Abstract: In mirror mark tests dolphins twist, posture, and engage in open-mouth and head movements, often repetitive. Because postures and an open mouth are also dolphin social behaviors, we used self-view television as a manipulatable mirror to distinguish between self-examination and social behavior. Two dolphins were exposed to alternating real-time self-view (“mirror mode”) and playback of the same to determine if they distinguished between them. The adult male engaged in elaborate open-mouth behaviors in mirror mode, but usually just watched when played back the same material. Mirror mode behavior was also compared to interacting with real dolphins (controls). Mark tests were conducted, as well as switches from front to side self-views to see if the dolphins turned. They presented marked areas to the self-view television and turned. The results suggest self-examination over social behavior.

Abstract: The authors demonstrated individual differences in inhibited behavior and withdrawal responses of laboratory-born rhesus monkeys when initially exposed to a snake. Most monkeys displayed a small significant increase in their behavioral inhibition in the presence of a snake. A few monkeys had marked responses, and some actively withdrew. Although the responses of the most extreme laboratory-born monkeys were comparable to feral-born monkeys, the responses of the laboratory-born monkeys rapidly habituated. The individual differences in the responses of naive monkeys likely reflect a continuum from orienting to wariness to fear. A neurobiological model is presented that addresses potential mechanisms underlying these individual differences, their relation to fear, and how they may predispose to phobia development.

Abstract: Horses fulfill many of the criteria for a species in which it would be adaptive to be capable of individual recognition: they are highly social, form strong and long lasting bonds, their affiliations are rarely kin based, they have a fission-fusion social structure and they possess inter and intra-group dominance hierarchies.
We used a novel cross-modal, expectancy violation paradigm to provide the first systematic evidence that a non-human animal – the domestic horse- is capable of cross modal recognition. We believe this paradigm could provide an ideal way to study individual recognition across a wide range of species.
For full published details see: Proops L, McComb K, Reby D (2009) Cross-modal individual recognition in domestic horses (Equus caballus). Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 106: 947-951.

Abstract: Recent research has shown that domestic dogs are particularly good at reading human attentional cues, often outperforming chimpanzees and hand reared wolves [1, 2]. It has been suggested that the close evolutionary relationship between humans and dogs has led to the development of this ability, however very few other species have been studied [3]. We tested the ability of 24 domestic horses to discriminate between an attentive and inattentive person when choosing whom to approach for food. While the attentive person faced forwards, the inattentive person either stood with their body turned 180° away from the subject (body orientation condition), stood with their body facing forwards but their head facing away (head orientation condition) or stood facing forwards but with their eyes closed (eyes closed condition). A fourth, mixed condition was included where the attentive person stood with their body facing away from the subjects but their head turned towards the subject while the inattentive person stood with their body facing the subject but their head turned away. Horses chose the attentive person significantly more often using the body cue (n = 24, k = 19, p = 0.003), the head cue (n = 24, k = 18, p = 0.011), and the eye cue (n = 24, k = 19, p = 0.003) but not the mixed cue (n = 24, k = 13, p = 0.42). In an additional pilot study, horses were tested in an object choice task. A human experimenter cued one of two buckets by either tapping the bucket (tap condition), orienting their body towards the bucket and pointing (body and point condition), pointing while facing forwards (point condition) or orienting their body towards the bucket (body condition). If the subjects chose the correct bucket they were rewarded. Subjects were able to use the tap cue (n = 31, k = 21, p = 0.035), body + point cue (n= 31, k = 21, p = 0.035) and the point cue (n = 30, k = 21, p = 0.021) but not the body cue (n = 31, k = 11, p = 0.076). These results taken together suggest that domestic horses are also very sensitive to human attentional cues, including gaze.
Keywords:
social cognition, animal-human interaction, horses, attention attribution, domestication
1. Hare, B., Brown, M., Williamson, C., and Tomasello, M. (2002). The domestication of social cognition in dogs. Science 298, 1634-1636.
2. Gacsi, M., Miklosi, A., Varga, O., Topal, J., and Csanyi, V. (2004). Are readers of our face readers of our minds` Dogs (Canis familiaris) show situation-dependent recognition of human’s attention. Animal Cognition 7, 144-153.
3. Hare, B., and Tomasello, M. (2005). Human-like social skills in dogs? Trends Cogn. Sci. 9, 439-444.

Abstract: A. Whiten, D. M. Custance, J.-C. Gomez, P. Teixidor, and K. A. Bard (1996) tested chimpanzees' (Pan troglodytes) and human children's (Homo sapiens) skills at imitation with a 2-action test on an “artificial fruit.” Chimpanzees imitated to a restricted degree; children were more thoroughly imitative. Such results prompted some to assert that the difference in imitation indicates a difference in the subjects' understanding of the intentions of the demonstrator (M. Tomasello, 1996). In this experiment, 37 adult human subjects were tested with the artificial fruit. Far from being perfect imitators, the adults were less imitative than the children. These results cast doubt on the inference from imitative performance to an ability to understand others' intentions. The results also demonstrate how any test of imitation requires a control group and attention to the level of behavioral analysis.