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Author Huber, L.; Gajdon, G.K. doi  openurl
  Title Technical intelligence in animals: the kea model Type Journal Article
  Year 2006 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 9 Issue 4 Pages 295-305  
  Keywords Animals; *Comprehension; *Intelligence; Models, Psychological; Observation; *Parrots; *Problem Solving; Psychological Theory; Social Environment; *Tool Use Behavior  
  Abstract The ability to act on information flexibly is one of the cornerstones of intelligent behavior. As particularly informative example, tool-oriented behavior has been investigated to determine to which extent nonhuman animals understand means-end relations, object affordances, and have specific motor skills. Even planning with foresight, goal-directed problem solving and immediate causal inference have been a focus of research. However, these cognitive abilities may not be restricted to tool-using animals but may be found also in animals that show high levels of curiosity, object exploration and manipulation, and extractive foraging behavior. The kea, a New Zealand parrot, is a particularly good example. We here review findings from laboratory experiments and field observations of keas revealing surprising cognitive capacities in the physical domain. In an experiment with captive keas, the success rate of individuals that were allowed to observe a trained conspecific was significantly higher than that of naive control subjects due to their acquisition of some functional understanding of the task through observation. In a further experiment using the string-pulling task, a well-probed test for means-end comprehension, we found the keas finding an immediate solution that could not be improved upon in nine further trials. We interpreted their performance as insightful in the sense of being sensitive of the relevant functional properties of the task and thereby producing a new adaptive response without trial-and-error learning. Together, these findings contribute to the ongoing debate on the distribution of higher cognitive skills in the animal kingdom by showing high levels of sensorimotor intelligence in animals that do not use tools. In conclusion, we suggest that the 'Technical intelligence hypothesis' (Byrne, Machiavellian intelligence II: extensions and evaluations, pp 289-211, 1997), which has been proposed to explain the origin of the ape/monkey grade-shift in intelligence by a selection pressure upon an increased efficiency in foraging behavior, should be extended, that is, applied to some birds as well.  
  Address Department for Behavior, Neurobiology and Cognition, University of Vienna, Althanstrasse 14, 1090, Vienna, Austria. ludwig.huber@univie.ac.at  
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  ISSN (down) 1435-9448 ISBN Medium  
  Area Expedition Conference  
  Notes PMID:16909237 Approved no  
  Call Number Serial 2085  
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Author Bugnyar, T.; Heinrich, B. doi  openurl
  Title Pilfering ravens, Corvus corax, adjust their behaviour to social context and identity of competitors Type Journal Article
  Year 2006 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 9 Issue 4 Pages 369-376  
  Keywords Adaptation, Psychological; Animals; *Behavior, Animal; *Competitive Behavior; Crows/*physiology; *Deception; Feeding Behavior; Female; Male; Social Behavior; *Social Environment  
  Abstract Like other corvids, food-storing ravens protect their caches from being pilfered by conspecifics by means of aggression and by re-caching. In the wild and in captivity, potential pilferers rarely approach caches until the storers have left the cache vicinity. When storers are experimentally prevented from leaving, pilferers first search at places other than the cache sites. These behaviours raise the possibility that ravens are capable of withholding intentions and providing false information to avoid provoking the storers' aggression for cache protection. Alternatively, birds may refrain from pilfering to avoid conflicts with dominants. Here we examined whether ravens adjust their pilfer tactics according to social context and type of competitors. We allowed birds that had witnessed a conspecific making caches to pilfer those caches either in private, together with the storer, or together with a conspecific bystander that had not created the caches (non-storer) but had seen them being made. Compared to in-private trials, ravens delayed approaching the caches only in the presence of storers. Furthermore, they quickly engaged in searching away from the caches when together with dominant storers but directly approached the caches when together with dominant non-storers. These findings demonstrate that ravens selectively alter their pilfer behaviour with those individuals that are likely to defend the caches (storers) and support the interpretation that they are deceptively manipulating the others' behaviour.  
