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McComb, K.; Shannon, G.; Durant, S.M.; Sayialel, K.; Slotow, R.; Poole, J.; Moss, C. |
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Title |
Leadership in elephants: the adaptive value of age |
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Journal Article |
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2011 |
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Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences |
Abbreviated Journal |
Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B. |
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278 |
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1722 |
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3270-3276 |
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The value of age is well recognized in human societies, where older individuals often emerge as leaders in tasks requiring specialized knowledge, but what part do such individuals play in other social species? Despite growing interest in how effective leadership might be achieved in animal social systems, the specific role that older leaders may play in decision-making has rarely been experimentally investigated. Here, we use a novel playback paradigm to demonstrate that in African elephants (Loxodonta africana), age affects the ability of matriarchs to make ecologically relevant decisions in a domain critical to survival—the assessment of predatory threat. While groups consistently adjust their defensive behaviour to the greater threat of three roaring lions versus one, families with younger matriarchs typically under-react to roars from male lions despite the severe danger they represent. Sensitivity to this key threat increases with matriarch age and is greatest for the oldest matriarchs, who are likely to have accumulated the most experience. Our study provides the first empirical evidence that individuals within a social group may derive significant benefits from the influence of an older leader because of their enhanced ability to make crucial decisions about predatory threat, generating important insights into selection for longevity in cognitively advanced social mammals. |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
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5652 |
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Proops, L.; McComb, K. |
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Title |
Cross-modal individual recognition in domestic horses (Equus caballus) extends to familiar humans |
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Journal Article |
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2012 |
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Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences |
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279 |
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1741 |
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3131-3138 |
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It has recently been shown that some non-human animals can cross-modally recognize members of their own taxon. What is unclear is just how plastic this recognition system can be. In this study, we investigate whether an animal, the domestic horse, is capable of spontaneous cross-modal recognition of individuals from a morphologically very different species. We also provide the first insights into how cross-modal identity information is processed by examining whether there are hemispheric biases in this important social skill. In our preferential looking paradigm, subjects were presented with two people and playbacks of their voices to determine whether they were able to match the voice with the person. When presented with familiar handlers subjects could match the specific familiar person with the correct familiar voice. Horses were significantly better at performing the matching task when the congruent person was standing on their right, indicating marked hemispheric specialization (left hemisphere bias) in this ability. These results are the first to demonstrate that cross-modal recognition in animals can extend to individuals from phylogenetically very distant species. They also indicate that processes governed by the left hemisphere are central to the cross-modal matching of visual and auditory information from familiar individuals in a naturalistic setting. |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
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5616 |
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Pedersen, E.J.; Kurzban, R.; McCullough, M.E. |
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Do humans really punish altruistically? A closer look |
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Journal Article |
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2013 |
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Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences |
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Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B |
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280 |
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1758 |
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Some researchers have proposed that natural selection has given rise in humans to one or more adaptations for altruistically punishing on behalf of other individuals who have been treated unfairly, even when the punisher has no chance of benefiting via reciprocity or benefits to kin. However, empirical support for the altruistic punishment hypothesis depends on results from experiments that are vulnerable to potentially important experimental artefacts. Here, we searched for evidence of altruistic punishment in an experiment that precluded these artefacts. In so doing, we found that victims of unfairness punished transgressors, whereas witnesses of unfairness did not. Furthermore, witnesses’ emotional reactions to unfairness were characterized by envy of the unfair individual's selfish gains rather than by moralistic anger towards the unfair behaviour. In a second experiment run independently in two separate samples, we found that previous evidence for altruistic punishment plausibly resulted from affective forecasting error—that is, limitations on humans’ abilities to accurately simulate how they would feel in hypothetical situations. Together, these findings suggest that the case for altruistic punishment in humans—a view that has gained increasing attention in the biological and social sciences—has been overstated. |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
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5804 |
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Author |
Wittig, R.M.; Crockford, C.; Langergraber, K.E.; Zuberbühler, K. |
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Title |
Triadic social interactions operate across time: a field experiment with wild chimpanzees |
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Journal Article |
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2014 |
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Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences |
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Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B |
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281 |
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1779 |
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Social animals cooperate with bonding partners to outcompete others. Predicting a competitor's supporter is likely to be beneficial, regardless of whether the supporting relationship is stable or transient, or whether the support happens immediately or later. Although humans make such predictions frequently, it is unclear to what extent animals have the cognitive abilities to recognize others’ transient bond partners and to predict others' coalitions that extend beyond the immediate present. We conducted playback experiments with wild chimpanzees to test this. About 2 h after fighting, subjects heard recordings of aggressive barks of a bystander, who was or was not a bond partner of the former opponent. Subjects looked longer and moved away more often from barks of the former opponents’ bond partners than non-bond partners. In an additional experiment, subjects moved away more from barks than socially benign calls of the same bond partner. These effects were present despite differences in genetic relatedness and considerable time delays between the two events. Chimpanzees, it appears, integrate memories of social interactions from different sources to make inferences about current interactions. This ability is crucial for connecting triadic social interactions across time, a requirement for predicting aggressive support even after a time delay. |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
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5803 |
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