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Author Herrmann, E.; Melis, A.P.; Tomasello, M. doi  openurl
  Title Apes' use of iconic cues in the object-choice task Type (up) Journal Article
  Year 2006 Publication Animal cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 9 Issue 2 Pages 118-130  
  Keywords Animal Communication; Animals; *Appetitive Behavior; *Choice Behavior; *Cues; Female; Gorilla gorilla; Male; *Nonverbal Communication; Pan paniscus; Pan troglodytes; Pongo pygmaeus; *Problem Solving; Space Perception; Species Specificity; Statistics, Nonparametric  
  Abstract In previous studies great apes have shown little ability to locate hidden food using a physical marker placed by a human directly on the target location. In this study, we hypothesized that the perceptual similarity between an iconic cue and the hidden reward (baited container) would help apes to infer the location of the food. In the first two experiments, we found that if an iconic cue is given in addition to a spatial/indexical cue – e.g., picture or replica of a banana placed on the target location – apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans, gorillas) as a group performed above chance. However, we also found in two further experiments that when iconic cues were given on their own without spatial/indexical information (iconic cue held up by human with no diagnostic spatial/indexical information), the apes were back to chance performance. Our overall conclusion is that although iconic information helps apes in the process of searching hidden food, the poor performance found in the last two experiments is due to apes' lack of understanding of the informative (cooperative) communicative intention of the experimenter.  
  Address Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany. eherrman@eva.mpg.de  
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  Language English Summary Language Original Title  
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  Series Volume Series Issue Edition  
  ISSN 1435-9448 ISBN Medium  
  Area Expedition Conference  
  Notes PMID:16395566 Approved no  
  Call Number Serial 14  
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Author Parish, A.R.; De Waal, F.B. openurl 
  Title The other “closest living relative”. How bonobos (Pan paniscus) challenge traditional assumptions about females, dominance, intra- and intersexual interactions, and hominid evolution Type (up) Journal Article
  Year 2000 Publication Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences Abbreviated Journal Ann N Y Acad Sci  
  Volume 907 Issue Pages 97-113  
  Keywords Animals; *Evolution; Female; Hominidae/*physiology; Humans; *Interpersonal Relations; Male; Pan paniscus/*physiology; Sexual Behavior, Animal/*physiology  
  Abstract Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) societies are typically characterized as physically aggressive, male-bonded and male-dominated. Their close relatives, the bonobos (Pan paniscus), differ in startling and significant ways. For instance, female bonobos bond with one another, form coalitions, and dominate males. A pattern of reluctance to consider, let alone acknowledge, female dominance in bonobos exists, however. Because both species are equally “man's” closest relative, the bonobo social system complicates models of human evolution that have historically been based upon referents that are male and chimpanzee-like. The bonobo evidence suggests that models of human evolution must be reformulated such that they also accommodate: real and meaningful female bonds; the possibility of systematic female dominance over males; female mating strategies which encompass extra-group paternities; hunting and meat distribution by females; the importance of the sharing of plant foods; affinitive inter-community interactions; males that do not stalk and attack and are not territorial; and flexible social relationships in which philopatry does not necessarily predict bonding pattern.  
  Address Department of Anthropology, University College London, England  
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  Series Volume Series Issue Edition  
  ISSN 0077-8923 ISBN Medium  
  Area Expedition Conference  
  Notes PMID:10818623 Approved no  
  Call Number refbase @ user @ Serial 189  
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Author Mulcahy, N.J.; Call, J. doi  openurl
  Title Apes save tools for future use Type (up) Journal Article
  Year 2006 Publication Science (New York, N.Y.) Abbreviated Journal Science  
  Volume 312 Issue 5776 Pages 1038-1040  
  Keywords Animals; Association Learning; *Cognition; *Evolution; *Mental Processes; *Pan paniscus; Pan troglodytes; *Pongo pygmaeus  
  Abstract Planning for future needs, not just current ones, is one of the most formidable human cognitive achievements. Whether this skill is a uniquely human adaptation is a controversial issue. In a study we conducted, bonobos and orangutans selected, transported, and saved appropriate tools above baseline levels to use them 1 hour later (experiment 1). Experiment 2 extended these results to a 14-hour delay between collecting and using the tools. Experiment 3 showed that seeing the apparatus during tool selection was not necessary to succeed. These findings suggest that the precursor skills for planning for the future evolved in great apes before 14 million years ago, when all extant great ape species shared a common ancestor.  
