| |
Records |
Links |
|
Author |
Zucca, P.; Antonelli, F.; Vallortigara, G. |
|
| |
Title |
Detour behaviour in three species of birds: quails (Coturnix sp.), herring gulls (Larus cachinnans) and canaries (Serinus canaria) |
Type |
Journal Article |
| |
Year |
2005 |
Publication |
Animal Cognition |
Abbreviated Journal |
Anim. Cogn. |
|
| |
Volume |
8 |
Issue |
2 |
Pages |
122-128 |
|
| |
Keywords |
Animals; *Avoidance Learning; *Birds; Canaries; Charadriiformes; Coturnix; *Discrimination Learning; Orientation; *Space Perception; *Spatial Behavior; Species Specificity |
|
| |
Abstract  |
Detour behaviour is the ability of an animal to reach a goal stimulus by moving round any interposed obstacle. It has been widely studied and has been proposed as a test of insight learning in several species of mammals, but few data are available in birds. A comparative study in three species of birds, belonging to different eco-ethological niches, allows a better understanding of the cognitive mechanism of such detour behaviour. Young quails (Coturnix sp.), herring gulls (Larus cachinnans) and canaries (Serinus canaria), 1 month old, 10-25 days old and 4-6 months old, respectively, were tested in a detour situation requiring them to abandon a clear view of a biologically interesting object (their own reflection in a mirror) in order to approach that object. Birds were placed in a closed corridor, at one end of which was a barrier through which the object was visible. Four different types of barrier were used: vertical bar, horizontal bar, grid and transparent. Two symmetrical apertures placed midline in the corridor allowed the birds to adopt routes passing around the barrier. After entering the apertures, birds could turn either right or left to re-establish social contact with the object in the absence of any local sensory cues emanating from it. Quails appeared able to solve the task, though their performance depended on the type of barrier used, which appeared to modulate their relative interest in approaching the object or in exploring the surroundings. Young herring gulls also showed excellent abilities to locate spatially the out-of-view object, except when the transparent barrier was used. Canaries, on the other hand, appeared completely unable to solve the detour task, whatever barrier was in use. It is suggested that these species differences can be accounted for in terms of adaptation to a terrestrial or aerial environment. |
|
| |
Address |
Laboratory of Animal Cognition and Comparative Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, University of Trieste, Via S. Anastasio 12, 34100, Trieste, Italy. zucca@units.it |
|
| |
Corporate Author |
|
Thesis |
|
|
| |
Publisher |
|
Place of Publication |
|
Editor |
|
|
| |
Language |
English |
Summary Language |
|
Original Title |
|
|
| |
Series Editor |
|
Series Title |
|
Abbreviated Series Title |
|
|
| |
Series Volume |
|
Series Issue |
|
Edition |
|
|
| |
ISSN |
1435-9448 |
ISBN |
|
Medium |
|
|
| |
Area |
|
Expedition |
|
Conference |
|
|
| |
Notes |
PMID:15449104 |
Approved |
no |
|
| |
Call Number |
Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
Serial |
2506 |
|
| Permanent link to this record |
| |
|
| |
|
Author |
Regolin, L.; Tommasi, L.; Vallortigara, G. |
|
| |
Title |
Visual perception of biological motion in newly hatched chicks as revealed by an imprinting procedure |
Type |
Journal Article |
| |
Year |
2000 |
Publication |
Animal Cognition |
Abbreviated Journal |
Anim. Cogn. |
|
| |
Volume |
3 |
Issue |
1 |
Pages |
53-60 |
|
| |
Keywords |
|
|
| |
Abstract |
Day-old chicks were exposed to point-light animation sequences depicting either a walking hen or a rotating cylinder. On a subsequent free-choice test (experiment 1) the chicks approached the novel stimulus, irrespective of this being the hen or the cylinder. In order to obtain equivalent local motion vectors, in experiments 2 and 3 newly hatched chicks were exposed either to a point-light animation sequence depicting a walking hen, or to a positionally scrambled walking hen (i.e. an animation in which exactly the same set of dots in motion as that employed for the walking hen was presented, but with spatially randomized starting positions). Chicks tested on day 1 (experiment 2) or on day 2 (i.e. after a period in the dark following exposure on day 1 (experiment 3)) proved able to discriminate the two animation sequences: males preferentially approached the novel stimulus, females the familiar one. These results indicate that discrimination was not based on local motion vectors, but rather on the temporally integrated motion sequence. |
|
| |
Address |
|
|
| |
Corporate Author |
|
Thesis |
|
|
| |
Publisher |
|
Place of Publication |
|
Editor |
|
|
| |
Language |
|
Summary Language |
|
Original Title |
|
|
| |
Series Editor |
|
Series Title |
|
Abbreviated Series Title |
|
|
| |
Series Volume |
|
Series Issue |
|
Edition |
|
|
| |
ISSN |
|
ISBN |
|
Medium |
|
|
| |
Area |
|
Expedition |
|
Conference |
|
|
| |
Notes |
|
Approved |
no |
|
| |
Call Number |
Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
Serial |
3314 |
|
| Permanent link to this record |
| |
|
| |
|
Author |
Tommasi, L.; Vallortigara, G. |
|
| |
Title |
Searching for the center: spatial cognition in the domestic chick (Gallus gallus) |
Type |
Journal Article |
| |
Year |
2000 |
Publication |
Journal of Experimental Psychology. Animal Behavior Processes |
Abbreviated Journal |
J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process |
|
| |
Volume |
26 |
Issue |
4 |
Pages |
477-486 |
|
