Kaseda, Y., & K. Nozawa, K. (1996). Father-daughter matings and its avoidance in Misaki feral horses. Anim Sci Tech, 67(11), 996–1002.
Abstract: Father-daughter matings and its avoidance mechanism were analysed on the basis of data which gained from behavioural observations and paternity tests in Misaki feral horses from 1979 to 1994. Twelve stallions and their 51 daughters had 176 breeding seasons, but they lived in the different home range in 82 breeding seasons. About half of 1- to 3-year-old mares emigrated from natal area to the other and grew up there. Therefore, emigrations of young mares may result reduction of contacts and avoidance of inbreeding with their fathers. The stallions and their daughters lived in the same area in 94 breeding seasons, but there were no cases that daughters which left their natal harem groups before sexual maturity formed again stable consort relations with their natal harem stallions. It is possible that separation of young mares from their natal groups before sexual maturity may result avoidance of formation of consort relation with their fathers. Two father-daughter matings were observed in 124 paternity tests. These two daughters were born in the other harem groups than their father's and left their natal groups before maturity. After maturity, one of them formed a stable consort relation with her father and the other remained together with her father for 2 months in the breeding season. Both of them had not experience to have lived with their fathers before maturity. The persent result supports the hypothesis in wild and semi-wild horses that inbreedings between fathers and daughters may be avioded by the experience to have lived together before sexual maturity.
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Rapaport, L., & King, N. E. (1987). The behavioral research program at the Washington Park Zoo. Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci., 18(1), 57–66.
Abstract: For the past decade, the Washington Park Zoo, Portland, Oregon, has had an active behavioral research program. The research department is both a zoo-supported research facility for visiting researchers and staff, and an educational facility that teaches practical behavioral research methods to undergraduates. The research education program utilizes students from any of a dozen local colleges and universities. Students receive academic credit for their participation. Active keeper-participation plays a major role in many research projects. Not only does keeper-cooperation facilitate research, but their knowledge of the individual animals often proves invaluable. In addition to involvement in student projects, keepers have also conducted their own research projects.
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Kirkpatrick, J. F., & Turner, J. W. J. (1986). Comparative reproductive biology of North American feral horses. J. Equine Vet. Sci., 6, 224–230.
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Miller, J. A. (1985). Telling a quagga by its stripes. (extinct South African animal). Sci. News, 128, 70.
Abstract: If, in a mix-up at a costume shop, a couple were issued the front half of a zebra suit and the back half of a horse, it could be considered a quagga disguise. But if the masqueraders were pressed as to whether they were more horse or more zebra, the latest biochemical research advises them to insist on zebra.
The quagga, a South African animal extinct for more than 100 years, has been a source of confusion among taxonomists. Some contend, on the basis of the quagga skins preserved in museums, that this front-striped animal is a zebra, either a fourth zebra species or a variant of the Plains zebra, whose hindquarter stripes are dim. But others have argued that the quagga's teeth and skeleton indicate that its nearest relative is the true horse.
Biochemists joined the fray last year when muscle tissue was obtained from a salt-preserved quagga pelt in a West German museum. The tissue yielded both proteins and genes that could be analyzed (SN:6/9/84, p. 356).
Now the analysis has yielded some results. According to “remarkably concordant” findings on the proteins and on the genes, the quagga was a subspecies of the Plains zebra, says Jerold M. Lowenstein of the University of California at San Francisco. He looked at the binding between a sample of quagga proteins and mixtures of antibodies that bind to blood-serum proteins of each of the extant Equus species. The quagga sample bound more of the antibodies against Plains zebra serum than against the other species. Lowenstein calculates that the quagga relationship with the Plains zebra is six times closer than its relationship with the two other zebra species.
“We had to use special techniques to show the difference,” Lowenstein told SCIENCE NEWS. “There is 99 percent identity on the protein level. All the [Equus] species diverged within the past 5 million years, which is only yesterday in evolutionary terms.”
