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Healy, S., & Braithwaite, V. (2000). Cognitive ecology: a field of substance? Trends. Ecol. Evol, 15(1), 22–26.
Abstract: In 1993, Les Real invented the label 'cognitive ecology'. This label was intended for work that brought cognitive science and behavioural ecology together. Real's article stressed the importance of such an approach to the understanding of behaviour. At the end of a decade in which more interdisciplinary work on behaviour has been seen than for many years, it is time to assess whether cognitive ecology is a label describing an active field.
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Shettleworth, S. J. (2000). Cognitive ecology: field or label? Trends. Ecol. Evol, 15(4), 161.
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Weeks, J. W., Crowell-Davis, S. L., Caudle, A. B., & Heusner, G. L. (2000). Aggression and social spacing in light horse (Equus caballus) mares and foals. Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci., 68(4), 319–337.
Abstract: Aggression and social spacing were studied in 14 light horse mares and their foals living at pasture. Focal samples were collected on each mare-foal dyad for 6 to 10.5 h from 2 months of foal age until weaning at approximately 4 months of age. Observations on foals continued until approximately 6 months of age for 7.5 to 10.5 h per foal. Every 2 min the identities of all individuals within 5 m were recorded. All occurrences of agonistic behavior, and the participants, were recorded during the focal samples. In addition, during feeding of supplemental grain, all occurrences of agonistic behavior by all subjects were recorded. Significant correlations were found between mare rank and the rank of foals both prior to and after weaning. Before weaning, the rank of the foal was significantly correlated with birth order. No significant correlation between birth order and foal rank was found for the post-weaning hierarchy. An animal's gender had no significant effect on foal rank or the choice of preferred associate. Both prior to and after weaning, foals associated preferentially with the foal of their dam's most preferred associate. In addition, significant positive correlations were found between rank of mares and foals and the rate at which they directed aggression to other herd members. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V.
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Emery, N. J. (2000). The eyes have it: the neuroethology, function and evolution of social gaze. Neurosci Biobehav Rev, 24(6), 581–604.
Abstract: Gaze is an important component of social interaction. The function, evolution and neurobiology of gaze processing are therefore of interest to a number of researchers. This review discusses the evolutionary role of social gaze in vertebrates (focusing on primates), and a hypothesis that this role has changed substantially for primates compared to other animals. This change may have been driven by morphological changes to the face and eyes of primates, limitations in the facial anatomy of other vertebrates, changes in the ecology of the environment in which primates live, and a necessity to communicate information about the environment, emotional and mental states. The eyes represent different levels of signal value depending on the status, disposition and emotional state of the sender and receiver of such signals. There are regions in the monkey and human brain which contain neurons that respond selectively to faces, bodies and eye gaze. The ability to follow another individual's gaze direction is affected in individuals with autism and other psychopathological disorders, and after particular localized brain lesions. The hypothesis that gaze following is “hard-wired” in the brain, and may be localized within a circuit linking the superior temporal sulcus, amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex is discussed.
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P. K. McGregor,, & T. M. Peake,. (2000). Communication networks: social environments for receiving and signalling behaviour. Acta. Ethol., 2(2), 71–81.
Abstract: Communication and social behaviour are inextricably linked, with communication mediating important social behaviours such as resource defence and mate attraction. However, the social environment in which communication occurs is often ignored in discussions of communication behaviour. We argue that networks of several individuals are the common social environment for communication behaviour. The consequences for receivers and signallers of communicating in a network environment are the main subjects of this review. Eavesdropping is a receiving behaviour that is only possible in the environment of a network and therefore we concentrate on this behaviour. The main effect of communication networks on signallers is to create competition with other signallers for receiver attention. We discuss the consequences of such competition. To conclude, we explore the role of signals and signalling interactions as sources of information that animals exploit to direct their behaviour.
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Kusayama, T., Bischof, H. - J., & Watanabe, S. (2000). Responses to mirror-image stimulation in jungle crows (Corvus macrorhynchos). Anim. Cogn., 3(1), 61–64.
Abstract: Four jungle crows (Corvus macrorhynchos) were exposed to a mirror placed either vertically or horizontally. The most frequently observed behaviors were pecking at the mirror and wing flapping when looking toward the mirror. These behavior patterns, which were only rarely observed when the mirror was reversed, can be interpreted as aggressive behaviors against a conspecific. The vertical mirror evoked the behaviors more often than the horizontal mirror. The present results suggest that crows perceive their mirror image as an image of a conspecific, not as their own.
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Regolin, L., Tommasi, L., & Vallortigara, G. (2000). Visual perception of biological motion in newly hatched chicks as revealed by an imprinting procedure. Anim. Cogn., 3(1), 53–60.
