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| Author |
Cinková, I.; Policht, R. |
| Title |
Discrimination of familiarity and sex from chemical cues in the dung by wild southern white rhinoceros |
Type |
Journal Article |
Year  |
2015 |
Publication |
Animal Cognition |
Abbreviated Journal |
Anim. Cogn. |
| Volume |
18 |
Issue |
1 |
Pages |
385-392 |
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| Abstract |
Communication in rhinos is primarily mediated by the vocal and olfactory signals as they have relatively poor eyesight. White rhinos are the most social of all the rhinoceros species, they defecate at common dungheaps and the adult bulls use dung and urine to mark their territory. Chemical communication may therefore be particularly important in the social interactions of white rhinos, and its knowledge could be very helpful in their management and conservation. However, no studies have investigated up until now the olfactory discrimination in any rhinoceros species in the wild. We have experimentally studied the reactions of the wild southern white rhinos (Ceratotherium simum) to the dung of familiar and unfamiliar adult females and adult territorial males. We registered the number of sniffing events, the duration of sniffing and the latency of the vigilance posture from the onset of sniffing. The dung of unfamiliar rhinos was sniffed longer than that of familiar rhinos. The rhinos showed a shorter latency of vigilance posture to the familiar dung of males than that of females. For unfamiliar dung, they displayed a shorter latency of vigilance posture to female than male dung. Our results indicate that the rhinos are able to discriminate the familiarity and sex of conspecifics from the smell of their dung. Olfactory cues could therefore play an important role in the social relationships and spatial organization of the southern white rhinoceros. |
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1435-9456 |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ Cinková2015 |
Serial |
6143 |
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| Author |
Whalen, A.; Cownden, D.; Laland, K. |
| Title |
The learning of action sequences through social transmission |
Type |
Journal Article |
| Year |
2015 |
Publication |
Animal Cognition |
Abbreviated Journal |
Anim. Cogn. |
| Volume |
18 |
Issue |
5 |
Pages |
1093-1103 |
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| Abstract |
Previous empirical work on animal social learning has found that many species lack the ability to learn entire action sequences solely through reliance on social information. Conversely, acquiring action sequences through asocial learning can be difficult due to the large number of potential sequences arising from even a small number of base actions. In spite of this, several studies report that some primates use action sequences in the wild. We investigate how social information can be integrated with asocial learning to facilitate the learning of action sequences. We formalize this problem by examining how learners using temporal difference learning, a widely applicable model of reinforcement learning, can combine social cues with their own experiences to acquire action sequences. The learning problem is modeled as a Markov decision process. The learning of nettle processing by mountain gorillas serves as a focal example. Through simulations, we find that the social facilitation of component actions can combine with individual learning to facilitate the acquisition of action sequences. Our analysis illustrates that how even simple forms of social learning, combined with asocial learning, generate substantially faster learning of action sequences compared to asocial processes alone, and that the benefits of social information increase with the length of the action sequence and the number of base actions. |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ Whalen2015 |
Serial |
6192 |
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| Author |
Brust, V.; Guenther, A. |
| Title |
Domestication effects on behavioural traits and learning performance: comparing wild cavies to guinea pigs |
Type |
Journal Article |
| Year |
2015 |
Publication |
Animal Cognition |
Abbreviated Journal |
Anim. Cogn. |
| Volume |
18 |
Issue |
1 |
Pages |
99-109 |
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The domestication process leads to a change in behavioural traits, usually towards individuals that are less attentive to changes in their environment and less aggressive. Empirical evidence for a difference in cognitive performance, however, is scarce. Recently, a functional linkage between an individual's behaviour and cognitive performance has been proposed in the framework of animal personalities via a shared risk-reward trade-off. Following this assumption, bolder and more aggressive animals (usually the wild form) should learn faster. Differences in behaviour may arise during ontogeny due to individual experiences or represent adaptations that occurred over the course of evolution. Both might singly or taken together account for differences in cognitive performance between wild and domestic lineages. To test for such possible linkages, we compared wild cavies and domestic guinea pigs, both kept in a university stock for more than 30 years under highly comparable conditions. Animals were tested in three behavioural tests as well as for initial and reversal learning performance. Guinea pigs were less bold and aggressive than their wild congeners, but learnt an association faster. Additionally, the personality structure was altered during the domestication process. The most likely explanation for these findings is that a shift in behavioural traits and their connectivity led to an altered cognitive performance. A functional linkage between behavioural and cognitive traits seems to exist in the proposed way only under natural selection, but not in animals that have been selected artificially over centuries. |
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1435-9456 |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ Brust2015 |
Serial |
6194 |
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| Author |
Horowitz, A.; Hecht, J. |
| Title |
Examining dog–human play: the characteristics, affect, and vocalizations of a unique interspecific interaction |
Type |
Journal Article |
| Year |
2016 |
Publication |
Animal Cognition |
Abbreviated Journal |
Anim. Cogn. |
| Volume |
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Issue |
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Pages |
1-10 |
