Abstract: Past studies of galliform anti-predator behavior show that they discriminate between aerial and ground predators, producing distinctive, functionally referential vocalizations to each class. Within the category of aerial predators, however, studies using overhead models, video images and observations of natural encounters with birds of prey report little evidence that galliforms discriminate between different raptor species. This pattern suggests that the aerial alarm response may be triggered by general features of objects moving in the air. To test whether these birds are also sensitive to more detailed differences between raptor species, adult chickens with young were presented with variously sized trained raptors (small, intermediate, large) under controlled conditions. In response to the small hawk, there was a decline in anti-predator aggression and in aerial alarm calling as the young grew older and less vulnerable to attack by a hawk of this size. During the same developmental period, responses to the largest hawk, which posed the smallest threat to the young at all stages, did not change; there were intermediate changes at this time in response to the middle-sized hawk. Thus the anti-predator behavior of the adult birds varied in an adaptive fashion, changing as a function of both chick age and risk. We discuss these results in light of current issues concerning the cognitive mechanisms underlying alarm calling behavior in animals.

Abstract: Imitation can be defined as the copying of behavior. To a biologist, interest in imitation is focused on its adaptive value for the survival of the organism, but to a psychologist, the mechanisms responsible for imitation are the most interesting. For psychologists, the most important cases of imitation are those that involve demonstrated behavior that the imitator cannot see when it performs the behavior (e.g., scratching one's head). Such examples of imitation are sometimes referred to as opaque imitation because they are difficult to account for without positing cognitive mechanisms, such as perspective taking, that most animals have not been acknowledged to have. The present review first identifies various forms of social influence and social learning that do not qualify as opaque imitation, including species-typical mechanisms (e.g., mimicry and contagion), motivational mechanisms (e.g., social facilitation, incentive motivation, transfer of fear), attentional mechanisms (e.g., local enhancement, stimulus enhancement), imprinting, following, observational conditioning, and learning how the environment works (affordance learning). It then presents evidence for different forms of opaque imitation in animals, and identifies characteristics of human imitation that have been proposed to distinguish it from animal imitation. Finally, it examines the role played in opaque imitation by demonstrator reinforcement and observer motivation. Although accounts of imitation have been proposed that vary in their level of analysis from neural to cognitive, at present no theory of imitation appears to be adequate to account for the varied results that have been found.

Abstract: Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) have learned, like humans, to use an uncertain response adaptively under test conditions that create uncertainty, suggesting a metacognitive process by which human and nonhuman primates may monitor their confidence and alter their behavior accordingly. In this study, 4 rhesus monkeys generalized their use of the uncertain response, without additional training, to 2 familiar tasks (2-choice discrimination learning and mirror-image matching to sample) that predictably and demonstrably produce uncertainty. The monkeys were significantly less likely to use the uncertain response on trials in which the answer might be known. These results indicate that monkeys, like humans, know when they do not know and that they can learn to use a symbol as a generalized means for indicating their uncertainty.

Abstract: Investigation of tool use is an effective way to determine cognitive abilities of animals. This approach raises hypotheses, which delineate limits of animal's competence in understanding of objects properties and interrelations and the influence of individual and social experience on their behaviour. On the basis of brief review of different models of manipulation with objects and tools manufacturing (detaching, subtracting and reshaping) by various animals (from elephants to ants) in natural conditions the experimental data concerning tool usage was considered. Tool behaviour of anumals could be observed rarely and its distribution among different taxons is rather odd. Recent studies have revealed that some species (for instance, bonobos and tamarins) which didn't manipulate tools in wild life appears to be an advanced tool users and even manufacturers in laboratory. Experimental studies of animals tool use include investigation of their ability to use objects physical properties, to categorize objects involved in tool activity by its functional properties, to take forces affecting objects into account, as well as their capacity of planning their actions. The crucial question is whether animals can abstract general principles of relations between objects regardless of the exact circumstances, or they develop specific associations between concerete things and situations. Effectiveness of laboratory methods is estimated in the review basing on comparative studies of tool behaviour, such as “support problem”, “stick problem”, “tube- and tube-trap problem”, and “reserve tube problem”. Levels of social learning, the role of imprinting, and species-specific predisposition to formation of specific domains are discussed. Experimental investigation of tool use allows estimation of the individuals' intelligence in populations. A hypothesis suggesting that strong predisposition to formation of specific associations can serve as a driving force and at the same time as obstacle to animals' activity is discussed. In several “technically gifted” species (such as woodpecker finches, New Caledonian crows, and chimpanzees) tool use seems to be guided by a rapid process of trial and error learning. Individuals that are predisposed to learn specific connections do this too quickly and thus become enslaved by stereotypic solutions of raising problems.

Abstract: In the wake of telling critiques of the foundations on which earlier conclusions were based, the last 15 years have witnessed a renaissance in the study of social learning in apes. As a result, we are able to review 31 experimental studies from this period in which social learning in chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans has been investigated. The principal question framed at the beginning of this era, Do apes ape? has been answered in the affirmative, at least in certain conditions. The more interesting question now is, thus, How do apes ape? Answering this question has engendered richer taxonomies of the range of social-learning processes at work and new methodologies to uncover them. Together, these studies suggest that apes ape by employing a portfolio of alternative social-learning processes in flexibly adaptive ways, in conjunction with nonsocial learning. We conclude by sketching the kind of decision tree that appears to underlie the deployment of these alternatives.