  Address Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany  
  Corporate Author Thesis  
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  Language English Summary Language Original Title  
  Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title  
  Series Volume Series Issue Edition  
  ISSN 1095-9203 ISBN Medium  
  Area Expedition Conference  
  Notes PMID:16709782 Approved no  
  Call Number refbase @ user @ Serial 466  
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Author Brauer, J.; Kaminski, J.; Riedel, J.; Call, J.; Tomasello, M. doi  openurl
  Title Making inferences about the location of hidden food: social dog, causal ape Type (up) Journal Article
  Year 2006 Publication Journal of comparative psychology Abbreviated Journal J Comp Psychol  
  Volume 120 Issue 1 Pages 38-47  
  Keywords Animals; Communication; Cues; Dogs; Exploratory Behavior; *Feeding Behavior; Female; *Food; Male; Pan paniscus; Pan troglodytes; *Visual Perception  
  Abstract Domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) and great apes from the genus Pan were tested on a series of object choice tasks. In each task, the location of hidden food was indicated for subjects by some kind of communicative, behavioral, or physical cue. On the basis of differences in the ecologies of these 2 genera, as well as on previous research, the authors hypothesized that dogs should be especially skillful in using human communicative cues such as the pointing gesture, whereas apes should be especially skillful in using physical, causal cues such as food in a cup making noise when it is shaken. The overall pattern of performance by the 2 genera strongly supported this social-dog, causal-ape hypothesis. This result is discussed in terms of apes' adaptations for complex, extractive foraging and dogs' adaptations, during the domestication process, for cooperative communication with humans.  
  Address Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany. jbraeuer@eva.mpg.de  
  Corporate Author Thesis  
  Publisher Place of Publication Washington, D.C. : 1983 Editor  
  Language English Summary Language Original Title  
  Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title  
  Series Volume Series Issue Edition  
  ISSN 0735-7036 ISBN Medium  
  Area Expedition Conference  
  Notes PMID:16551163 Approved yes  
  Call Number refbase @ user @ Serial 597  
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Author Vervaecke, H.; Vries, H.D.; Elsacker, L.V. doi  openurl
  Title An Experimental Evaluation Of The Consistency Of Competitive Ability And Agonistic Dominance In Different Social Contexts In Captive Bonobos Type (up) Journal Article
  Year 1999 Publication Behaviour Abbreviated Journal Behaviour  
  Volume 136 Issue 4 Pages 423-442  
  Keywords BONOBO PAN PANISCUS; RANK ORDERS; FEEDING SCORES; AGONISTIC RANKS; PEERING  
  Abstract Bonobos have been described as a relatively egalitarian and female dominant species. The exact nature and quality of their dominance relationships and the existence of female dominance are current topics of dispute. We investigated the consistency across social contexts, the stability in time, and the degree of expression of the competitive feeding ability and agonistic dominance in a captive group of bonobos. First, we examined whether the competitive feeding ranks and agonistic ranks differed in different dyadic contexts, triadic contexts and the whole group context. For some pairs of animals the dominance relationships with respect to competitive feeding altered with different group compositions. The agonistic dominance relationships changed accordingly. The competitive feeding ranks and agonistic ranks in the experiments correlated strongly with each other. The alpha position was occupied by a female, but not all females outranked all males. We suggest that females can profit from each others presence to gain inter-sexual dominance. Second, although the agonistic rank order in the whole group remained the same over at least five years, some dyadic competitive feeding ranks changed over time, resulting in a stronger female intersexual dominance. Third, the degree of expression of the behaviors used to quantify dyadic competitive and agonistic dominance was not high, in line with the popular 'egalitarian' epithet. Notwithstanding its low consistency across contexts, the dominance hierarchy in the whole group has a strong predictive value for other social relationships such as grooming. Given this strong effect of rank on other behaviours and given the strong dependency of rank on social context, the choice of the right party members may be a crucial factor in the fission-fusion processes of free-ranging bonobos.  