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Despite the growing interest in research on the interaction between humans and dogs, only a very few research projects focus on the routines between dogs and their owners. In this study, we investigated one such routine: dog–human play. Dyadic interspecific play is known to be a common interaction between owner and charge, but the details of what counts as play have not been thoroughly researched. Similarly, though people represent that “play” is pleasurable, no study has yet undertaken to determine whether different forms of play are associated with different affective states. Thus, we aimed to generate an inventory of the forms of dyadic play, the vocalizations within play, and to investigate the relationship of affect to elements of play. Via a global citizen science project, we solicited videotapes of dog–human play sessions from dog owners. We coded 187 play bouts via frame-by-frame video playback. We then assessed the relationship between various intra-bout variables and owner affect (positive or neutral) during play (dog affect was overwhelmingly positive). Amount of physical contact (“touch”), level of activity of owner (“movement”), and physical closeness of dog–owner dyad (“proximity”) were highly correlated with positive affect. Owner vocalizations were found to contain different elements in positive- and neutral-affect play. One novel category of play, “tease”, was found. We conclude that not all play is created equal: the experience of play to the owner participant is strongly related to a few identifiable characteristics of the interaction. |
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1435-9456 |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ Horowitz.2016 |
Serial |
5947 |
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| Author |
Malavasi, R.; Huber, L. |
| Title |
Evidence of heterospecific referential communication from domestic horses (Equus caballus) to humans |
Type |
Journal Article |
| Year |
2016 |
Publication |
Animal Cognition |
Abbreviated Journal |
Anim. Cogn. |
| Volume |
19 |
Issue |
5 |
Pages |
899-909 |
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Referential communication occurs when a sender elaborates its gestures to direct the attention of a recipient to its role in pursuit of the desired goal, e.g. by pointing or showing an object, thereby informing the recipient what it wants. If the gesture is successful, the sender and the recipient focus their attention simultaneously on a third entity, the target. Here we investigated the ability of domestic horses (Equus caballus) to communicate referentially with a human observer about the location of a desired target, a bucket of food out of reach. In order to test six operational criteria of referential communication, we manipulated the recipient’s (experimenter) attentional state in four experimental conditions: frontally oriented, backward oriented, walking away from the arena and frontally oriented with other helpers present in the arena. The rate of gaze alternation was higher in the frontally oriented condition than in all the others. The horses appeared to use both indicative (pointing) and non-indicative (nods and shakes) head gestures in the relevant test conditions. Horses also elaborated their communication by switching from a visual to a tactile signal and demonstrated perseverance in their communication. The results of the tests revealed that horses used referential gestures to manipulate the attention of a human recipient so to obtain an unreachable resource. These are the first such findings in an ungulate species. |
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1435-9456 |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ Malavasi2016 |
Serial |
6029 |
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| Author |
Taubert, J.; Weldon, K.B.; Parr, L.A. |
| Title |
Robust representations of individual faces in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) but not monkeys (Macaca mulatta) |
Type |
Journal Article |
| Year |
2016 |
Publication |
Animal Cognition |
Abbreviated Journal |
Anim. Cogn. |
| Volume |
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Issue |
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Pages |
1-9 |
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Being able to recognize the faces of our friends and family members no matter where we see them represents a substantial challenge for the visual system because the retinal image of a face can be degraded by both changes in the person (age, expression, pose, hairstyle, etc.) and changes in the viewing conditions (direction and degree of illumination). Yet most of us are able to recognize familiar people effortlessly. A popular theory for how face recognition is achieved has argued that the brain stabilizes facial appearance by building average representations that enhance diagnostic features that reliably vary between people while diluting features that vary between instances of the same person. This explains why people find it easier to recognize average images of people, created by averaging multiple images of the same person together, than single instances (i.e. photographs). Although this theory is gathering momentum in the psychological and computer sciences, there is no evidence of whether this mechanism represents a unique specialization for individual recognition in humans. Here we tested two species, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta), to determine whether average images of different familiar individuals were easier to discriminate than photographs of familiar individuals. Using a two-alternative forced-choice, match-to-sample procedure, we report a behaviour response profile that suggests chimpanzees encode the faces of conspecifics differently than rhesus monkeys and in a manner similar to humans. |
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1435-9456 |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ Taubert2016 |
Serial |
6030 |
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| Author |
Ringhofer, M.; Yamamoto, S. |
| Title |
Domestic horses send signals to humans when they face with an unsolvable task |
Type |
Journal Article |
| Year |
2016 |
Publication |
Animal Cognition |
Abbreviated Journal |
Anim. Cogn. |
| Volume |
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Issue |
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Pages |
1-9 |
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Some domestic animals are thought to be skilled at social communication with humans due to the process of domestication. Horses, being in close relationship with humans, similar to dogs, might be skilled at communication with humans. Previous studies have indicated that they are sensitive to bodily signals and the attentional state of humans; however, there are few studies that investigate communication with humans and responses to the knowledge state of humans. Our first question was whether and how horses send signals to their potentially helpful but ignorant caretakers in a problem-solving situation where a food item was hidden in a bucket that was accessible only to the caretakers. We then examined whether horses alter their behaviours on the basis of the caretakers’ knowledge of where the food was hidden. We found that horses communicated to their caretakers using visual and tactile signals. The signalling behaviour of the horses significantly increased in conditions where the caretakers had not seen the hiding of the food. These results suggest that horses alter their communicative behaviour towards humans in accordance with humans’ knowledge state. |
