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Author Kitchen, D.M.; Cheney, D.L.; Seyfarth, R.M. doi  openurl
  Title Male chacma baboons (Papio hamadryas ursinus) discriminate loud call contests between rivals of different relative ranks Type Journal Article
  Year 2005 Publication Animal cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 8 Issue 1 Pages 1-6  
  Keywords Acoustic Stimulation; Animals; *Discrimination Learning; *Hierarchy, Social; Male; Papio hamadryas/*psychology; *Social Dominance; *Vocalization, Animal  
  Abstract Males in multi-male groups of chacma baboons (Papio hamadryas ursinus) in Botswana compete for positions in a linear dominance hierarchy. Previous research suggests that males treat different categories of rivals differently; competitive displays between males of similar rank are more frequent and intense than those between disparately ranked males. Here we test whether males also respond differently to male-male interactions in which they are not directly involved, using playbacks of the loud 'wahoo' calls exchanged between competing males in aggressive displays. We played paired sequences of vocal contests between two adjacently ranked and two disparately ranked males to ten subjects, half ranking below the signalers in the call sequences and half above. Subjects who ranked above the two signalers showed stronger responses than lower-ranking subjects. Higher-ranking subjects also responded more strongly to sequences involving disparately ranked, as opposed to adjacently ranked opponents, suggesting that they recognized those individuals' relative ranks. Strong responses to sequences between disparately ranked opponents might have occurred either because such contests typically involve resources of high fitness value (defense of meat, estrous females or infants vulnerable to infanticide) or because they indicate a sudden change in one contestant's condition. In contrast, subjects who ranked lower than the signalers responded equally strongly to both types of sequences. These subjects may have been able to distinguish between the two categories of opponents but did not respond differently to them because they had little to lose or gain by a rank reversal between males that already ranked higher than they did.  
  Address Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. dkitchen@psych.upenn.edu  
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  ISSN (up) 1435-9448 ISBN Medium  
  Area Expedition Conference  
  Notes PMID:15164259 Approved no  
  Call Number refbase @ user @ Serial 687  
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Author Gajdon, G.K.; Fijn, N.; Huber, L. doi  openurl
  Title Limited spread of innovation in a wild parrot, the kea (Nestor notabilis) Type Journal Article
  Year 2006 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 9 Issue 3 Pages 173-181  
  Keywords Animal Communication; Animals; Diffusion of Innovation; Feeding Behavior; Female; *Imitative Behavior; *Learning; Male; *Motor Skills; *Parrots; *Problem Solving; Sex Factors; Social Dominance; Social Environment; Statistics, Nonparametric  
  Abstract In the local population of kea in Mount Cook Village, New Zealand, some keas open the lids of rubbish bins with their bill to obtain food scraps within. We investigated the extent to which this innovation has spread in the local population, and what factors limit the acquisition of bin opening. Only five males of 36 individually recognised birds were observed to have performed successful bin opening. With one exception there were always other keas present, watching successful bin opening. Seventeen additional individuals were seen to have benefitted from lid opening. Their foraging success was less than that of the bin openers. Social status of bin openers did not differ from scrounging males. Among the individuals that were regularly seen at the site of the bins but were not successful in bin opening, social status and the ratio of feeding directly from open bins correlated with the amount of opening attempts. We conclude that scrounging facilitated certain behavioural aspects of bin opening rather than inhibiting them. The fact that only 9% of opening attempts were successful, and the long period of time required to increase efficiency in lid opening shows that mainly individual experience, and to a lesser extent insight and social learning, play key roles in acquisition of the opening technique. The results indicate that the spread of innovative solutions of challenging mechanical problems in animals may be restricted to only a few individuals.  
