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Author Petruso, E.J.; Fuchs, T.; Bingman, V.P.
Title Time-space learning in homing pigeons (Columba livia): orientation to an artificial light source Type Journal Article
Year 2007 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.
Volume 10 Issue 2 Pages 181-188
Keywords Animals; Circadian Rhythm; Columbidae/*physiology; Homing Behavior/physiology; Learning/*physiology; *Light; Orientation/*physiology; Space Perception/*physiology; Time Perception/*physiology
Abstract Time-space learning reflects an ability to represent in memory event-stimulus properties together with the place and time of the event; a capacity well developed in birds. Homing pigeons were trained in an indoor octagonal arena to locate one food goal in the morning and a different food goal in the late afternoon. The goals differed with respect to their angular/directional relationship to an artificial light source located outside the arena. Further, the angular difference in reward position approximated the displacement of the sun's azimuth that would occur during the same time period. The experimental birds quickly learned the task, demonstrating the apparent ease with which birds can adopt an artificial light source to discriminate among alternative spatial responses at different times of the day. However, a novel midday probe session following successful learning revealed that the light source was interpreted as a stable landmark and not as a surrogate sun that would support compass orientation. Probe sessions following a phase shift of the light-dark cycle revealed that the mechanism employed to make the temporal discrimination was prevailingly based on an endogenous circadian rhythm and not an interval timing mechanism.
Address Department of Psychology and J.P. Scott Center for Neuroscience, Mind and Behavior Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH 43403, USA
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ISSN 1435-9448 ISBN Medium
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Notes PMID:17160343 Approved no
Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial (up) 2432
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Author Chiandetti, C.; Regolin, L.; Sovrano, V.A.; Vallortigara, G.
Title Spatial reorientation: the effects of space size on the encoding of landmark and geometry information Type Journal Article
Year 2007 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.
Volume 10 Issue 2 Pages 159-168
Keywords Animals; Chickens/*physiology; *Feeding Behavior; Male; Orientation/*physiology; Pattern Recognition, Visual/*physiology; *Space Perception
Abstract The effects of the size of the environment on animals' spatial reorientation was investigated. Domestic chicks were trained to find food in a corner of either a small or a large rectangular enclosure. A distinctive panel was located at each of the four corners of the enclosures. After removal of the panels, chicks tested in the small enclosure showed better retention of geometrical information than chicks tested in the large enclosure. In contrast, after changing the enclosure from a rectangular-shaped to a square-shaped one, chicks tested in the large enclosure showed better retention of landmark (panels) information than chicks tested in the small enclosure. No differences in the encoding of the overall arrangement of landmarks were apparent when chicks were tested for generalisation in an enclosure differing from that of training in size together with a transformation (affine transformation) that altered the geometric relations between the target and the shape of the environment. These findings suggest that primacy of geometric or landmark information in reorientation tasks depends on the size of the experimental space, likely reflecting a preferential use of the most reliable source of information available during visual exploration of the environment.
Address Department of Psychology and B.R.A.I.N. Centre for Neuroscience, University of Trieste, Via S. Anastasio 12, 34123, Trieste, Italy. cchiandetti@univ.trieste.it
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ISSN 1435-9448 ISBN Medium
Area Expedition Conference
Notes PMID:17136416 Approved no
Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial (up) 2433
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Author Topál, J.; Byrne, R.W.; Miklósi, Á.; Csányi, V.
Title Reproducing human actions and action sequences: “Do as I Do!” in a dog Type Journal Article
Year 2006 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.
Volume 9 Issue 4 Pages 355-367
Keywords Animals; *Comprehension; Conditioning, Operant; *Discrimination Learning; Dogs/*psychology; Humans; *Imitative Behavior; Male; *Serial Learning
Abstract We present evidence that a dog (Philip, a 4-year-old tervueren) was able to use different human actions as samples against which to match his own behaviour. First, Philip was trained to repeat nine human-demonstrated actions on command ('Do it!'). When his performance was markedly over chance in response to demonstration by one person, testing with untrained action sequences and other demonstrators showed some ability to generalise his understanding of copying. In a second study, we presented Philip with a sequence of human actions, again using the 'Do as I do' paradigm. All demonstrated actions had basically the same structure: the owner picked up a bottle from one of six places; transferred it to one of the five other places and then commanded the dog ('Do it!'). We found that Philip duplicated the entire sequence of moving a specific object from one particular place to another more often than expected by chance. Although results point to significant limitations in his imitative abilities, it seems that the dog could have recognized the action sequence, on the basis of observation alone, in terms of the initial state, the means, and the goal. This suggests that dogs might acquire abilities by observation that enhance their success in complex socio-behavioural situations.
Address Comparative Ethology Research Group, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Pazmany, P. 1/c H-1117, Hungary. kea@t-online.hu
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ISSN 1435-9448 ISBN Medium
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Notes PMID:17024511 Approved no
Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial (up) 2434
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Author Weir, A.A.S.; Kacelnik, A.
Title A New Caledonian crow (Corvus moneduloides) creatively re-designs tools by bending or unbending aluminium strips Type Journal Article
Year 2006 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.
