Abstract: Genetic parameters of eventing horse competitions were estimated. About 13 000 horses, 30 000 annual results during 17 years and 110 000 starts in eventing competitions during 8 years were recorded. The measures of performance were logarithmic transformations of annual earnings, annual earnings per start, and annual earnings per place, and underlying variables responsible for ranks in each competition. Heritabilities were low (0.11 / 0.17 for annual results, 0.07 for ranks). Genetic correlations between criteria were high (greater than 0.90) except between ranks and earnings per place (0.58) or per start (0.67). Genetic correlations between ages (from 5 to 10 years old) were also high (more than 0.85) and allow selection on early performances. The genetic correlation between the results in different levels of competition (high/international and low/amateur) was near 1. Genetic correlations of eventing with other disciplines, which included partial aptitude needed for eventing, were very low for steeplechase races (0.18) and moderate with sport: jumping (0.45), dressage (0.58). The results suggest that selection on jumping performance will lead to some positive correlated response for eventing performance, but much more response could be obtained if a specific breeding objective and selection criteria were developed for eventing.

Abstract: What examples of convergence in higher-level complex cognitive characteristics exist in the animal kingdom? In this paper I will provide evidence that convergent intelligence has occurred in two distantly related mammalian taxa. One of these is the order Cetacea (dolphins, whales and porpoises) and the other is our own order Primates, and in particular the suborder anthropoid primates (monkeys, apes, and humans). Despite a deep evolutionary divergence, adaptation to physically dissimilar environments, and very different neuroanatomical organization, some primates and cetaceans show striking convergence in social behavior, artificial 'language' comprehension, and self-recognition ability. Taken together, these findings have important implications for understanding the generality and specificity of those processes that underlie cognition in different species and the nature of the evolution of intelligence.

Abstract: Mammals show extensive interspecific variation in the form of maternal care. Among ungulates, there is a dichotomy between species in which offspring follow the mother (“following” strategy) versus species in which offspring remain concealed (“hiding” strategy). Here we reveal that the same dichotomy exists among macropods (kangaroos, wallabies and allies). We test three traditional adaptive explanations and one new life history hypothesis, and find very similar patterns among both ungulates and macropods. The three traditional explanations that we tested were that a “following” strategy is associated with (1) open habitat, (2) large mothers, and (3) gregariousness. Our new life-history hypothesis is that a “following strategy” is associated with delayed weaning, and thus with the “slow” end of the slow-fast mammalian life-history continuum, because offspring devote resources to locomotion rather than rapid growth. Our comparative test strongly supports the habitat structure hypothesis and provides some support for this new delayed weaning hypothesis for both ungulates and macropods. We propose that sedentary young in closed habitats benefit energetically by having milk brought to them. In open habitats, predation pressure will select against hiding. Followers will suffer slower growth to independence. Taken together, therefore, our results provide the first quantitative evidence that macropods and ungulates are convergent with respect to interspecific variation in maternal care strategy. In both clades, differences between species in the form of parental care are due to a similar interaction between habitat, social behavior, and life history. Corresponding Editor: B. Crespi

Abstract: Conventional wisdom over the past 160 years in the cognitive and neurosciences has assumed that brains evolved to process factual information about the world. Most attention has therefore been focused on such features as pattern recognition, color vision, and speech perception. By extension, it was assumed that brains evolved to deal with essentially ecological problem-solving tasks. © 1998 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Abstract: Herring gulls drop hard-shelled mollusks and hermit crab-inhabited molluskan prey in order to break the shells and gain access to the edible interior. A field study of predatory shell dropping on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, U.S.A. showed that the gulls usually drop the same shell repeatedly, orient directly to dropping sites that are invisible from the point at which the mollusks are captured, drop preferentially on hard surfaces, adjust dropping heights to suit the area and elasticity of the substrate, orient directly into the wind while dropping, sever the large defensive cheliped of hermit crabs before consumption, and rinse prey that is difficult to swallow. Proficiency in prey dropping is acquired through dropping objects in play, trial-and-error learning, and perhaps, observation learning.
Observable attributes of predatory shell-dropping support inferences that the gulls are capable of extended concentration, purposefulness, mental representation of spatially and temporally displaced environmental features, cognitive mapping, cognitive modeling, selectivity, and strategy formation. Identical cognitive processes have been inferred to underlie the most sophisticated forms of chimpanzee tool-use.
Advanced cognitive capacities are not restricted to chimpanzees and other pongids, and are not associated uniquely with tool use. The chimpocentric bias should be abandoned, and reconstructions of the evolution of intelligence should be modified accordingly.