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Riley, J.L.; Noble, D.W.A.; Byrne, R.W.; Whiting, M.J. |
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Title |
Does social environment influence learning ability in a family-living lizard? |
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Journal Article |
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2017 |
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Animal Cognition |
Abbreviated Journal |
Anim. Cogn. |
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20 |
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3 |
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449-458 |
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Early developmental environment can have profound effects on individual physiology, behaviour, and learning. In birds and mammals, social isolation during development is known to negatively affect learning ability; yet in other taxa, like reptiles, the effect of social isolation during development on learning ability is unknown. We investigated how social environment affects learning ability in the family-living tree skink (Egernia striolata). We hypothesized that early social environment shapes cognitive development in skinks and predicted that skinks raised in social isolation would have reduced learning ability compared to skinks raised socially. Offspring were separated at birth into two rearing treatments: (1) raised alone or (2) in a pair. After 1 year, we quantified spatial learning ability of skinks in these rearing treatments (N = 14 solitary, 14 social). We found no effect of rearing treatment on learning ability. The number of skinks to successfully learn the task, the number of trials taken to learn the task, the latency to perform the task, and the number of errors in each trial did not differ between isolated and socially reared skinks. Our results were unexpected, yet the facultative nature of this species' social system may result in a reduced effect of social isolation on behaviour when compared to species with obligate sociality. Overall, our findings do not provide evidence that social environment affects development of spatial learning ability in this family-living lizard. |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ Riley2017 |
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6190 |
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Bates, L.A.; Lee, P.C.; Njiraini, N.; Poole, J.H.; Sayialel, K.; Sayialel, S.; Moss, C.J.; Byrne, R. |
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Title |
Do Elephants Show Empathy? |
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Journal Article |
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2008 |
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Journal of Consciousness Studies |
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J Conscious Stud |
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15 |
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10-11 |
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204-225 |
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Elephants show a rich social organization and display a number of unusual traits. In this paper, we analyse reports collected over a thirty-five year period, describing behaviour that has the potential to reveal signs of empathic understanding. These include coalition formation, the offering of protection and comfort to others, retrieving and 'babysitting' calves, aiding individuals that would otherwise have difficulty in moving, and removing foreign objects attached to others. These records demonstrate that an elephant is capable of diagnosing animacy and goal directedness, and is able to understand the physical competence, emotional state and intentions of others, when they differ from its own. We argue that an empathic understanding of others is the simplest explanation of these abilities, and discuss reasons why elephants appear to show empathy more than other non-primate species. |
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yes |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
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5057 |
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Byrne, R.W. |
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Title |
Culture in great apes: using intricate complexity in feeding skills to trace the evolutionary origin of human technical prowess |
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Journal Article |
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2007 |
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Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences |
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Phil. Trans. Biol. Sci. |
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362 |
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1480 |
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577-585 |
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Geographical cataloguing of traits, as used in human ethnography, has led to the description of “culture” in some non-human great apes. Culture, in these terms, is detected as a pattern of local ignorance resulting from environmental constraints on knowledge transmission. However, in many cases, the geographical variations may alternatively be explained by ecology. Social transmission of information can reliably be identified in many other animal species, by experiment or distinctive patterns in distribution; but the excitement of detecting culture in great apes derives from the possibility of understanding the evolution of cumulative technological culture in humans. Given this interest, I argue that great ape research should concentrate on technically complex behaviour patterns that are ubiquitous within a local population; in these cases, a wholly non-social ontogeny is highly unlikely. From this perspective, cultural transmission has an important role in the elaborate feeding skills of all species of great ape, in conveying the “gist” or organization of skills. In contrast, social learning is unlikely to be responsible for local stylistic differences, which are apt to reflect sensitive adaptations to ecology. |
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refbase @ user @ |
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3527 |
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Hobaiter, C.; Byrne, R. |
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The gestural repertoire of the wild chimpanzee |
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Journal Article |
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Year |
2011 |
Publication |
Animal Cognition |
Abbreviated Journal |
Anim. Cogn. |
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14 |
Issue |
5 |
Pages |
745-767 |
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Biomedical and Life Sciences |