  Address Department for Behavior, Neurobiology and Cognition, University of Vienna, 1090, Vienna, Austria. gyula.gajdon@univie.ac.at  
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  ISSN (up) 1435-9448 ISBN Medium  
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  Notes PMID:16568276 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 2472  
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Author Rands, S.A.; Cowlishaw, G.; Pettifor, R.A.; Rowcliffe, J.M.; Johnstone, R.A. url  doi
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  Title The emergence of leaders and followers in foraging pairs when the qualities of individuals differ Type Journal Article
  Year 2008 Publication BMC Evolutionary Biology Abbreviated Journal BMC Evol Biol  
  Volume 8 Issue Pages 51  
  Keywords Animals; *Feeding Behavior; *Food Chain; *Models, Biological; *Social Dominance  
  Abstract BACKGROUND: Foraging in groups offers animals a number of advantages, such as increasing their likelihood of finding food or detecting and avoiding predators. In order for a group to remain together, there has to be some degree of coordination of behaviour and movement between its members (which may in some cases be initiated by a decision-making leader, and in other cases may emerge as an underlying property of the group). For example, behavioural synchronisation is a phenomenon where animals within a group initiate and then continue to conduct identical behaviours, and has been characterised for a wide range of species. We examine how a pair of animals should behave using a state-dependent approach, and ask what conditions are likely to lead to behavioural synchronisation occurring, and whether one of the individuals is more likely to act as a leader. RESULTS: The model we describe considers how the energetic gain, metabolic requirements and predation risks faced by the individuals affect measures of their energetic state and behaviour (such as the degree of behavioural synchronisation seen within the pair, and the value to an individual of knowing the energetic state of its colleague). We explore how predictable changes in these measures are in response to changes in physiological requirements and predation risk. We also consider how these measures should change when the members of the pair are not identical in their metabolic requirements or their susceptibility to predation. We find that many of the changes seen in these measures are complex, especially when asymmetries exist between the members of the pair. CONCLUSION: Analyses are presented that demonstrate that, although these general patterns are robust, care needs to be taken when considering the effects of individual differences, as the relationship between individual differences and the resulting qualitative changes in behaviour may be complex. We discuss how these results are related to experimental observations, and how the model and its predictions could be extended.  
  Address Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EJ, UK. sean.rands@bristol.ac.uk  
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  ISSN (up) 1471-2148 ISBN Medium  
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  Notes PMID:18282297 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 5126  
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Author Paz-y-Miño C. G.; Bond, A.B.; Kamil, A.C.; Balda, R.P. doi  openurl
  Title Pinyon jays use transitive inference to predict social dominance Type Journal Article
  Year 2004 Publication Nature Abbreviated Journal Nature  
  Volume 430 Issue 7001 Pages 778-781  
  Keywords Animals; Cognition/*physiology; Group Structure; Male; *Social Dominance; Songbirds/*physiology  
  Abstract Living in large, stable social groups is often considered to favour the evolution of enhanced cognitive abilities, such as recognizing group members, tracking their social status and inferring relationships among them. An individual's place in the social order can be learned through direct interactions with others, but conflicts can be time-consuming and even injurious. Because the number of possible pairwise interactions increases rapidly with group size, members of large social groups will benefit if they can make judgments about relationships on the basis of indirect evidence. Transitive reasoning should therefore be particularly important for social individuals, allowing assessment of relationships from observations of interactions among others. Although a variety of studies have suggested that transitive inference may be used in social settings, the phenomenon has not been demonstrated under controlled conditions in animals. Here we show that highly social pinyon jays (Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus) draw sophisticated inferences about their own dominance status relative to that of strangers that they have observed interacting with known individuals. These results directly demonstrate that animals use transitive inference in social settings and imply that such cognitive capabilities are widespread among social species.  