Abstract: Day-old chicks were exposed to point-light animation sequences depicting either a walking hen or a rotating cylinder. On a subsequent free-choice test (experiment 1) the chicks approached the novel stimulus, irrespective of this being the hen or the cylinder. In order to obtain equivalent local motion vectors, in experiments 2 and 3 newly hatched chicks were exposed either to a point-light animation sequence depicting a walking hen, or to a positionally scrambled walking hen (i.e. an animation in which exactly the same set of dots in motion as that employed for the walking hen was presented, but with spatially randomized starting positions). Chicks tested on day 1 (experiment 2) or on day 2 (i.e. after a period in the dark following exposure on day 1 (experiment 3)) proved able to discriminate the two animation sequences: males preferentially approached the novel stimulus, females the familiar one. These results indicate that discrimination was not based on local motion vectors, but rather on the temporally integrated motion sequence.
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Depraz, V., Leboucher, G., & Kreutzer, M. (2000). Early tutoring and adult reproductive behaviour in female domestic canary (Serinus canaria). Anim. Cogn., 3(1), 45–51.
Abstract: We studied the effect of early tutoring on the subsequent sexual preferences and reproductive activity of female domestic canaries (Serinus canaria). Young female canaries were exposed during the first 4 months of life to songs of either domestic or wild canaries. When adult, these females were again exposed to domestic or wild songs. In the first experiment, the sexual responses of the females to unfamiliar domestic and wild songs were quantified with the copulation solicitation display (CSD) assay. In the second experiment, the same females were tested again with modified tutoring songs. In the third experiment, song stimulation of nest-building and egg-laying was studied. Domestic-strain-tutored females gave more CSDs to domestic than to wild songs. In contrast, wild-strain-tutored females showed no sexual preference. We propose that the sexual preference of adult domestic-strain-tutored female canaries for domestic songs is the consequence of learning and categorisation processes. The discrepancy between the results of the domestic-strain-tutored females and those of the wild-strain-tutored females suggests that female canaries have a predisposition to learn songs of their own strain rather than songs of an alien strain. In the third experiment nest-building and egg-laying activities appeared to be unaffected by early tutoring conditions: there was no significant differential effect of the different tutoring and exposure conditions on nest-building and egg-laying scores. Mate attraction and stimulation of females' reproductive activity appear to be two separate functions of male song, which may have been shaped by different evolutionary constraints.
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Xia, L., Siemann, M., & Delius, J. D. (2000). Matching of numerical symbols with number of responses by pigeons. Anim. Cogn., 3(1), 35–43.
Abstract: Pigeons were trained to peck a certain number of times on a key that displayed one of several possible numerical symbols. The particular symbol displayed indicated the number of times that the key had to be pecked. The pigeons signalled the completion of the requirement by operating a separate key. They received a food reward for correct response sequences and time-out penalties for incorrect response sequences. In the first experiment nine pigeons learned to allocate 1, 2, 3 or 4 pecks to the corresponding numerosity symbols s1, s2, s3 and s4 with levels of accuracy well above chance. The second experiment explored the maximum set of numerosities that the pigeons were capable of handling concurrently. Six of the pigeons coped with an s1-s5 task and four pigeons even managed an s1-s6 task with performances that were significantly above chance. Analysis of response times suggested that the pigeons were mainly relying on a number-based rather than on a time-based strategy.
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Call, J., Agnetta, B., & Tomasello, M. (2000). Cues that chimpanzees do and do not use to find hidden objects. Anim. Cogn., 3(1), 23–34.
Abstract: Chimpanzees follow conspecific and human gaze direction reliably in some situations, but very few chimpanzees reliably use gaze direction or other communicative signals to locate hidden food in the object-choice task. Three studies aimed at exploring factors that affect chimpanzee performance in this task are reported. In the first study, vocalizations and other noises facilitated the performance of some chimpanzees (only a minority). In the second study, various behavioral cues were given in which a human experimenter either touched, approached, or actually lifted and looked under the container where the food was hidden. Each of these cues led to enhanced performance for only a very few individuals. In the third study – a replication with some methodological improvements of a previous experiment – chimpanzees were confronted with two experimenters giving conflicting cues about the location of the hidden food, with one of them (the knower) having witnessed the hiding process and the other (the guesser) not. In the crucial test in which a third experimenter did the hiding, no chimpanzee found the food at above chance levels. Overall, in all three studies, by far the best performers were two individuals who had been raised in infancy by humans. It thus seems that while chimpanzees are very good at “behavior reading” of various sorts, including gaze following, they do not understand the communicative intentions (informative intentions) behind the looking and gesturing of others – with the possible exception of enculturated chimpanzees, who still do not understand the differential significance of looking and gesturing done by people who have different knowledge about states of affairs in the world.
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