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Great ape gestural communication is known to be intentional, elaborate and flexible; yet there is controversy over the best interpretation of the system and how gestures are acquired, perhaps because most studies have been made in restricted, captive settings. Here, we report the first systematic analysis of gesture in a population of wild chimpanzees. Over 266 days of observation, we recorded 4,397 cases of intentional gesture use in the Sonso community, Budongo, Uganda. We describe 66 distinct gesture types: this estimate appears close to asymptote, and the Sonso repertoire includes most gestures described informally at other sites. Differences in repertoire were noted between individuals and age classes, but in both cases, the measured repertoire size was predicted by the time subjects were observed gesturing. No idiosyncratic usages were found, i.e. no gesture type was used only by one individual. No support was found for the idea that gestures are acquired by ‘ontogenetic ritualization’ from originally effective actions; moreover, in detailed analyses of two gestures, action elements composing the gestures did not closely match those of the presumed original actions. Rather, chimpanzee gestures are species-typical; indeed, many are ‘family-typical’, because gesture types recorded in gorillas, orangutans and chimpanzee overlap extensively, with 24 gestures recorded in all three genera. Nevertheless, chimpanzee gestures are used flexibly across a range of contexts and show clear adjustment to audience (e.g. silent gestures for attentive targets, contact gestures for inattentive ones). Such highly intentional use of a species-typical repertoire raises intriguing questions for the evolution of advanced communication. |
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Springer Berlin / Heidelberg |
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1435-9448 |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
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5585 |
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Author |
Cartmill, E.; Byrne, R. |
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Title |
Semantics of primate gestures: intentional meanings of orangutan gestures |
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Journal Article |
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Year |
2010 |
Publication |
Animal Cognition |
Abbreviated Journal |
Anim. Cogn. |
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Volume |
13 |
Issue |
6 |
Pages |
793-804-804 |
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Biomedical and Life Sciences |
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Great ape gesture has become a research topic of intense interest, because its intentionality and flexibility suggest strong parallels to human communication. Yet the fundamental question of whether an animal species’ gestures carry specific meanings has hardly been addressed. We set out a systematic approach to studying intentional meaning in the gestural communication of non-humans and apply it to a sample of orangutan gestures. We propose that analysis of meaning should be limited to gestures for which (1) there is strong evidence for intentional production and (2) the recipient’s final reaction matches the presumed goal of the signaller, as determined independently. This produces a set of successful instances of gesture use, which we describe as having goal–outcome matches. In this study, 28 orangutans in three European zoos were observed for 9 months. We distinguished 64 gestures on structural grounds, 40 of which had frequent goal–outcome matches and could therefore be analysed for meaning. These 40 gestures were used predictably to achieve one of 6 social goals: to initiate an affiliative interaction (contact, grooming, or play), request objects, share objects, instigate co-locomotion, cause the partner to move back, or stop an action. Twenty-nine of these gestures were used consistently with a single meaning. We tested our analysis of gesture meaning by examining what gesturers did when the response to their gesture did not match the gesture’s meaning. Subsequent actions of the gesturer were consistent with our assignments of meaning to gestures. We suggest that, despite their contextual flexibility, orangutan gestures are made with the expectation of specific behavioural responses and thus have intentional meanings as well as functional consequences. |
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Springer Berlin / Heidelberg |
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1435-9448 |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
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5273 |
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Stokes, E.; Byrne, R. |
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Cognitive capacities for behavioural flexibility in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): the effect of snare injury on complex manual food processing |
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Journal Article |
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Year |
2001 |
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Animal Cognition |
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Anim. Cogn. |
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4 |
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1 |
Pages |
11-28 |
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In chimpanzees, it is only in the restricted context of tool use that manual and cognitive skills have been described, comparable to those that gorillas and orang-utans display in obtaining plant foods. We report the complex food preparation skills used to eat, without tools, the leaves of the tree Broussonettia papyrifera in the Sonso community of chimpanzees at Budongo Forest, Uganda. Able-bodied individuals used multi-stage techniques that required bimanual role differentiation at several stages, and were hierarchical in organisation. A total repertoire of 14 techniques was found, with strong preference in all individuals for either of two of these; 6 additional techniques were found when flowers and leaves were eaten together. However, in this community over 20% of individuals suffer from some form of upper- or lower-limb injury as a result of snares. We investigated the manner of compensation for upper-limb injury. Only the most severely injured showed reduced feeding efficiency. Injured individuals were found to use the same repertoire of techniques as able-bodied chimpanzees. We found no evidence to suggest that injured individuals were able to develop wholly novel techniques optimal for their specific injuries, although shifts in preference for particular techniques did occur. Rather, injured individuals used novel ways of achieving particular steps in the process; by “working around” their impairments; in this way, they managed to use the same techniques as the able-bodied. Since snare injuries generally befall young animals, these results suggest that chimpanzees learn techniques partly through observational learning (of, necessarily, able-bodied individuals). |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
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3191 |
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Bates, L.A.; Byrne, R.W. |
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Title |
Creative or created: Using anecdotes to investigate animal cognition |
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Journal Article |
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Year |
2007 |
Publication |
Methods |
Abbreviated Journal |
Methods |
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42 |
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1 |
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12-21 |
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Anecdote; Creativity; Intelligence; Deception; Innovation; African elephant |
