Abstract: Researchers with diverse interests in topics ranging from the formation of dominance hierarchies and social intelligence to animal personalities have predicted specific, and often conflicting, relations between social rank, neophobia and learning ability. We investigated the relations between these variables in captive groups of wild-caught starlings, Sturnus vulgaris, adopting a multidimensional approach to social rank and neophobia. Both agonistic and competitive rank orders were determined for each group and we tested individuals in the absence of their groupmates for object neophobia, latency to feed in a novel environment and performance on an extractive foraging task. In each starling group, the fastest learners occupied the highest competitive ranks, supporting the hypothesis that cognitive ability is positively correlated with social dominance. Competitive rank orders, however, did not correlate significantly with agonistic rank orders. Situation-specific foraging neophobia was suggested: individuals showed consistency in their latencies to feed near a variety of novel objects, but no significant correlation was found between this measure of object neophobia and latency to feed in a novel environment. Starlings fastest to feed in the novel environment were fastest in solving the foraging task. We discuss the implications of these findings for researchers studying hierarchy formation in animal groups, social intelligence and animal personalities.

Abstract: Recent attention has been drawn to the existence of individual differences in correlated behaviour across contexts, animal `personality' (Gosling 2001, Psychological Bulletin, 127, 45-86) and behavioural syndromes (Sih et al. 2004b, Quarterly Review of Biology, 79, 241-277). The causes of these patterns of behaviour are subjects of debate. Here, we present a very simple model of how adaptively managing noisy information, combined with differences in individual state, can lead to evolutionarily stable differences in how individuals respond to environmental cues. When information is very noisy, behavioural syndromes are most likely, but as long as there is some error, some types of individuals display the same behaviour in all contexts. In extreme cases, very few individuals display flexible behaviour, and different stable behavioural types dominate the population.

Abstract: Cuttlefish have a large repertoire of body patterns that are used for camouflage and interspecific signaling. Intraspecific signaling by male cuttlefish has been well documented but studies on signaling by females are lacking. We found that females displayed a newly described body pattern termed Splotch toward their mirror image and female conspecifics, but not to males, prey or inanimate objects. Female cuttlefish may use the Splotch body pattern as an intraspecific signal, possibly to reduce agonistic interactions. The ability of females to produce a consistent body pattern in response to conspecifics and mirrors suggests that they can recognize same-sex conspecifics using visual cues, despite the lack of sexual dimorphism visible to human observers.

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: The ability to act on information flexibly is one of the cornerstones of intelligent behavior. As particularly informative example, tool-oriented behavior has been investigated to determine to which extent nonhuman animals understand means-end relations, object affordances, and have specific motor skills. Even planning with foresight, goal-directed problem solving and immediate causal inference have been a focus of research. However, these cognitive abilities may not be restricted to tool-using animals but may be found also in animals that show high levels of curiosity, object exploration and manipulation, and extractive foraging behavior. The kea, a New Zealand parrot, is a particularly good example. We here review findings from laboratory experiments and field observations of keas revealing surprising cognitive capacities in the physical domain. In an experiment with captive keas, the success rate of individuals that were allowed to observe a trained conspecific was significantly higher than that of naive control subjects due to their acquisition of some functional understanding of the task through observation. In a further experiment using the string-pulling task, a well-probed test for means-end comprehension, we found the keas finding an immediate solution that could not be improved upon in nine further trials. We interpreted their performance as insightful in the sense of being sensitive of the relevant functional properties of the task and thereby producing a new adaptive response without trial-and-error learning. Together, these findings contribute to the ongoing debate on the distribution of higher cognitive skills in the animal kingdom by showing high levels of sensorimotor intelligence in animals that do not use tools. In conclusion, we suggest that the 'Technical intelligence hypothesis' (Byrne, Machiavellian intelligence II: extensions and evaluations, pp 289-211, 1997), which has been proposed to explain the origin of the ape/monkey grade-shift in intelligence by a selection pressure upon an increased efficiency in foraging behavior, should be extended, that is, applied to some birds as well.