  Address Department of Biology, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT 05405, USA. thomas.bugnyar@univie.ac.at  
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  ISSN (down) 1435-9448 ISBN Medium  
  Area Expedition Conference  
  Notes PMID:16909235 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 2449  
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Author Sovrano, V.A.; Bisazza, A.; Vallortigara, G. doi  openurl
  Title How fish do geometry in large and in small spaces Type Journal Article
  Year 2007 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 10 Issue 1 Pages 47-54  
  Keywords Animals; *Association Learning; Color Perception; Cues; *Discrimination Learning; *Distance Perception; *Fishes; Male; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Social Environment; *Space Perception; Visual Perception  
  Abstract It has been shown that children and non-human animals seem to integrate geometric and featural information to different extents in order to reorient themselves in environments of different spatial scales. We trained fish (redtail splitfins, Xenotoca eiseni) to reorient to find a corner in a rectangular tank with a distinctive featural cue (a blue wall). Then we tested fish after displacement of the feature on another adjacent wall. In the large enclosure, fish chose the two corners with the feature, and also tended to choose among them the one that maintained the correct arrangement of the featural cue with respect to geometric sense (i.e. left-right position). In contrast, in the small enclosure, fish chose both the two corners with the features and the corner, without any feature, that maintained the correct metric arrangement of the walls with respect to geometric sense. Possible reasons for species differences in the use of geometric and non-geometric information are discussed.  
  Address Department of General Psychology, University of Padua, Via Venezia, 8, 35131, Padova, Italy. valeriaanna.sovrano@unipd.it  
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  ISSN (down) 1435-9448 ISBN Medium  
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  Notes PMID:16794851 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 2462  
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Author Gajdon, G.K.; Fijn, N.; Huber, L. doi  openurl
  Title Limited spread of innovation in a wild parrot, the kea (Nestor notabilis) Type Journal Article
  Year 2006 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 9 Issue 3 Pages 173-181  
  Keywords Animal Communication; Animals; Diffusion of Innovation; Feeding Behavior; Female; *Imitative Behavior; *Learning; Male; *Motor Skills; *Parrots; *Problem Solving; Sex Factors; Social Dominance; Social Environment; Statistics, Nonparametric  
  Abstract In the local population of kea in Mount Cook Village, New Zealand, some keas open the lids of rubbish bins with their bill to obtain food scraps within. We investigated the extent to which this innovation has spread in the local population, and what factors limit the acquisition of bin opening. Only five males of 36 individually recognised birds were observed to have performed successful bin opening. With one exception there were always other keas present, watching successful bin opening. Seventeen additional individuals were seen to have benefitted from lid opening. Their foraging success was less than that of the bin openers. Social status of bin openers did not differ from scrounging males. Among the individuals that were regularly seen at the site of the bins but were not successful in bin opening, social status and the ratio of feeding directly from open bins correlated with the amount of opening attempts. We conclude that scrounging facilitated certain behavioural aspects of bin opening rather than inhibiting them. The fact that only 9% of opening attempts were successful, and the long period of time required to increase efficiency in lid opening shows that mainly individual experience, and to a lesser extent insight and social learning, play key roles in acquisition of the opening technique. The results indicate that the spread of innovative solutions of challenging mechanical problems in animals may be restricted to only a few individuals.  
  Address Department for Behavior, Neurobiology and Cognition, University of Vienna, 1090, Vienna, Austria. gyula.gajdon@univie.ac.at  
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  ISSN (down) 1435-9448 ISBN Medium  
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  Notes PMID:16568276 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 2472  
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Author Call, J.; Carpenter, M.; Tomasello, M. doi  openurl
  Title Copying results and copying actions in the process of social learning: chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and human children (Homo sapiens) Type Journal Article
  Year 2005 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 8 Issue 3 Pages 151-163  
  Keywords Animals; Child Behavior; Child, Preschool; *Concept Formation; Female; Humans; *Imitative Behavior; *Learning; Male; Pan troglodytes; *Problem Solving; Psychomotor Performance; Random Allocation; *Social Environment; Species Specificity  
  Abstract There is currently much debate about the nature of social learning in chimpanzees. The main question is whether they can copy others' actions, as opposed to reproducing the environmental effects of these actions using their own preexisting behavioral strategies. In the current study, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and human children (Homo sapiens) were shown different demonstrations of how to open a tube-in both cases by a conspecific. In different experimental conditions, demonstrations consisted of (1) action only (the actions necessary to open the tube without actually opening it); (2) end state only (the open tube, without showing any actions); (3) both of these components (in a full demonstration); or (4) neither of these components (in a baseline condition). In the first three conditions subjects saw one of two different ways that the tube could open (break in middle; caps off ends). Subjects' behavior in each condition was assessed for how often they opened the tube, how often they opened it in the same location as the demonstrator, and how often they copied the demonstrator's actions or style of opening the tube. Whereas chimpanzees reproduced mainly the environmental results of the demonstrations (emulation), human children often reproduced the demonstrator's actions (imitation). Because the procedure used was similar in many ways to the procedure that Meltzoff (Dev Psych 31:1, 1995) used to study the understanding of others' unfulfilled intentions, the implications of these findings with regard to chimpanzees' understanding of others' intentions are also discussed.  
