Goodall J. (1964). Tool-using and aimed throwing in a community of free-living chimpanzees. Nature, 201, 1264.
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Sugiyama Y. (1994). Tool use by wild chimpanzees. Nature, 376, 327.
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Fehr, E., & Gachter, S. (2002). Altruistic punishment in humans. Nature, 415(6868), 137–140.
Abstract: Human cooperation is an evolutionary puzzle. Unlike other creatures, people frequently cooperate with genetically unrelated strangers, often in large groups, with people they will never meet again, and when reputation gains are small or absent. These patterns of cooperation cannot be explained by the nepotistic motives associated with the evolutionary theory of kin selection and the selfish motives associated with signalling theory or the theory of reciprocal altruism. Here we show experimentally that the altruistic punishment of defectors is a key motive for the explanation of cooperation. Altruistic punishment means that individuals punish, although the punishment is costly for them and yields no material gain. We show that cooperation flourishes if altruistic punishment is possible, and breaks down if it is ruled out. The evidence indicates that negative emotions towards defectors are the proximate mechanism behind altruistic punishment. These results suggest that future study of the evolution of human cooperation should include a strong focus on explaining altruistic punishment.
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Ferrero, D. M., Moeller, L. M., Osakada, T., Horio, N., Li, Q., Roy, D. S., et al. (2013). A juvenile mouse pheromone inhibits sexual behaviour through the vomeronasal system. Nature, 502(7471), 368–371.
Abstract: Animals display a repertoire of different social behaviours. Appropriate behavioural responses depend on sensory input received during social interactions. In mice, social behaviour is driven by pheromones, chemical signals that encode information related to age, sex and physiological state1. However, although mice show different social behaviours towards adults, juveniles and neonates, sensory cues that enable specific recognition of juvenile mice are unknown. Here we describe a juvenile pheromone produced by young mice before puberty, termed exocrine-gland secreting peptide 22 (ESP22). ESP22 is secreted from the lacrimal gland and released into tears of 2- to 3-week-old mice. Upon detection, ESP22 activates high-affinity sensory neurons in the vomeronasal organ, and downstream limbic neurons in the medial amygdala. Recombinant ESP22, painted on mice, exerts a powerful inhibitory effect on adult male mating behaviour, which is abolished in knockout mice lacking TRPC2, a key signalling component of the vomeronasal organ2, 3. Furthermore, knockout of TRPC2 or loss of ESP22 production results in increased sexual behaviour of adult males towards juveniles, and sexual responses towards ESP22-deficient juveniles are suppressed by ESP22 painting. Thus, we describe a pheromone of sexually immature mice that controls an innate social behaviour, a response pathway through the accessory olfactory system and a new role for vomeronasal organ signalling in inhibiting sexual behaviour towards young. These findings provide a molecular framework for understanding how a sensory system can regulate behaviour.
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Moon, C., Baldridge, M. T., Wallace, M. A., Burnham, C. - A. D., Virgin, H. W., & Stappenbeck, T. S. (2015). Vertically transmitted faecal IgA levels determine extra-chromosomal phenotypic variation. Nature, 521(7550), 90–93.
Abstract: The proliferation of genetically modified mouse models has exposed phenotypic variation between investigators and institutions that has been challenging to control1-5. In many cases, the microbiota is the presumed culprit of the variation. Current solutions to account for phenotypic variability include littermate and maternal controls or defined microbial consortia in gnotobiotic mice6,7. In conventionally raised mice, the microbiome is transmitted from the dam2,8,9. Here we show that microbially–driven dichotomous fecal IgA levels in WT mice within the same facility mimic the effects of chromosomal mutations. We observed in multiple facilities that vertically-transmissible bacteria in IgA-Low mice dominantly lowered fecal IgA levels in IgA-High mice after cohousing or fecal transplantation. In response to injury, IgA-Low mice showed increased damage that was transferable by fecal transplantation and driven by fecal IgA differences. We found that bacteria from IgA-Low mice degraded the secretory component (SC) of SIgA as well as IgA itself. These data indicate that phenotypic comparisons between mice must take into account the non-chromosomal hereditary variation between different breeders. We propose fecal IgA as one marker of microbial variability and conclude that cohousing and/or fecal transplantation enables analysis of progeny from different dams.
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Hamilton, W. D. (1970). Selfish and Spiteful Behaviour in an Evolutionary Model. Nature, 228, 1218–1220.
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Maynard Smith, J., & Price, G. R. (1973). The Logic of Animal Conflict. Nature, 246, 15–18.
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Clutton-Brock, T. H. (1974). Primate social organisation and ecology. Nature, 250(5467), 539–542.
Abstract: Attempts to relate interspecific differences in social organisation among primates to gross differences in habitat or diet type have been largely unsuccessful. This is probably partly because distantly related species have adapted to similar ecological situations in different ways and partly because much finer ecological differences are important.
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Clayton, N. S., & Dickinson, A. (1998). Episodic-like memory during cache recovery by scrub jays. Nature, 395(6699), 272–274.
Abstract: The recollection of past experiences allows us to recall what a particular event was, and where and when it occurred1,2, a form of memory that is thought to be unique to humans3. It is known, however, that food-storing birds remember the spatial location4, 5, 6 and contents6, 7, 8, 9 of their caches. Furthermore, food-storing animals adapt their caching and recovery strategies to the perishability of food stores10, 11, 12, 13, which suggests that they are sensitive to temporal factors. Here we show that scrub jays (Aphelocoma coerulescens) remember 'when' food items are stored by allowing them to recover perishable 'wax worms' (wax-moth larvae) and non-perishable peanuts which they had previously cached in visuospatially distinct sites. Jays searched preferentially for fresh wax worms, their favoured food, when allowed to recover them shortly after caching. However, they rapidly learned to avoid searching for worms after a longer interval during which the worms had decayed. The recovery preference of jays demonstrates memory of where and when particular food items were cached, thereby fulfilling the behavioural criteria for episodic-like memory in non-human animals.
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Packer, C. (1977). Reciprocal altruism in Papio anubis. Nature, 265, 441–445.
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