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Author (up) Bates, L.A.; Lee, P.C.; Njiraini, N.; Poole, J.H.; Sayialel, K.; Sayialel, S.; Moss, C.J.; Byrne, R. url  openurl
  Title Do Elephants Show Empathy? Type Journal Article
  Year 2008 Publication Journal of Consciousness Studies Abbreviated Journal J Conscious Stud  
  Volume 15 Issue 10-11 Pages 204-225  
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  Abstract Elephants show a rich social organization and display a number of unusual traits. In this paper, we analyse reports collected over a thirty-five year period, describing behaviour that has the potential to reveal signs of empathic understanding. These include coalition formation, the offering of protection and comfort to others, retrieving and 'babysitting' calves, aiding individuals that would otherwise have difficulty in moving, and removing foreign objects attached to others. These records demonstrate that an elephant is capable of diagnosing animacy and goal directedness, and is able to understand the physical competence, emotional state and intentions of others, when they differ from its own. We argue that an empathic understanding of others is the simplest explanation of these abilities, and discuss reasons why elephants appear to show empathy more than other non-primate species.  
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  Notes Approved yes  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 5057  
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Author (up) Bates, L.A.; Byrne, R.W. url  doi
openurl 
  Title Creative or created: Using anecdotes to investigate animal cognition Type Journal Article
  Year 2007 Publication Methods Abbreviated Journal Methods  
  Volume 42 Issue 1 Pages 12-21  
  Keywords Anecdote; Creativity; Intelligence; Deception; Innovation; African elephant  
  Abstract In non-human animals, creative behaviour occurs spontaneously only at low frequencies, so is typically missed by standardised observational methods. Experimental approaches have tended to rely overly on paradigms from child development or adult human cognition, which may be inappropriate for species that inhabit very different perceptual worlds and possess quite different motor capacities than humans. The analysis of anecdotes offers a solution to this impasse, provided certain conditions are met. To be reliable, anecdotes must be recorded immediately after observation, and only the records of scientists experienced with the species and the individuals concerned should be used. Even then, interpretation of a single record is always ambiguous, and analysis is feasible only when collation of multiple records shows that a behaviour pattern occurs repeatedly under similar circumstances. This approach has been used successfully to study a number of creative capacities of animals: the distribution, nature and neural correlates of deception across the primate order; the occurrence of teaching in animals; and the neural correlates of several aptitudes--in birds, foraging innovation, and in primates, innovation, social learning and tool-use. Drawing on these approaches, we describe the use of this method to investigate a new problem, the cognition of the African elephant, a species whose sheer size and evolutionary distance from humans renders the conventional methods of comparative psychology of little use. The aim is both to chart the creative cognitive capacities of this species, and to devise appropriate experimental methods to confirm and extend previous findings.  
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  ISSN 1046-2023 ISBN Medium  
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  Notes also special issue: Neurocognitive Mechanisms of Creativity: A Toolkit Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 6185  
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Author (up) Bates, L.A.; Sayialel, K.N.; Njiraini, N.W.; Poole, J.H.; Moss, C.J.; Byrne, R.W. doi  openurl
  Title African elephants have expectations about the locations of out-of-sight family members Type Journal Article
  Year 2008 Publication Biology Letters Abbreviated Journal Biol Lett  
  Volume 4 Issue 1 Pages 34-36  
  Keywords elephants, olfaction, urine, individual recognition  
  Abstract Monitoring the location of conspecifics may be important to social mammals. Here, we use an expectancy-violation paradigm to test the ability of African elephants (Loxodonta africana) to keep track of their social companions from olfactory cues. We presented elephants with samples of earth mixed with urine from female conspecifics that were either kin or unrelated to them, and either unexpected or highly predictable at that location. From behavioural measurements of the elephants' reactions, we show that African elephants can recognize up to 17 females and possibly up to 30 family members from cues present in the urine-earth mix, and that they keep track of the location of these individuals in relation to themselves.  
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  Notes Approved yes  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 4332  
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Author (up) Byrne, R.W.; Bates, L.A. url  doi
openurl 
  Title Why are animals cognitive? Type Journal Article
  Year 2006 Publication Current Biology : CB Abbreviated Journal Curr Biol  
  Volume 16 Issue 12 Pages R445-8  
  Keywords Animals; Arachnida/physiology; *Association Learning; *Behavior, Animal; *Cognition; Cooperative Behavior; Falconiformes/physiology; Pan troglodytes/physiology; Parrots/physiology; Passeriformes/physiology  
  Abstract  
  Address Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, and Scottish Primate Research Group, School of Psychology, University of St Andrews, Fife KY16 9JP, Scotland  
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  Language English Summary Language Original Title  
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  Series Volume Series Issue Edition  
  ISSN 0960-9822 ISBN Medium  
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  Notes PMID:16781995 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 4708  
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