Abstract: Dogs are more skillful than great apes at a number of tasks in which they must read human communicative signals indicating the location of hidden food. In this study, we found that wolves who were raised by humans do not show these same skills, whereas domestic dog puppies only a few weeks old, even those that have had little human contact, do show these skills. These findings suggest that during the process of domestication, dogs have been selected for a set of social-cognitive abilities that enable them to communicate with humans in unique ways.

Abstract: Aggressive contests probably occur in networking environments where information about fighting ability is conveyed both to an opponent and to individuals peripheral to the fight itself, the bystanders. Our primary aim was to investigate the relative influences of eavesdropping and prior social experience on the dynamics of aggressive contests in Xiphophorus helleri. A bystander's ability to witness an encounter was manipulated using clear, one-way mirror, and opaque partitions. After watching (or not watching) the initial contest, the bystander encountered either the winner or loser of the bout. Treatment comparisons of bystander-winner or bystander-loser contest dynamics indicated the presence or absence of winner, loser, or eavesdropping effects. Winner and loser effects had negligible influences on bystander contest dynamics. Eavesdropping significantly reduced the bystander's propensity to initiate aggression, escalate, and win against seen winners regardless of whether the watched bout had escalated or not. Though eavesdropping had relatively little effect on bystander-loser contest dynamics, bystanders were less prone to initiate aggression and win against losers that had escalated in the witnessed bout. Thus, bystanders appear to preferentially retain and utilize information gained about potentially dangerous opponents (winners or persistent losers). Our data lend clear support for the importance of eavesdropping in visually based aggressive signalling systems.

Abstract: HÜBENER, EBERHARD, Schmeichelnder Sitz, atmender Schenkel,
flüsternder Zügel
Vom feinfühligen, partnerschaftlichen Umgang mit dem Pferd und über Nöte
der bundesdeutschen Reiterei. Mit einem Geleitwort von Dr. Reiner Klimke
2. ergänzte Aufl. Hildesheim 2002. 223 S. mit 63 Abb., davon 3 farbig. Gebunden. Reihe:
(NOVA HIPPOLOGICA.) ISBN: 3-487-08408-2
Dieses Buch beantwortet eine Reihe zentraler Fragen zur Reitlehre und zum
Umgang mit dem Pferd gründlich und leicht verständlich. Es ist daher hilfreich
für alle, die sich am und auf dem Pferd gern helfen lassen. Ob sie nun nur zum
Vergnügen oder mit turniersportlichen Ambitionen reiten. Ob sie lernen oder
lehren.
Der vorliegenden zweiten Auflage ist eine neue Arbeit des Autors beigebunden:
Nachdem eine Video-Analyse seinen “selbsttätigen Schenkel” bestätigt hat, wird
jetzt endlich auch das “Sitz-Rätsel” definitiv gelöst.
Die Video-Technik hat ermöglicht, das Zusammenspiel von Gangart, Bewegungen
von Pferderumpf und -rücken, Sitz des Reiters und Hilfengebung zum Nutzen
des Reiter-Rückgrats, der keineswegs beliebig belastbaren Wirbelsäule des
Pferdes und kultivierten, feinfühligen Reitens zu entschlüsseln.
Reitunterricht kann anders aussehen. Irrwege sind vermeidbar geworden.

Abstract: Summary A wonderfully lucid framework for the ways to understand animal behaviour is that represented by the four [`]whys' proposed by Tinbergen (1963). For much of the past three decades, however, these four avenues have been pursued more or less in parallel. Functional questions, for example, have been addressed by behavioural ecologists, mechanistic questions by psychologists and ethologists, ontogenetic questions by developmental biologists and neuroscientists and phylogenetic questions by evolutionary biologists. More recently, the value of integration between these differing views has become apparent. In this brief review, we concentrate especially on current attempts to integrate mechanistic and functional approaches. Most of our understanding of learning and memory in animals comes from the psychological literature, which tends to use only rats or pigeons, and more occasionally primates, as subjects. The underlying psychological assumption is of general processes that are similar across species and contexts rather than a range of specific abilities. However, this does not seem to be entirely true as several learned behaviours have been described that are specific to particular species or contexts. The first conspicuous exception to the generalist assumption was the demonstration of long delay taste aversion learning in rats (Garcia et al., 1955), in which it was shown that a stimulus need not be temporally contiguous with a response for the animal to make an association between food and illness. Subsequently, a number of other examples, such as imprinting and song learning in birds (e.g., Bolhuis and Honey, 1998; Catchpole and Slater, 1995; Horn, 1998), have been thoroughly researched. Even in these cases, however, it has been typical for only a few species to be studied (domestic chicks provide the [`]model' imprinting species and canaries and zebra finches the song learning [`]models'). As a result, a great deal is understood about the neural underpinnings and development of the behaviour, but substantially less is understood about interspecific variation and whether variation in behaviour is correlated with variation in neural processing (see review by Tramontin and Brenowitz, 2000 but see ten Cate and Vos, 1999).