Abstract: Innovative problem solving enables individuals to deal with novel social and ecological challenges. However, our understanding of the importance of innovation for animals in their natural habitat is limited because experimental investigations of innovation have historically focused on captive animals. To determine how captivity affects innovation, and whether captive studies of animal innovation suffer from low external validity, we need experimental investigations of innovation in both wild and captive populations of the same species in diverse taxa. Here we inquired whether wild and captive spotted hyaenas differ in their ability to solve the same novel technical problem, and in the diversity of exploratory behaviours they exhibit when first interacting with the problem. Our results suggest that wild and captive populations show important differences in their innovative problem-solving abilities. Captive hyaenas were significantly more successful at solving the novel problem, and significantly more diverse in their initial exploratory behaviour, than were wild hyaenas. We were able to rule out hypotheses suggesting that these differences result from excess energy or time available to captive animals. We conclude that captive hyaenas were more successful because captive individuals were less neophobic and more exploratory than their wild counterparts. These results have important implications for our interpretation of studies on innovative problem solving in captive animals and aid our attempts to gain a broader understanding of the importance of innovation for animals in their natural habitat.

Abstract: Cortisol levels in hair samples were examined in fourteen domestic dogs and related to the dogs’ responses to different acoustic stimuli. Stimuli were playbacks of species-typical vocalizations recorded during three different situations (“disturbance”, “isolation” and “play” barks) and the sounds of a thunderstorm. Hair samples were collected at 9:00 h and 17:00 h two weeks after the behavioural tests. Results showed that behavioural reactivity to playback of the various stimuli correlates with cortisol levels in hair samples collected at 9:00 h, and the same was the case for the separate measures of behaviour (i.e. hiding, running away, seeking attention from the tester, panting and lowering of the body posture). Hence, levels of cortisol in hair appear to reflect the dog’s chronic state of emotional reactivity, or temperament.

Abstract: Both in humans and non-human animals, it has been shown that individuals attend more to those they have previously interacted with and/or they are more closely associated with than to unfamiliar individuals. Whether this preference is mediated by mere social familiarity based on exposure or by the specific relationship between the two individuals, however, remains unclear. The domestic dog is an interesting subject in this line of research as it lives in the human environment and regularly interacts with numerous humans, yet it often has a particularly close relationship with its owner. Therefore, we investigated how long dogs (Canis familiaris) would attend to the actions of two familiar humans and one unfamiliar experimenter, while varying whether dogs had a close relationship with only one or both familiar humans. Our data provide evidence that social familiarity by itself cannot account for dogs’ increased attention towards their owners since they only attended more to those familiar humans with whom they also had a close relationship.

Abstract: Social learning is a more efficient method of information acquisition and application than trial and error learning and is prevalent across a variety of animal taxa. Social learning is assumed to be important for elephants, but evidence in support of that claim is mostly anecdotal. Using a herd of six adult female African bush elephants (Loxodonta africana africana) at the San Diego Zoo’s Safari Park, we evaluated whether viewing a conspecific’s interactions facilitated learning of a novel task. The tasks used feeding apparatus that could be solved in one of two distinct ways. Contrary to our hypothesis, the method the demonstrating animal used did not predict the method used by the observer. However, we did find evidence of social learning: After watching the model, subjects spent a greater percentage of their time interacting with the apparatus than they did in unmodeled trials. These results suggest that the demonstrations of a model may increase the motivation of elephants to explore novel foraging tasks.

Abstract: Conservation agencies within the European Union promote the restoration of traditional land uses as a cost-effective way to preserve biodiversity outside reserves. Although the European Union pursues the integration of the environment into strategic decision-making, it also dictates sectoral policies that may damage farmland biodiversity. We illustrate this point by outlining the socioeconomic factors that allow the persistence of traditional free-ranging horse husbandry in Galicia, northwestern Spain. Free-ranging Galician mountain ponies provide ecological and socioeconomic services including the prevention of forest fires, the maintenance of heathlands and wolves, and the attenuation of wolf-human conflicts. This traditional livestock system may have persisted because it entails negligible costs for farmers. Wolf predation upon Galician mountain ponies does not threaten farmer's economies and seems to be tolerated better than attacks to more valuable stock. Recently, European Union's regulations on animal welfare, carcass management, or meat production put new economic and administrative burdens on farmers, make free-ranging horse rearing economically unsustainable, and incentivize its abandonment. The aim of the European Union to integrate environmental policies may be successful to preserve farmland biodiversity only through careful anticipation of the side effects of apparently unrelated regulations on the fragile equilibrium that sustain traditional land uses.