  Address Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103, Leipzig, Germany. call@eva.mpg.de  
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  Notes PMID:15490290 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 2504  
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Author Barth, J.; Reaux, J.E.; Povinelli, D.J. doi  openurl
  Title Chimpanzees' (Pan troglodytes) use of gaze cues in object-choice tasks: different methods yield different results Type Journal Article
  Year 2005 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 8 Issue 2 Pages 84-92  
  Keywords Animals; *Attention; *Choice Behavior; *Cues; *Eye Movements; Female; Male; *Nonverbal Communication; Orientation; Pan troglodytes/*psychology; Social Environment  
  Abstract To assess the influence of different procedures on chimpanzees' performance in object-choice tasks, five adult chimpanzees were tested using three experimenter-given cues to food location: gazing, glancing, and pointing. These cues were delivered to the subjects in an identical fashion but were deployed within the context of two distinct meta-procedures that have been previously employed with this species with conflicting results. In one procedure, the subjects entered the test unit and approached the experimenter (who had already established the cue) on each trial. In the other procedure, the subjects stayed in the test unit throughout a session, witnessed the hiding procedure, and waited for a delay of 10 s during which the cue was provided. The subjects scored at high levels far exceeding chance in response to the gaze cue only when they approached the experimenter for each trial. They performed at chance levels when they stayed inside the test unit throughout the session. They scored at chance levels on all other cues irrespective of the procedure. These findings imply that (a) chimpanzees can immediately exploit social gaze cues, and (b) previous conflicting findings were likely due to the different meta-procedures that were used.  
  Address Department of Neurocognition, Faculty of Psychology, Universiteit Maastricht, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD, Maastricht, The Netherlands. j.barth@psychology.unimaas.nl  
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  ISSN (down) 1435-9448 ISBN Medium  
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  Notes PMID:15449100 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 2510  
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Author Tomasello, M.; Call, J. doi  openurl
  Title The role of humans in the cognitive development of apes revisited Type Journal Article
  Year 2004 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 7 Issue 4 Pages 213-215  
  Keywords Animals; *Behavior, Animal; *Cognition; Culture; Hominidae/*psychology; Humans; *Imitative Behavior; Imprinting (Psychology); *Intention; Social Behavior; *Social Environment; Species Specificity  
  Abstract  
  Address Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany. tomas@eva.mpg.de  
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  ISSN (down) 1435-9448 ISBN Medium  
  Area Expedition Conference  
  Notes PMID:15278733 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 2517  
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Author Fripp, D.; Owen, C.; Quintana-Rizzo, E.; Shapiro, A.; Buckstaff, K.; Jankowski, K.; Wells, R.; Tyack, P. doi  openurl
  Title Bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) calves appear to model their signature whistles on the signature whistles of community members Type Journal Article
  Year 2005 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 8 Issue 1 Pages 17-26  
  Keywords Acoustic Stimulation; Animals; Dolphins/*psychology; Female; *Imitative Behavior; Individuality; *Learning; *Social Environment; *Vocalization, Animal  
  Abstract Bottlenose dolphins are unusual among non-human mammals in their ability to learn new sounds. This study investigates the importance of vocal learning in the development of dolphin signature whistles and the influence of social interactions on that process. We used focal animal behavioral follows to observe six calves in Sarasota Bay, Fla., recording their social associations during their first summer, and their signature whistles during their second. The signature whistles of five calves were determined. Using dynamic time warping (DTW) of frequency contours, the calves' signature whistles were compared to the signature whistles of several sets of dolphins: their own associates, the other calves' associates, Tampa Bay dolphins, and captive dolphins. Whistles were considered similar if their DTW similarity score was greater than those of 95% of the whistle comparisons. Association was defined primarily in terms of time within 50 m of the mother/calf pair. On average, there were six dolphins with signature whistles similar to the signature whistles of each of the calves. These were significantly more likely to be Sarasota Bay resident dolphins than non-Sarasota dolphins, and (though not significantly) more likely to be dolphins that were within 50 m of the mother and calf less than 5% of the time. These results suggest that calves may model their signature whistles on the signature whistles of members of their community, possibly community members with whom they associate only rarely.  