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  Notes Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 2195  
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Author Call, J. doi  openurl
  Title Inferences by exclusion in the great apes: the effect of age and species Type (up) Journal Article
  Year 2006 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 9 Issue 4 Pages 393-403  
  Keywords Age Factors; Animals; Association Learning; *Cognition; *Concept Formation; *Discrimination Learning; Female; Gorilla gorilla; Hominidae/classification/*psychology; Male; Pan paniscus; Pan troglodytes; Pongo pygmaeus; *Problem Solving; Species Specificity  
  Abstract This study investigated the ability of chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, and bonobos to make inferences by exclusion using the procedure pioneered by Premack and Premack (Cognition 50:347-362, 1994) with chimpanzees. Thirty apes were presented with two different food items (banana vs. grape) on a platform and covered with identical containers. One of the items was removed from the container and placed between the two containers so that subjects could see it. After discarding this item, subjects could select between the two containers. In Experiment 1, apes preferentially selected the container that held the item that the experimenter had not discarded, especially if subjects saw the experimenter remove the item from the container (but without seeing the container empty). Experiment 3 in which the food was removed from one of the containers behind a barrier confirmed these results. In contrast, subjects performed at chance levels when a stimulus (colored plastic chip: Exp. 1; food item: Exp. 2 and Exp. 3) designated the item that had been removed. These results indicated that apes made inferences, not just learned to use a discriminative cue to avoid the empty container. Apes perceived and treated the item discarded by the experimenter as if it were the very one that had been hidden under the container. Results suggested a positive relationship between age and inferential ability independent of memory ability but no species differences.  
  Address Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103, Leipzig, Germany. call@eva.mpg.de  
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  Language English Summary Language Original Title  
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  Series Volume Series Issue Edition  
  ISSN 1435-9448 ISBN Medium  
  Area Expedition Conference  
  Notes PMID:16924458 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 2444  
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Author Mulcahy, N.J.; Call, J. doi  openurl
  Title How great apes perform on a modified trap-tube task Type (up) Journal Article
  Year 2006 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 9 Issue 3 Pages 193-199  
  Keywords Animals; *Discrimination Learning; Female; Gorilla gorilla; Hominidae/*psychology; *Intelligence; Male; *Motor Skills; Pan paniscus; Pan troglodytes; Pongo pygmaeus; *Problem Solving; Species Specificity  
  Abstract To date, neither primates nor birds have shown clear evidence of causal knowledge when attempting to solve the trap tube task. One factor that may have contributed to mask the knowledge that subjects may have about the task is that subjects were only allowed to push the reward away from them, which is a particularly difficult action for primates in certain problem solving situations. We presented five orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus), two chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), two bonobos (Pan paniscus), and one gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) with a modified trap tube that allowed subjects to push or rake the reward with the tool. In two additional follow-up tests, we inverted the tube 180 degrees rendering the trap nonfunctional and also presented subjects with the original task in which they were required to push the reward out of the tube. Results showed that all but one of the subjects preferred to rake the reward. Two orangutans and one chimpanzee (all of whom preferred to rake the reward), consistently avoided the trap only when it was functional but failed the original task. These findings suggest that some great apes may have some causal knowledge about the trap-tube task. Their success, however, depended on whether they were allowed to choose certain tool-using actions.  
  Address Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103, Leipzig, Germany. mulcahy@eva.mpg.de  
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  Language English Summary Language Original Title  
  Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title  
  Series Volume Series Issue Edition  
  ISSN 1435-9448 ISBN Medium  
  Area Expedition Conference  
  Notes PMID:16612632 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 2469  
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Author Suda, C.; Call, J. doi  openurl
  Title Piagetian conservation of discrete quantities in bonobos (Pan paniscus), chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), and orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) Type (up) Journal Article
  Year 2005 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 8 Issue 4 Pages 220-235  
  Keywords Animals; *Behavior, Animal; Female; Hominidae/*psychology; Male; Pan paniscus; Pan troglodytes; Pongo pygmaeus; *Problem Solving  
  Abstract This study investigated whether physical discreteness helps apes to understand the concept of Piagetian conservation (i.e. the invariance of quantities). Subjects were four bonobos, three chimpanzees, and five orangutans. Apes were tested on their ability to conserve discrete/continuous quantities in an over-conservation procedure in which two unequal quantities of edible rewards underwent various transformations in front of subjects. Subjects were examined to determine whether they could track the larger quantity of reward after the transformation. Comparison between the two types of conservation revealed that tests with bonobos supported the discreteness hypothesis. Bonobos, but neither chimpanzees nor orangutans, performed significantly better with discrete quantities than with continuous ones. The results suggest that at least bonobos could benefit from the discreteness of stimuli in their acquisition of conservation skills.  
