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Author Sinclair, M.; Buhrmann, G.; Gummow, B. openurl 
  Title An epidemiological investigation of the African horsesickness outbreak in the Western Cape Province of South Africa in 2004 and its relevance to the current equine export protocol Type Journal Article
  Year 2006 Publication Journal of the South African Veterinary Association Abbreviated Journal J S Afr Vet Assoc  
  Volume 77 Issue (down) 4 Pages 191-196  
  Keywords African Horse Sickness/diagnosis/*epidemiology; African horse sickness virus/*isolation & purification; Animals; Ceratopogonidae/virology; Diagnosis, Differential; Disease Outbreaks/*veterinary; Female; Horses; Insect Vectors/virology; Male; Prevalence; Retrospective Studies; Sentinel Surveillance; South Africa/epidemiology; Viral Vaccines/administration & dosage  
  Abstract African Horsesickness (AHS) is a controlled disease in South Africa. The country is divided into an infected area and a control area. An outbreak of AHS in the control area can result in a ban of exports for at least 2 years. A retrospective epidemiological study was carried out on data collected during the 2004 AHS outbreak in the surveillance zone of the AHS control area in the Western Cape Province. The objective of this study was to describe the 2004 outbreak and compare it with the 1999 AHS outbreak in the same area. As part of the investigation, a questionnaire survey was conducted in the 30 km radius surrounding the index case. Spatial, temporal and population patterns for the outbreak are described. The investigation found that the outbreak occurred before any significant rainfall and that the main AHS vector (Culicoides imicola) was present in abundance during the outbreak. Furthermore, 63% of cases occurred at temperatures < or = 15 degrees C, the Eerste River Valley was a high risk area, only 17% of owners used vector protection as a control measure and 70% of horses in the outbreak area were protected by means of vaccination at the start of the outbreak. The study revealed that the current AHS control measures do not function optimally because of the high percentage of vaccinated horses in the surveillance zone, which results in insufficient sentinel animals and the consequent failure of the early warning system. Alternative options for control that allow continued export are discussed in the paper.  
  Address State Veterinarian Epidemiology, Elsenburg, South Africa. marnas@elsenburg.com  
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  ISSN 1019-9128 ISBN Medium  
  Area Expedition Conference  
  Notes PMID:17458343 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 2354  
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Author Topál, J.; Byrne, R.W.; Miklósi, Á.; Csányi, V. doi  openurl
  Title Reproducing human actions and action sequences: “Do as I Do!” in a dog Type Journal Article
  Year 2006 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 9 Issue (down) 4 Pages 355-367  
  Keywords Animals; *Comprehension; Conditioning, Operant; *Discrimination Learning; Dogs/*psychology; Humans; *Imitative Behavior; Male; *Serial Learning  
  Abstract We present evidence that a dog (Philip, a 4-year-old tervueren) was able to use different human actions as samples against which to match his own behaviour. First, Philip was trained to repeat nine human-demonstrated actions on command ('Do it!'). When his performance was markedly over chance in response to demonstration by one person, testing with untrained action sequences and other demonstrators showed some ability to generalise his understanding of copying. In a second study, we presented Philip with a sequence of human actions, again using the 'Do as I do' paradigm. All demonstrated actions had basically the same structure: the owner picked up a bottle from one of six places; transferred it to one of the five other places and then commanded the dog ('Do it!'). We found that Philip duplicated the entire sequence of moving a specific object from one particular place to another more often than expected by chance. Although results point to significant limitations in his imitative abilities, it seems that the dog could have recognized the action sequence, on the basis of observation alone, in terms of the initial state, the means, and the goal. This suggests that dogs might acquire abilities by observation that enhance their success in complex socio-behavioural situations.  
  Address Comparative Ethology Research Group, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Pazmany, P. 1/c H-1117, Hungary. kea@t-online.hu  
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  ISSN 1435-9448 ISBN Medium  
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  Notes PMID:17024511 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 2434  
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Author Weir, A.A.S.; Kacelnik, A. doi  openurl
  Title A New Caledonian crow (Corvus moneduloides) creatively re-designs tools by bending or unbending aluminium strips Type Journal Article
  Year 2006 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 9 Issue (down) 4 Pages 317-334  
  Keywords Animals; *Comprehension; *Crows; Female; Learning; *Motor Skills; *Problem Solving; *Tool Use Behavior  
  Abstract Previous observations of a New Caledonian crow (Corvus moneduloides) spontaneously bending wire and using it as a hook [Weir et al. (2002) Science 297:981] have prompted questions about the extent to which these animals 'understand' the physical causality involved in how hooks work and how to make them. To approach this issue we examine how the same subject (“Betty”) performed in three experiments with novel material, which needed to be either bent or unbent in order to function to retrieve food. These tasks exclude the possibility of success by repetition of patterns of movement similar to those employed before. Betty quickly developed novel techniques to bend the material, and appropriately modified it on four of five trials when unbending was required. She did not mechanically apply a previously learned set of movements to the new situations, and instead sought new solutions to each problem. However, the details of her behaviour preclude concluding definitely that she understood and planned her actions: in some cases she probed with the unmodified tools before modifying them, or attempted to use the unmodified (unsuitable) end of the tool after modification. Gauging New Caledonian crows' level of understanding is not yet possible, but the observed behaviour is consistent with a partial understanding of physical tasks at a level that exceeds that previously attained by any other non-human subject, including apes.  