The quagga-Plains zebra relationship is further supported by the analysis of quagga mitochondrial genes performed by Russell Higuchi and Allan Wilson at the University of California at Berkeley. They find seven times as great a difference between quagga and Mountain zebra DNA as they do between quagga and Plains zebra DNA.
“Stripes, the molecules tell us, do make a zebra,” Lowenstein concludes in the July 18 NEW SCIENTIST, “and the half-striped quagga was a Plains zebra.”
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Singh, M., Singh, M., Sharma, A. K., & Krishna B. A. (2003). Methodological considerations in measurement of dominance in primates. CURRENT SCIENCE, 84(5), 709–713.
Abstract: The strength of dominance hierarchy in a group of
animals needs to be quantitatively measured since it
influences many other aspects of social interactions.
This article discusses three attempts made by previous
researchers to measure the strength of hierarchy. We
propose a method which attempts to rectify the lacunae
in the previous attempts. Data are used from a
group of Japanese macaques housed in a colony. A
method to calculate strength of hierarchy has been
illustrated and a procedure has been suggested to
normalize the dominance scores in order to place the
ranks of individuals on an interval scale.
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Emery, N. J., & Clayton, N. S. (2004). The Mentality of Crows: Convergent Evolution of Intelligence in Corvids and Apes. Science, 306(5703), 1903–1907.
Abstract: Discussions of the evolution of intelligence have focused on monkeys and apes because of their close evolutionary relationship to humans. Other large-brained social animals, such as corvids, also understand their physical and social worlds. Here we review recent studies of tool manufacture, mental time travel, and social cognition in corvids, and suggest that complex cognition depends on a “tool kit” consisting of causal reasoning, flexibility, imagination, and prospection. Because corvids and apes share these cognitive tools, we argue that complex cognitive abilities evolved multiple times in distantly related species with vastly different brain structures in order to solve similar socioecological problems.
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Jolly, A. (1966). Lemur social behavior and primate intelligence. Science, 153(3735), 501–506.
Abstract: Our human intellect has resulted from an enormous leap in capacity above the level of monkeys and apes. Earlier, though, Old and New World monkeys' intelligence outdistanced that of other mammals, including the prosimian primates. This first great advance in intelligence probably was selected through interspecific competition on the large continents. However, even at this early stage, primate social life provided the evolutionary context of primate intelligence.
Two arguments support this conclusion. One is ontogenetic: modern monkeys learn so much of their social behavior, and learn their behavior toward food and toward other species through social example. The second is phylogenetic: some prosimians, the social lemurs, have evolved the usual primate type of society and social learning without the capacity to manipulate objects as monkeys do. It thus seems likely that the rudiments of primate society preceded the growth of primate intelligence, made it possible, and determined its nature.
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Griffiths D., Dickinson A., & Clayton N. (1999). Episodic memory: what can animals remember about their past? Trends. Cognit. Sci., 3, 74–80.
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Byrne R.W. (2000). - Animal Cognition in Nature, edited by Russell P. Balda, Irene M. Pepperberg and Alan C. Kamil. Trends. Cognit. Sci., 4, 73.
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Terrace, H. S. (1985). Animal Cognition: Thinking without Language. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences (1934-1990), 308(1135), 113–128.
Abstract: Recent attempts to teach apes rudimentary grammatical skills have produced negative results. The basic obstacle appears to be at the level of the individual symbol which, for apes, functions only as a demand. Evidence is lacking that apes can use symbols as names, that is, as a means of simply transmitting information. Even though non-human animals lack linguistic competence, much evidence has recently accumulated that a variety of animals can represent particular features of their environment. What then is the non-verbal nature of animal representations? This question will be discussed with reference to the following findings of studies of serial learning by pigeons. While learning to produce a particular sequence of four elements (colours), pigeons also acquire knowledge about the relation between non-adjacent elements and about the ordinal position of a particular element. Learning to produce a particular sequence also facilitates the discrimination of that sequence from other sequences.
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