth, R. M., & Cheney, D. L. (2003). Signalers and receivers in animal communication. Annu Rev Psychol, 54, 145–173.
Abstract: In animal communication natural selection favors callers who vocalize to affect the behavior of listeners and listeners who acquire information from vocalizations, using this information to represent their environment. The acquisition of information in the wild is similar to the learning that occurs in laboratory conditioning experiments. It also has some parallels with language. The dichotomous view that animal signals must be either referential or emotional is false, because they can easily be both: The mechanisms that cause a signaler to vocalize do not limit a listener's ability to extract information from the call. The inability of most animals to recognize the mental states of others distinguishes animal communication most clearly from human language. Whereas signalers may vocalize to change a listener's behavior, they do not call to inform others. Listeners acquire information from signalers who do not, in the human sense, intend to provide it.
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Seyfarth, R. M., Cheney, D. L., & Marler, P. (1980). Monkey responses to three different alarm calls: evidence of predator classification and semantic communication. Science, 210(4471), 801–803.
Abstract: Vervet monkeys give different alarm calls to different predators. Recordings of the alarms played back when predators were absent caused the monkeys to run into trees for leopard alarms, look up for eagle alarms, and look down for snake alarms. Adults call primarily to leopards, martial eagles, and pythons, but infants give leopard alarms to various mammals, eagle alarms to many birds, and snake alarms to various snakelike objects. Predator classification improves with age and experience.
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Soproni, K., Miklósi, A., Topál, J., & Csányi, V. (2001). Comprehension of human communicative signs in pet dogs (Canis familiaris). J Comp Psychol, 115(2), 122–126.
Abstract: On the basis of a study by D. J. Povinelli, D. T. Bierschwale, and C. G. Cech (1999), the performance of family dogs (Canis familiaris) was examined in a 2-way food choice task in which 4 types of directional cues were given by the experimenter: pointing and gazing, head-nodding (“at target”), head turning above the correct container (“above target”), and glancing only (“eyes only”). The results showed that the performance of the dogs resembled more closely that of the children in D. J. Povinelli et al.'s study, in contrast to the chimpanzees' performance in the same study. It seems that dogs, like children, interpret the test situation as being a form of communication. The hypothesis is that this similarity is attributable to the social experience and acquired social routines in dogs because they spend more time in close contact with humans than apes do, and as a result dogs are probably more experienced in the recognition of human gestures.
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Stoinski, T. S., & Whiten, A. (2003). Social learning by orangutans (Pongo abelii and Pongo pygmaeus) in a simulated food-processing task. J Comp Psychol, 117(3), 272–282.
Abstract: Increasing evidence for behavioral differences between populations of primates has created a resurgence of interest in examining mechanisms of information transfer between individuals. The authors examined the social transmission of information in 15 captive orangutans (Pongo abelii and Pongo pygmaeus) using a simulated food-processing task. Experimental subjects were shown 1 of 2 methods for removing a suite of defenses on an “artificial fruit.” Control subjects were given no prior exposure before interacting with the fruit. Observing a model provided a functional advantage in the task, as significantly more experimental than control subjects opened the fruit. Within the experimental groups, the authors found a trend toward differences in the actual behaviors used to remove 1 of the defenses. Results support observations from the wild implying horizontal transfer of information in orangutans and show that a number of social learning processes are likely to be involved in the transfer of knowledge in this species.
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Suzuki, Y., & Toquenaga, Y. (2005). Effects of information and group structure on evolution of altruism: analysis of two-score model by covariance and contextual analyses. J. Theor. Biol., 232(2), 191–201.
Abstract: An altruistic individual has to gamble on cooperation to a stranger because it does not know whether the stranger is trustworthy before direct interaction. Nowak and Sigmund (Nature 393 (1998a) 573; J. Theor. Biol. 194 (1998b) 561) presented a new theoretical framework of indirect reciprocal altruism by image scoring game where all individuals are informed about a partner's behavior from its image score without direct interaction. Interestingly, in a simplified version of the image scoring game, the evolutionarily stability condition for altruism became a similar form of Hamilton's rule, i.e. inequality that the probability of getting correct information is more than the ratio of cost to benefit. Since the Hamilton's rule was derived by evolutionarily stable analysis, the evolutionary meaning of the probability of getting correct information has not been clearly examined in terms of kin and group selection. In this study, we applied covariance analysis to the two-score model for deriving the Hamilton's rule. We confirmed that the probability of getting correct information was proportional to the bias of altruistic interactions caused by using information about a partner's image score. The Hamilton's rule was dependent on the number of game bouts even though the information reduced the risk of cooperation to selfish one at the first encounter. In addition, we incorporated group structure to the two-score model to examine whether the probability of getting correct information affect selection for altruism by group selection. We calculated a Hamilton's rule of group selection by contextual analysis. Group selection is very effective when either the probability of getting correct information or that of future interaction, or both are low. The two Hamilton's rules derived by covariance and contextual analyses demonstrated the effects of information and group structure on the evolution of altruism. We inferred that information about a partner's behavior and group structure can produce flexible pathways for the evolution of altruism.
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Toro, J. M., Trobalon, J. B., & Sebastian-Galles, N. (2003). The use of prosodic cues in language discrimination tasks by rats. Anim. Cogn., 6(2), 131–136.
Abstract: Recent research with cotton-top tamarin monkeys has revealed language discrimination abilities similar to those found in human infants, demonstrating that these perceptual abilities are not unique to humans but are also present in non-human primates. Specifically, tamarins could discriminate forward but not backward sentences of Dutch from Japanese, using both natural and synthesized utterances. The present study was designed as a conceptual replication of the work on tamarins. Results show that rats trained in a discrimination learning task readily discriminate forward, but not backward sentences of Dutch from Japanese; the results are particularly robust for synthetic utterances, a pattern that shows greater parallels with newborns than with tamarins. Our results extend the claims made in the research with tamarins that the capacity to discriminate languages from different rhythmic classes depends on general perceptual abilities that evolved at least as far back as the rodents.
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Trillmich, F., & Rehling, A. (2006). Animal Communication: Parent-Offspring. In Keith Brown (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics (pp. 284–288). Oxford: Elsevier.
Abstract: Parent-offspring communication has evolved under strong selection to guarantee that the valuable resource of parental care is expended efficiently on raising offspring. To ensure allocation of parental care to their own offspring, individual recognition becomes established in higher vertebrates when the young become mobile at a time when a nest site can no longer provide a safe cue to recognition. Such recognition needs to be established by rapid, sometimes imprinting-like, processes in animals producing precocial offspring. In parents, offering strategies that stimulate feeding and entice offspring to approach the right site have evolved. Such parental signals can be olfactory, acoustic, or visual. In offspring, begging strategies involve shuffling for the best place to obtain food – be this the most productive teat or the best position in the nest. This involves signals that make the offspring particularly obvious to the parent. Parents often feed young according to their signaling intensity but may also show favoritism for weaker offspring. Offspring signals also serve to communicate the continuing presence of the young and may thereby maintain brood-care behavior in parents. Internal processes in parents may end parental care irrespective of further signaling by offspring, thus ensuring that offspring cannot manipulate parents into providing substantially more care than is optimal for their own fitness.
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