  Address Department of Zoology, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3PS, UK. alex.weir@magdalen.oxon.org  
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  ISSN 1435-9448 ISBN Medium  
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  Notes PMID:17024509 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 2436  
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Author Hunt, G.R.; Rutledge, R.B.; Gray, R.D. doi  openurl
  Title The right tool for the job: what strategies do wild New Caledonian crows use? Type Journal Article
  Year 2006 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 9 Issue (down) 4 Pages 307-316  
  Keywords Analysis of Variance; Animals; Comprehension; *Crows; Female; *Intelligence; Male; *Problem Solving; *Tool Use Behavior  
  Abstract New Caledonian crows Corvus moneduloides (NC crows) display sophisticated tool manufacture in the wild, but the cognitive strategy underlying these skills is poorly understood. Here, we investigate what strategy two free-living NC crows used in response to a tool-length task. The crows manufactured tools to extract food from vertical holes of different depths. The first tools they made in visits were of a similar length regardless of the hole depth. The typical length was usually too short to extract food from the deep holes, which ruled out a strategy of immediate causal inference on the first attempt in a trial. When the first tool failed, the crows made second tools significantly longer than the unsuccessful first tools. There was no evidence that the crows made the lengths of first tools to directly match hole depth. We argue that NC crows may generally use a two-stage heuristic strategy to solve tool problems and that performance on the first attempt in a trial is not necessarily the 'gold standard' for assessing folk physics.  
  Address Department of Psychology, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand. grhunt10@hotmail.com  
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  ISSN 1435-9448 ISBN Medium  
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  Notes PMID:16941156 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 2442  
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Author Call, J. doi  openurl
  Title Inferences by exclusion in the great apes: the effect of age and species Type Journal Article
  Year 2006 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 9 Issue (down) 4 Pages 393-403  
  Keywords Age Factors; Animals; Association Learning; *Cognition; *Concept Formation; *Discrimination Learning; Female; Gorilla gorilla; Hominidae/classification/*psychology; Male; Pan paniscus; Pan troglodytes; Pongo pygmaeus; *Problem Solving; Species Specificity  
  Abstract This study investigated the ability of chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, and bonobos to make inferences by exclusion using the procedure pioneered by Premack and Premack (Cognition 50:347-362, 1994) with chimpanzees. Thirty apes were presented with two different food items (banana vs. grape) on a platform and covered with identical containers. One of the items was removed from the container and placed between the two containers so that subjects could see it. After discarding this item, subjects could select between the two containers. In Experiment 1, apes preferentially selected the container that held the item that the experimenter had not discarded, especially if subjects saw the experimenter remove the item from the container (but without seeing the container empty). Experiment 3 in which the food was removed from one of the containers behind a barrier confirmed these results. In contrast, subjects performed at chance levels when a stimulus (colored plastic chip: Exp. 1; food item: Exp. 2 and Exp. 3) designated the item that had been removed. These results indicated that apes made inferences, not just learned to use a discriminative cue to avoid the empty container. Apes perceived and treated the item discarded by the experimenter as if it were the very one that had been hidden under the container. Results suggested a positive relationship between age and inferential ability independent of memory ability but no species differences.  
  Address Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103, Leipzig, Germany. call@eva.mpg.de  
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  Notes PMID:16924458 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 2444  
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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 (down) 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 1435-9448 ISBN Medium  
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  Notes PMID:16909235 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 2449  
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Author Russell, J.L.; Braccini, S.; Buehler, N.; Kachin, M.J.; Schapiro, S.J.; Hopkins, W.D. doi  openurl
  Title Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) intentional communication is not contingent upon food Type Journal Article
  Year 2005 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 8 Issue (down) 4 Pages 263-272  
  Keywords *Animal Communication; Animals; *Feeding Behavior; Female; Humans; Male; Pan troglodytes/*psychology  
  Abstract Studies of great apes have revealed that they use manual gestures and other signals to communicate about distal objects. There is also evidence that chimpanzees modify the types of communicative signals they use depending on the attentional state of a human communicative partner. The majority of previous studies have involved chimpanzees requesting food items from a human experimenter. Here, these same communicative behaviors are reported in chimpanzees requesting a tool from a human observer. In this study, captive chimpanzees were found to gesture, vocalize, and display more often when the experimenter had a tool than when she did not. It was also found that chimpanzees responded differentially based on the attentional state of a human experimenter, and when given the wrong tool persisted in their communicative efforts. Implications for the referential and intentional nature of chimpanzee communicative signaling are discussed.  