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1435-9456 |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ Ringhofer2016 |
Serial |
6037 |
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Sommer, V.; Lowe, A.; Dietrich, T. |
| Title |
Not eating like a pig: European wild boar wash their food |
Type |
Journal Article |
| Year |
2016 |
Publication |
Animal Cognition |
Abbreviated Journal |
Anim. Cogn. |
| Volume |
19 |
Issue |
1 |
Pages |
245-249 |
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Carrying food to water and either dunking or manipulating it before consumption has been observed in various taxa including birds, racoons and primates. Some animals seem to be simply moistening their food. However, true washing aims to remove unpleasant surface substrates such as grit and sand and requires a distinction between items that do and do not need cleaning as well as deliberate transportation of food to a water source. We provide the first evidence for food washing in suids, based on an incidental observation with follow-up experiments on European wild boar (Sus scrofa) kept at Basel Zoo, Switzerland. Here, all adult pigs and some juveniles of a newly formed group carried apple halves soiled with sand to the edge of a creek running through their enclosure where they put the fruits in the water and pushed them to and fro with their snouts before eating. Clean apple halves were never washed. This indicates that pigs can discriminate between soiled and unsoiled foods and that they are able to delay gratification for long enough to transport and wash the items. However, we were unable to ascertain to which degree individual and/or social learning brought this behaviour about. |
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1435-9456 |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ Sommer2016 |
Serial |
6132 |
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Cinková, I.; Policht, R. |
| Title |
Sex and species recognition by wild male southern white rhinoceros using contact pant calls |
Type |
Journal Article |
| Year |
2016 |
Publication |
Animal Cognition |
Abbreviated Journal |
Anim. Cogn. |
| Volume |
19 |
Issue |
2 |
Pages |
375-386 |
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Recognition of information from acoustic signals is crucial in many animals, and individuals are under selection pressure to discriminate between the signals of conspecifics and heterospecifics or males and females. Here, we first report that rhinos use information encoded in their calls to assess conspecifics and individuals of closely related species. The southern (Ceratotherium simum) and critically endangered northern (C. cottoni) white rhinos are the most social out of all the rhinoceros species and use a contact call pant. We found that southern white rhino pant calls provide reliable information about the caller’s sex, age class and social situation. Playback experiments on wild territorial southern white rhinoceros males revealed that they responded more strongly to the pant calls of conspecific females compared to the calls of other territorial males. This suggests that pant calls are more important form of communication between males and females than between territorial males. Territorial southern males also discriminated between female and territorial male calls of northern species and reacted more intensively to the calls of northern than southern males. This might be caused by a novelty effect since both species naturally live in allopatry. We conclude that white rhinos can directly benefit from assessing individuals at long distances using vocal cues especially because their eyesight is poor. Pant calls thus likely play a significant role in their social relationships and spatial organization. In addition, better understanding of vocal communication in white rhinos might be helpful in conservation management particularly because of their low reproduction in captivity. |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ Cinková2016 |
Serial |
6144 |
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Bílá, K.; Beránková, J.; Veselý, P.; Bugnyar, T.; Schwab, C. |
| Title |
Responses of urban crows to con- and hetero-specific alarm calls in predator and non-predator zoo enclosures |
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Journal Article |
| Year |
2017 |
Publication |
Animal Cognition |
Abbreviated Journal |
Anim. Cogn. |
| Volume |
20 |
Issue |
1 |
Pages |
43-51 |
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Urban animals and birds in particular are able to cope with diverse novel threats in a city environment such as avoiding novel, unfamiliar predators. Predator avoidance often includes alarm signals that can be used also by hetero-specifics, which is mainly the case in mixed-species flocks. It can also occur when species do not form flocks but co-occur together. In this study we tested whether urban crows use alarm calls of conspecifics and hetero-specifics (jackdaws, Corvus monedula) differently in a predator and a non-predator context with partly novel and unfamiliar zoo animal species. Birds were tested at the Tiergarten Schönbrunn in the city of Vienna by playing back con- and hetero-specific alarm calls and control stimuli (great tit song and no stimuli) at predator (wolf, polar bear) and non-predator (eland antelope and cranes, peccaries) enclosures. We recorded responses of crows as the percentage of birds flying away after hearing the playback (out of those present before the playback) and as the number of vocalizations given by the present birds. A significantly higher percentage of crows flew away after hearing either con- or hetero-specific alarm calls, but it did not significantly differ between the predator and the non-predator context. Crows treated jackdaw calls just as crow calls, indicating that they make proper use of hetero-specific alarm calls. Responding similarly in both contexts may suggest that the crows were uncertain about the threat a particular zoo animal represents and were generally cautious. In the predator context, however, a high percentage of crows also flew away upon hearing the great tit control song which suggests that they may still evaluate those species which occasionally killed crows as more dangerous and respond to any conspicuous sound. |
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1435-9456 |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ Bílá2017 |
Serial |
6159 |
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