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In non-human animals, creative behaviour occurs spontaneously only at low frequencies, so is typically missed by standardised observational methods. Experimental approaches have tended to rely overly on paradigms from child development or adult human cognition, which may be inappropriate for species that inhabit very different perceptual worlds and possess quite different motor capacities than humans. The analysis of anecdotes offers a solution to this impasse, provided certain conditions are met. To be reliable, anecdotes must be recorded immediately after observation, and only the records of scientists experienced with the species and the individuals concerned should be used. Even then, interpretation of a single record is always ambiguous, and analysis is feasible only when collation of multiple records shows that a behaviour pattern occurs repeatedly under similar circumstances. This approach has been used successfully to study a number of creative capacities of animals: the distribution, nature and neural correlates of deception across the primate order; the occurrence of teaching in animals; and the neural correlates of several aptitudes--in birds, foraging innovation, and in primates, innovation, social learning and tool-use. Drawing on these approaches, we describe the use of this method to investigate a new problem, the cognition of the African elephant, a species whose sheer size and evolutionary distance from humans renders the conventional methods of comparative psychology of little use. The aim is both to chart the creative cognitive capacities of this species, and to devise appropriate experimental methods to confirm and extend previous findings. |
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1046-2023 |
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also special issue: Neurocognitive Mechanisms of Creativity: A Toolkit |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
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6185 |
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Farmer, K.; Krüger, K.; Byrne, R.W.; Marr, I. |
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Title |
Sensory laterality in affiliative interactions in domestic horses and ponies (Equus caballus) |
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Journal Article |
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2018 |
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Animal Cognition |
Abbreviated Journal |
Anim. Cogn. |
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21 |
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5 |
Pages |
631-637 |
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Many studies have been carried out into both motor and sensory laterality of horses in agonistic and stressful situations. Here we examine sensory laterality in affiliative interactions within four groups of domestic horses and ponies (N = 31), living in stable social groups, housed at a single complex close to Vienna, Austria, and demonstrate for the first time a significant population preference for the left side in affiliative approaches and interactions. No effects were observed for gender, rank, sociability, phenotype, group, or age. Our results suggest that right hemisphere specialization in horses is not limited to the processing of stressful or agonistic situations, but rather appears to be the norm for processing in all social interactions, as has been demonstrated in other species including chicks and a range of vertebrates. In domestic horses, hemispheric specialization for sensory input appears not to be based on a designation of positive versus negative, but more on the perceived need to respond quickly and appropriately in any given situation. |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ Farmer2018 |
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6386 |
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Bates, L.A.; Sayialel, K.N.; Njiraini, N.W.; Poole, J.H.; Moss, C.J.; Byrne, R.W. |
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African elephants have expectations about the locations of out-of-sight family members |
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2008 |
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Biology Letters |
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Biol Lett |
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4 |
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1 |
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34-36 |
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elephants, olfaction, urine, individual recognition |
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Monitoring the location of conspecifics may be important to social mammals. Here, we use an expectancy-violation paradigm to test the ability of African elephants (Loxodonta africana) to keep track of their social companions from olfactory cues. We presented elephants with samples of earth mixed with urine from female conspecifics that were either kin or unrelated to them, and either unexpected or highly predictable at that location. From behavioural measurements of the elephants' reactions, we show that African elephants can recognize up to 17 females and possibly up to 30 family members from cues present in the urine-earth mix, and that they keep track of the location of these individuals in relation to themselves. |
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yes |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
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4332 |
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Farmer, K.; Krueger, K.; Byrne, R. |
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Visual laterality in the domestic horse (Equus caballus) interacting with humans |
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Journal Article |
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2010 |
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Animal Cognition |
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Anim. Cogn. |
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13 |
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229-238 |
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Horse – Laterality – Eye preference – Emotion – Vision |
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Most horses have a side on which they are easier to handle and a direction they favour when working on a circle, and recent studies have suggested a correlation between emotion and visual laterality when horses observe inanimate objects. As such lateralisation could provide important clues regarding the horse’s cognitive processes, we investigated whether horses also show laterality in association with people. We gave horses the choice of entering a chute to left or right, with and without the passive, non-interactive presence of a person unknown to them. The left eye was preferred for scanning under both conditions, but significantly more so when a person was present. Traditionally, riders handle horses only from the left, so we repeated the experiment with horses specifically trained on both sides. Again, there was a consistent preference for left eye scanning in the presence of a person, whether known to the horses or not. We also examined horses interacting with a person, using both traditionally and bilaterally trained horses. Both groups showed left eye preference for viewing the person, regardless of training and test procedure. For those horses tested under both passive and interactive conditions, the left eye was preferred significantly more during interaction. We suggest that most horses prefer to use their left eye for assessment and evaluation, and that there is an emotional aspect to the choice which may be positive or negative, depending on the circumstances. We believe these results have important practical implications and that emotional laterality should be taken into account in training methods. |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
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4953 |
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