  Address Biology Department, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, USA. deborah.fripp@verizon.net  
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  ISSN (down) 1435-9448 ISBN Medium  
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  Notes PMID:15221637 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 2520  
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Author Bering, J.M. doi  openurl
  Title A critical review of the “enculturation hypothesis”: the effects of human rearing on great ape social cognition Type Journal Article
  Year 2004 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 7 Issue 4 Pages 201-212  
  Keywords Animals; *Cognition; *Culture; Hominidae/*psychology; Humans; *Imitative Behavior; Imprinting (Psychology); *Intention; Macaca; Psychological Theory; Social Behavior; *Social Environment; Species Specificity  
  Abstract Numerous investigators have argued that early ontogenetic immersion in sociocultural environments facilitates cognitive developmental change in human-reared great apes more characteristic of Homo sapiens than of their own species. Such revamping of core, species-typical psychological systems might be manifest, according to this argument, in the emergence of mental representational competencies, a set of social cognitive skills theoretically consigned to humans alone. Human-reared great apes' capacity to engage in “true imitation,” in which both the means and ends of demonstrated actions are reproduced with fairly high rates of fidelity, and laboratory great apes' failure to do so, has frequently been interpreted as reflecting an emergent understanding of intentionality in the former. Although this epigenetic model of the effects of enculturation on social cognitive systems may be well-founded and theoretically justified in the biological literature, alternative models stressing behavioral as opposed to representational change have been largely overlooked. Here I review some of the controversy surrounding enculturation in great apes, and present an alternative nonmentalistic version of the enculturation hypothesis that can also account for enhanced imitative performance on object-oriented problem-solving tasks in human-reared animals.  
  Address Department of Psychology, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 72701, USA. jbering@uark.edu  
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  ISSN (down) 1435-9448 ISBN Medium  
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  Notes PMID:15004739 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 2543  
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Author Biro, D.; Inoue-Nakamura, N.; Tonooka, R.; Yamakoshi, G.; Sousa, C.; Matsuzawa, T. doi  openurl
  Title Cultural innovation and transmission of tool use in wild chimpanzees: evidence from field experiments Type Journal Article
  Year 2003 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 6 Issue 4 Pages 213-223  
  Keywords Animals; Cooking and Eating Utensils; *Culture; *Diffusion of Innovation; *Feeding Behavior/psychology; Female; Functional Laterality; *Imitative Behavior; Male; Motor Skills; Pan troglodytes/*psychology; *Social Environment  
  Abstract Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) are the most proficient and versatile users of tools in the wild. How such skills become integrated into the behavioural repertoire of wild chimpanzee communities is investigated here by drawing together evidence from three complementary approaches in a group of oil-palm nut- ( Elaeis guineensis) cracking chimpanzees at Bossou, Guinea. First, extensive surveys of communities adjacent to Bossou have shown that population-specific details of tool use, such as the selection of species of nuts as targets for cracking, cannot be explained purely on the basis of ecological differences. Second, a 16-year longitudinal record tracing the development of nut-cracking in individual chimpanzees has highlighted the importance of a critical period for learning (3-5 years of age), while the similar learning contexts experienced by siblings have been found to result in near-perfect (13 out of 14 dyads) inter-sibling correspondence in laterality. Third, novel data from field experiments involving the introduction of unfamiliar species of nuts to the Bossou group illuminates key aspects of both cultural innovation and transmission. We show that responses of individuals toward the novel items differ markedly with age, with juveniles being the most likely to explore. Furthermore, subjects are highly specific in their selection of conspecifics as models for observation, attending to the nut-cracking activities of individuals in the same age group or older, but not younger than themselves. Together with the phenomenon of inter-community migration, these results demonstrate a mechanism for the emergence of culture in wild chimpanzees.  
  Address Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University, Japan. dora.biro@zoology.oxford.ac.uk  
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  Publisher Springer-Verlag Place of Publication Editor  
  Language English Summary Language Original Title  
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  ISSN (down) 1435-9448 ISBN Medium  
  Area Expedition Conference  
  Notes PMID:12898285 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 2560  
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