  Address Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany. suda@eva.mpg.de  
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  Language English Summary Language Original Title  
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  Series Volume Series Issue Edition  
  ISSN 1435-9448 ISBN Medium  
  Area Expedition Conference  
  Notes PMID:15692813 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 2494  
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Author O'Connell, S.; Dunbar, R.I.M. doi  openurl
  Title The perception of causality in chimpanzees (Pan spp.) Type (up) Journal Article
  Year 2005 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 8 Issue 1 Pages 60-66  
  Keywords Animals; *Association Learning; Awareness; *Concept Formation; Female; *Habituation, Psychophysiologic; Male; Pan paniscus/*psychology; Pan troglodytes/*psychology; Perception  
  Abstract Chimpanzees (Pan spp.) were tested on a habituation/dishabituation paradigm that was originally developed to test for comprehension of causality in very young human infants. Three versions of the test were used: a food item being moved by a hand, a human pushing another human off a chair to obtain a food item, and a film clip of natural chimpanzee behaviour (capturing and eating a monkey). Chimpanzees exhibited similar results to those obtained with human infants, with significantly elevated levels of looking on the dishabituation trials. Since the level of response was significantly greater on natural/unnatural sequences than on unnatural/natural sequences, we conclude that the chimpanzees were not responding just to novelty but rather to events that infringed their sense of natural causation.  
  Address Evolutionary Psychology Research Group, School of Biological Sciences, Biosciences Building, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, L69 7ZB, UK  
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  Series Volume Series Issue Edition  
  ISSN 1435-9448 ISBN Medium  
  Area Expedition Conference  
  Notes PMID:15322943 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 2514  
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Author Kaminski, J.; Call, J.; Tomasello, M. doi  openurl
  Title Body orientation and face orientation: two factors controlling apes' behavior from humans Type (up) Journal Article
  Year 2004 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 7 Issue 4 Pages 216-223  
  Keywords Animals; *Attention; *Behavior, Animal; Cognition; *Concept Formation; Face; Facial Expression; Female; Fixation, Ocular; Hominidae/*psychology; Humans; Male; *Nonverbal Communication; *Orientation; Pan paniscus/psychology; Pan troglodytes/psychology; Pongo pygmaeus/psychology; *Posture; Social Perception; Species Specificity  
  Abstract A number of animal species have evolved the cognitive ability to detect when they are being watched by other individuals. Precisely what kind of information they use to make this determination is unknown. There is particular controversy in the case of the great apes because different studies report conflicting results. In experiment 1, we presented chimpanzees, orangutans, and bonobos with a situation in which they had to request food from a human observer who was in one of various attentional states. She either stared at the ape, faced the ape with her eyes closed, sat with her back towards the ape, or left the room. In experiment 2, we systematically crossed the observer's body and face orientation so that the observer could have her body and/or face oriented either towards or away from the subject. Results indicated that apes produced more behaviors when they were being watched. They did this not only on the basis of whether they could see the experimenter as a whole, but they were sensitive to her body and face orientation separately. These results suggest that body and face orientation encode two different types of information. Whereas face orientation encodes the observer's perceptual access, body orientation encodes the observer's disposition to transfer food. In contrast to the results on body and face orientation, only two of the tested subjects responded to the state of the observer's eyes.  
  Address Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Plaz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany. kaminski@eva.mpg.de  
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  Language English Summary Language Original Title  
  Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title  
  Series Volume Series Issue Edition  
  ISSN 1435-9448 ISBN Medium  
  Area Expedition Conference  
  Notes PMID:15034765 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 2538  
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