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Range, F., Viranyi, Z., & Huber, L. (2007). Selective Imitation in Domestic Dogs. Curr Biol, 17(10), 868–872.
Abstract: Summary The transmission of cultural knowledge requires learners to identify what relevant information to retain and selectively imitate when observing others' skills. Young human infants--without relying on language or theory of mind--already show evidence of this ability. If, for example, in a communicative context, a model demonstrates a head action instead of a more efficient hand action, infants imitate the head action only if the demonstrator had no good reason to do so, suggesting that their imitation is a selective, interpretative process [1]. Early sensitivity to ostensive-communicative cues and to the efficiency of goal-directed actions is thought to be a crucial prerequisite for such relevance-guided selective imitation [2]. Although this competence is thought to be human specific [2], here we show an analog capacity in the dog. In our experiment, subjects watched a demonstrator dog pulling a rod with the paw instead of the preferred mouth action. In the first group, using the “inefficient” action was justified by the model's carrying of a ball in her mouth, whereas in the second group, no constraints could explain the demonstrator's choice. In the first trial after observation, dogs imitated the nonpreferred action only in the second group. Consequently, dogs, like children, demonstrated inferential selective imitation.
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Quaranta, A., Siniscalchi, M., & Vallortigara, G. (2007). Asymmetric tail-wagging responses by dogs to different emotive stimuli. In Current biology : CB (Vol. 17, pp. R199–R201). Cell Press.
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Allen, D., & Tanner, K. (2007). Putting the horse back in front of the cart: using visions and decisions about high-quality learning experiences to drive course design. CBE Life Sci Educ, 6(2), 85–89.
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Balendra, G., Turner, M., McCrory, P., & Halley, W. (2007). Injuries in amateur horse racing (point to point racing) in Great Britain and Ireland during 1993-2006. Br J Sports Med, 41(3), 162–166.
Abstract: OBJECTIVES: To provide a breakdown of injury incidence from amateur jump racing (also known as point to point racing) in Great Britain and Ireland during 1993-2006 and to compare the injury epidemiology with professional horse racing in Great Britain, Ireland and France. DESIGN: Retrospective review. SETTING: Great Britain and Ireland. PARTICIPANTS: Amateur jockeys. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Injury rates. RESULTS: Injury data suggest that point to point racing is more dangerous from an injury point of view than professional jump racing, which has previously been shown to be more dangerous than flat racing. Amateur jockeys have more falls than their professional counterparts, and this in turn puts them at greater risk of sustaining more serious injuries. CONCLUSIONS: Amateur (point to point) jockeys represent a sporting population that previously has been little studied. They represent a group at high risk of injury, and hence formal injury surveillance tracking and counter measures for injury prevention are recommended.
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Dunbar, R. I. M. (2007). Male and female brain evolution is subject to contrasting selection pressures in primates. BMC Biol, 5, 21.
Abstract: The claim that differences in brain size across primate species has mainly been driven by the demands of sociality (the “social brain” hypothesis) is now widely accepted. Some of the evidence to support this comes from the fact that species that live in large social groups have larger brains, and in particular larger neocortices. Lindenfors and colleagues (BMC Biology 5:20) add significantly to our appreciation of this process by showing that there are striking differences between the two sexes in the social mechanisms and brain units involved. Female sociality (which is more affiliative) is related most closely to neocortex volume, but male sociality (which is more competitive and combative) is more closely related to subcortical units (notably those associated with emotional responses). Thus different brain units have responded to different selection pressures.
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Dreier, S., van Zweden, J. S., & D'Ettorre, P. (2007). Long-term memory of individual identity in ant queens. Biol Lett, 3(5), 459–462.
Abstract: Remembering individual identities is part of our own everyday social life. Surprisingly, this ability has recently been shown in two social insects. While paper wasps recognize each other individually through their facial markings, the ant, Pachycondyla villosa, uses chemical cues. In both species, individual recognition is adaptive since it facilitates the maintenance of stable dominance hierarchies among individuals, and thus reduces the cost of conflict within these small societies. Here, we investigated individual recognition in Pachycondyla ants by quantifying the level of aggression between pairs of familiar or unfamiliar queens over time. We show that unrelated founding queens of P. villosa and Pachycondyla inversa store information on the individual identity of other queens and can retrieve it from memory after 24h of separation. Thus, we have documented for the first time that long-term memory of individual identity is present and functional in ants. This novel finding represents an advance in our understanding of the mechanism determining the evolution of cooperation among unrelated individuals.
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Zentall, T. R. (2007). Temporal discrimination learning by pigeons. Behav. Process., 74(2), 286–292.
Abstract: Memory for time by animals appears to undergo a systematic shortening. This so-called choose-short effect can be seen in a conditional temporal discrimination when a delay is inserted between the sample and comparison stimuli. We have proposed that this temporal shortening may result from a procedural artifact in which the delay appears similar to the intertrial interval and thus, produces an inadvertent ambiguity or 'instructional failure'. When this ambiguity is avoided by distinguishing the intertrial interval from the delay, as well as the samples from the delay, the temporal shortening effect and other asymmetries often disappear. By avoiding artifacts that can lead to a misinterpretation of results, we may understand better how animals represent time. An alternative procedure for studying temporal discriminations is with the psychophysical bisection procedure in which following conditional discrimination training, intermediate durations are presented and the point of subjective equality is determined. Research using the bisection procedure has shown that pigeons represent temporal durations not only as their absolute value but also relative to durations from which they must be discriminated. Using this procedure, we have also found that time passes subjectively slower when animals are required to respond to the to-be-timed stimulus.
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Hall, C. (2007). The impact of visual perception on equine learning. Behav. Process., 76, 29–33.
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Ninomiya, S. (2007). Social leaning and stereotypy in horses. Behav. Process., 76, 22–23.
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Leblanc, M. - A., & Duncan, P. (2007). Can studies of cognitive abilities and of life in the wild really help us to understand equine learning? Behav. Process., 76, 49–52.
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