  Address Division of Psychobiology, Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA  
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  Notes PMID:15742162 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 2491  
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Author Santos, L.R.; Barnes, J.L.; Mahajan, N. doi  openurl
  Title Expectations about numerical events in four lemur species (Eulemur fulvus, Eulemur mongoz, Lemur catta and Varecia rubra) Type Journal Article
  Year 2005 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 8 Issue (down) 4 Pages 253-262  
  Keywords Animals; *Behavior, Animal; Female; Lemuridae/classification/*psychology; Male; *Pattern Recognition, Visual  
  Abstract Although much is known about how some primates--in particular, monkeys and apes--represent and enumerate different numbers of objects, very little is known about the numerical abilities of prosimian primates. Here, we explore how four lemur species (Eulemur fulvus, E. mongoz, Lemur catta, and Varecia rubra) represent small numbers of objects. Specifically, we presented lemurs with three expectancy violation looking time experiments aimed at exploring their expectations about a simple 1+1 addition event. In these experiments, we presented subjects with displays in which two lemons were sequentially added behind an occluder and then measured subjects' duration of looking to expected and unexpected outcomes. In experiment 1, subjects looked reliably longer at an unexpected outcome of only one object than at an expected outcome of two objects. Similarly, subjects in experiment 2 looked reliably longer at an unexpected outcome of three objects than at an expected outcome of two objects. In experiment 3, subjects looked reliably longer at an unexpected outcome of one object twice the size of the original than at an expected outcome of two objects of the original size. These results suggest that some prosimian primates understand the outcome of simple arithmetic operations. These results are discussed in light of similar findings in human infants and other adult primates.  
  Address Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA. laurie.santos@yale.edu  
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  ISSN 1435-9448 ISBN Medium  
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  Notes PMID:15729569 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 2492  
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Author Suda, C.; Call, J. doi  openurl
  Title Piagetian conservation of discrete quantities in bonobos (Pan paniscus), chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), and orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) Type Journal Article
  Year 2005 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 8 Issue (down) 4 Pages 220-235  
  Keywords Animals; *Behavior, Animal; Female; Hominidae/*psychology; Male; Pan paniscus; Pan troglodytes; Pongo pygmaeus; *Problem Solving  
  Abstract This study investigated whether physical discreteness helps apes to understand the concept of Piagetian conservation (i.e. the invariance of quantities). Subjects were four bonobos, three chimpanzees, and five orangutans. Apes were tested on their ability to conserve discrete/continuous quantities in an over-conservation procedure in which two unequal quantities of edible rewards underwent various transformations in front of subjects. Subjects were examined to determine whether they could track the larger quantity of reward after the transformation. Comparison between the two types of conservation revealed that tests with bonobos supported the discreteness hypothesis. Bonobos, but neither chimpanzees nor orangutans, performed significantly better with discrete quantities than with continuous ones. The results suggest that at least bonobos could benefit from the discreteness of stimuli in their acquisition of conservation skills.  
  Address Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany. suda@eva.mpg.de  
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  ISSN 1435-9448 ISBN Medium  
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  Notes PMID:15692813 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 2494  
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Author Santos, L.R.; Rosati, A.; Sproul, C.; Spaulding, B.; Hauser, M.D. doi  openurl
  Title Means-means-end tool choice in cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus): finding the limits on primates' knowledge of tools Type Journal Article
  Year 2005 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 8 Issue (down) 4 Pages 236-246  
  Keywords Animals; *Behavior, Animal; *Choice Behavior; Female; Male; *Problem Solving; Saguinus/*psychology  
  Abstract Most studies of animal tool use require subjects to use one object to gain access to a food reward. In many real world situations, however, animals perform more than one action in sequence to achieve their goals. Of theoretical interest is whether animals have the cognitive capacity to recognize the relationship between consecutive action sequences in which there may be one overall goal and several subgoals. Here we ask if cotton-top tamarins, a species that in captivity uses tools to solve means-end problems, can go one step further and use a sequence of tools (means) to obtain food (end). We first trained subjects to use a pulling tool to obtain a food reward. After this initial training, subjects were presented with problems in which one tool had to be used in combination with a second in order to obtain food. Subjects showed great difficulty when two tools were required to obtain the food reward. Although subjects attended to the connection between the tool and food reward, they ignored the physical connection between the two tools. After training on a two-tool problem, we presented subjects with a series of transfer tests to explore if they would generalize to new types of connections between the tools. Subjects readily transferred to new connections. Our results therefore provide the first evidence to date that tamarins can learn to solve problems involving two tools, but that they do so only with sufficient training.  
  Address Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA. laurie.santos@yale.edu  
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  ISSN 1435-9448 ISBN Medium  
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  Notes PMID:15668762 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 2495  
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