  Address Center for Avian Cognition, School of Biological Sciences, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska 68588, USA  
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  ISSN (up) 1476-4687 ISBN Medium  
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  Notes PMID:15306809 Approved no  
  Call Number refbase @ user @; Equine Behaviour @ team @ room B 3.029 Serial 352  
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Author Shettleworth, S.J. doi  openurl
  Title Cognitive science: rank inferred by reason Type Journal Article
  Year 2004 Publication Nature Abbreviated Journal Nature  
  Volume 430 Issue 7001 Pages 732-733  
  Keywords Animals; Cognition/*physiology; Group Structure; Male; *Social Dominance; Songbirds/*physiology  
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  ISSN (up) 1476-4687 ISBN Medium  
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  Notes PMID:15306792 Approved no  
  Call Number refbase @ user @ Serial 365  
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Author Grosenick, L.; Clement, T.S.; Fernald, R.D. doi  openurl
  Title Fish can infer social rank by observation alone Type Journal Article
  Year 2007 Publication Nature Abbreviated Journal Nature  
  Volume 445 Issue 7126 Pages 429-432  
  Keywords Aggression/physiology; Animals; Cognition/*physiology; Female; Fishes/*physiology; Learning/*physiology; Male; Models, Biological; *Social Dominance; Territoriality  
  Abstract Transitive inference (TI) involves using known relationships to deduce unknown ones (for example, using A > B and B > C to infer A > C), and is thus essential to logical reasoning. First described as a developmental milestone in children, TI has since been reported in nonhuman primates, rats and birds. Still, how animals acquire and represent transitive relationships and why such abilities might have evolved remain open problems. Here we show that male fish (Astatotilapia burtoni) can successfully make inferences on a hierarchy implied by pairwise fights between rival males. These fish learned the implied hierarchy vicariously (as 'bystanders'), by watching fights between rivals arranged around them in separate tank units. Our findings show that fish use TI when trained on socially relevant stimuli, and that they can make such inferences by using indirect information alone. Further, these bystanders seem to have both spatial and featural representations related to rival abilities, which they can use to make correct inferences depending on what kind of information is available to them. Beyond extending TI to fish and experimentally demonstrating indirect TI learning in animals, these results indicate that a universal mechanism underlying TI is unlikely. Rather, animals probably use multiple domain-specific representations adapted to different social and ecological pressures that they encounter during the course of their natural lives.  
  Address Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, California, 94305, USA. logang@stanford.edu  
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  ISSN (up) 1476-4687 ISBN Medium  
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  Notes PMID:17251980 Approved no  
  Call Number refbase @ user @ Serial 600  
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Author Dreier, S.; van Zweden, J.S.; D'Ettorre, P. url  doi
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  Title Long-term memory of individual identity in ant queens Type Journal Article
  Year 2007 Publication Biology Letters Abbreviated Journal Biol Lett  
  Volume 3 Issue 5 Pages 459-462  
  Keywords Aggression; Animals; Ants/*physiology; Conditioning, Operant; Evolution; Female; *Memory; *Recognition (Psychology); Social Dominance  
  Abstract Remembering individual identities is part of our own everyday social life. Surprisingly, this ability has recently been shown in two social insects. While paper wasps recognize each other individually through their facial markings, the ant, Pachycondyla villosa, uses chemical cues. In both species, individual recognition is adaptive since it facilitates the maintenance of stable dominance hierarchies among individuals, and thus reduces the cost of conflict within these small societies. Here, we investigated individual recognition in Pachycondyla ants by quantifying the level of aggression between pairs of familiar or unfamiliar queens over time. We show that unrelated founding queens of P. villosa and Pachycondyla inversa store information on the individual identity of other queens and can retrieve it from memory after 24h of separation. Thus, we have documented for the first time that long-term memory of individual identity is present and functional in ants. This novel finding represents an advance in our understanding of the mechanism determining the evolution of cooperation among unrelated individuals.  
  Address Institute of Biology, Department of Population Biology, University of Copenhagen, Universitetsparken 15, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark. sdreier@bi.ku.dk  
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  ISSN (up) 1744-9561 ISBN Medium  
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  Notes PMID:17594958 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 4649  
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