| |
Keywords |
Animals; Behavior, Animal/physiology; Chickens; Cognition/*physiology; Learning/physiology; Male; Space Perception/*physiology; Spatial Behavior/*physiology |
|
| |
Abstract |
Chicks learned to find food hidden under sawdust by ground-scratching in the central position of the floor of a closed arena. When tested inan arena of identical shape but a larger area, chicks searched at 2 different locations, one corresponding to the correct distance (i.e., center) in the smaller (training) arena and the other to the actual center of the test arena. When tested in an arena of the same shape but a smaller area, chicks searched in the center of it. These results suggest that chicks are able to encode information on the absolute and relative distance of the food from the walls of the arena. After training in the presence of a landmark located at the center of the arena, animals searched at the center even after the removal of the landmark. Marked changes in the height of the walls of the arena produced some displacement in searching behavior, suggesting that chicks used the angular size of the walls to estimate distances. |
|
| |
Address |
Department of General Psychology, University of Padua, Italy |
|
| |
Corporate Author |
|
Thesis |
|
|
| |
Publisher |
|
Place of Publication |
|
Editor |
|
|
| |
Language |
English |
Summary Language |
|
Original Title |
|
|
| |
Series Editor |
|
Series Title |
|
Abbreviated Series Title |
|
|
| |
Series Volume |
|
Series Issue |
|
Edition |
|
|
| |
ISSN |
0097-7403 |
ISBN |
|
Medium |
|
|
| |
Area |
|
Expedition |
|
Conference |
|
|
| |
Notes |
PMID:11056887 |
Approved |
no |
|
| |
Call Number |
Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
Serial |
2774 |
|
| Permanent link to this record |
| |
|
| |
|
Author |
Chiesa, A.D.; Pecchia, T.; Tommasi, L.; Vallortigara, G. |
|
| |
Title |
Multiple landmarks, the encoding of environmental geometry and the spatial logics of a dual brain |
Type |
Journal Article |
| |
Year |
2006 |
Publication |
Animal Cognition |
Abbreviated Journal |
Anim. Cogn. |
|
| |
Volume |
9 |
Issue |
4 |
Pages |
281-293 |
|
| |
Keywords |
Animals; Association Learning/*physiology; Chickens; *Cues; Dominance, Cerebral/*physiology; *Environment; Exploratory Behavior/*physiology; Logic; Space Perception/*physiology; Spatial Behavior/physiology |
|
| |
Abstract |
A series of place learning experiments was carried out in young chicks (Gallus gallus) in order to investigate how the geometry of a landmark array and that of a walled enclosure compete when disoriented animals could rely on both of them to re-orient towards the centre of the enclosure. A square-shaped array (four wooden sticks) was placed in the middle of a square-shaped enclosure, the two structures being concentric. Chicks were trained to ground-scratch to search for food hidden in the centre of the enclosure (and the array). To check for effects of array degradation, one, two, three or all landmarks were removed during test trials. Chicks concentrated their searching activity in the central area of the enclosure, but their accuracy was inversely contingent on the number of landmarks removed; moreover, the landmarks still present within the enclosure appeared to influence the shape of the searching patterns. The reduction in the number of landmarks affected the searching strategy of chicks, suggesting that they had focussed mainly on local cues when landmarks were present within the enclosure. When all the landmarks were removed, chicks searched over a larger area, suggesting an absolute encoding of distances from the local cues and less reliance on the relationships provided by the geometry of the enclosure. Under conditions of monocular vision, chicks tended to rely on different strategies to localize the centre on the basis of the eye (and thus the hemisphere) in use, the left hemisphere attending to details of the environment and the right hemisphere attending to the global shape. |
|
| |
Address |
Department of Psychology and B.R.A.I.N. Centre for Neuroscience, University of Trieste, via S. Anastasio 12, 34100, Trieste, Italy |
|
| |
Corporate Author |
|
Thesis |
|
|
| |
Publisher |
|
Place of Publication |
|
Editor |
|
|
| |
Language |
English |
Summary Language |
|
Original Title |
|
|
| |
Series Editor |
|
Series Title |
|
Abbreviated Series Title |
|
|
| |
Series Volume |
|
Series Issue |
|
Edition |
|
|
| |
ISSN |
1435-9448 |
ISBN |
|
Medium |
|
|
| |
Area |
|
Expedition |
|
Conference |
|
|
| |
Notes |
PMID:16941155 |
Approved |
no |
|
| |
Call Number |
Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
Serial |
2443 |
|
| Permanent link to this record |
| |
|
| |
|
Author |
Quaranta, A.; Siniscalchi, M.; Vallortigara, G. |
|
| |
Title |
Asymmetric tail-wagging responses by dogs to different emotive stimuli |
Type |
Abstract |
| |
Year |
2007 |
Publication |
Current biology : CB |
Abbreviated Journal |
Curr Biol |
|
| |
Volume |
17 |
Issue |
6 |
Pages |
R199-R201 |
|
| |
Keywords |
|
|
| |
Abstract |
|
|
| |
Address |
|
|
| |
Corporate Author |
|
Thesis |
|
|
| |
Publisher |
Cell Press |
Place of Publication |
|
Editor |
|
|
| |
Language |
|
Summary Language |
|
Original Title |
|
|
| |
Series Editor |
|
Series Title |
|
Abbreviated Series Title |
|
|
| |
Series Volume |
|
Series Issue |
|
Edition |
|
|
| |
ISSN |
0960-9822 |
ISBN |
|
Medium |
|
|
| |
Area |
|
Expedition |
|
Conference |
|
|
| |
Notes |
|
Approved |
no |
|
| |
Call Number |
Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
Serial |
5733 |
|
| Permanent link to this record |