Volume 9 Issue 4 Pages 317-334
Keywords Animals; *Comprehension; *Crows; Female; Learning; *Motor Skills; *Problem Solving; *Tool Use Behavior
Abstract Previous observations of a New Caledonian crow (Corvus moneduloides) spontaneously bending wire and using it as a hook [Weir et al. (2002) Science 297:981] have prompted questions about the extent to which these animals 'understand' the physical causality involved in how hooks work and how to make them. To approach this issue we examine how the same subject (“Betty”) performed in three experiments with novel material, which needed to be either bent or unbent in order to function to retrieve food. These tasks exclude the possibility of success by repetition of patterns of movement similar to those employed before. Betty quickly developed novel techniques to bend the material, and appropriately modified it on four of five trials when unbending was required. She did not mechanically apply a previously learned set of movements to the new situations, and instead sought new solutions to each problem. However, the details of her behaviour preclude concluding definitely that she understood and planned her actions: in some cases she probed with the unmodified tools before modifying them, or attempted to use the unmodified (unsuitable) end of the tool after modification. Gauging New Caledonian crows' level of understanding is not yet possible, but the observed behaviour is consistent with a partial understanding of physical tasks at a level that exceeds that previously attained by any other non-human subject, including apes.
Address Department of Zoology, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3PS, UK. alex.weir@magdalen.oxon.org
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Notes PMID:17024509 Approved no
Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial (up) 2436
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Author Watanabe, S.; Troje, N.F.
Title Towards a “virtual pigeon”: a new technique for investigating avian social perception Type Journal Article
Year 2006 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.
Volume 9 Issue 4 Pages 271-279
Keywords Animals; Behavioral Research/instrumentation/methods; Columbidae/*physiology; Computer Graphics; *Computer Simulation; Discrimination Learning/*physiology; Generalization (Psychology)/*physiology; Pattern Recognition, Visual/*physiology; Perceptual Masking/physiology; Rats; Recognition (Psychology)/physiology; *Social Behavior; User-Computer Interface
Abstract The purpose of the present study is to examine the applicability of a computer-generated, virtual animal to study animal cognition. Pigeons were trained to discriminate between movies of a real pigeon and a rat. Then, they were tested with movies of the computer-generated (CG) pigeon. Subjects showed generalization to the CG pigeon, however, they also responded to modified versions in which the CG pigeon was showing impossible movement, namely hopping and walking without its head bobbing. Hence, the pigeons did not attend to these particular details of the display. When they were trained to discriminate between the normal and the modified version of the CG pigeon, they were able to learn the discrimination. The results of an additional partial occlusion test suggest that the subjects used head movement as a cue for the usual vs. unusual CG pigeon discrimination.
Address Department of Psychology, Keio University, Mita 2-15-45, Minato-ku, Tokyo, 108, Japan. swat@flet.keio.ac.jp
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Notes PMID:17024508 Approved no
Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial (up) 2437
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Author Ward, C.; Smuts, B.B.
Title Quantity-based judgments in the domestic dog (Canis lupus familiaris) Type Journal Article
Year 2007 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.
Volume 10 Issue 1 Pages 71-80
Keywords Animals; *Choice Behavior; Dogs; Female; Food; Male; *Size Perception
Abstract We examined the ability of domestic dogs to choose the larger versus smaller quantity of food in two experiments. In experiment 1, we investigated the ability of 29 dogs (results from 18 dogs were used in the data analysis) to discriminate between two quantities of food presented in eight different combinations. Choices were simultaneously presented and visually available at the time of choice. Overall, subjects chose the larger quantity more often than the smaller quantity, but they found numerically close comparisons more difficult. In experiment 2, we tested two dogs from experiment 1 under three conditions. In condition 1, we used similar methods from experiment 1 and tested the dogs multiple times on the eight combinations from experiment 1 plus one additional combination. In conditions 2 and 3, the food was visually unavailable to the subjects at the time of choice, but in condition 2, food choices were viewed simultaneously before being made visually unavailable, and in condition 3, they were viewed successively. In these last two conditions, and especially in condition 3, the dogs had to keep track of quantities mentally in order to choose optimally. Subjects still chose the larger quantity more often than the smaller quantity when the food was not simultaneously visible at the time of choice. Olfactory cues and inadvertent cuing by the experimenter were excluded as mechanisms for choosing larger quantities. The results suggest that, like apes tested on similar tasks, some dogs can form internal representations and make mental comparisons of quantity.
Address Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, 1012 East Hall, 530 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1043, USA. rameses@unich.edu
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ISSN 1435-9448 ISBN Medium
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Notes PMID:16941158 Approved no
Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial (up) 2440
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Author Naug, D.; Arathi, H.S.
Title Sampling and decision rules used by honey bees in a foraging arena Type Journal Article
Year 2007 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.
Volume 10 Issue 2 Pages 117-124
Keywords Animals; Bees/*physiology; *Choice Behavior; Cooperative Behavior; *Feeding Behavior; Flight, Animal
Abstract Animals must continuously choose among various available options to exploit the most profitable resource. They also need to keep themselves updated about the values of all available options, since their relative values can change quickly due to depletion or exploitation by competitors. While the sampling and decision rules by which foragers profitably exploit a flower patch have attracted a great deal of attention in theory and experiments with bumble bees, similar rules for honey bee foragers, which face similar foraging challenges, are not as well studied. By presenting foragers of the honey bee Apis cerana with choice tests in a foraging arena and recording their behavior, we investigate possible sampling and decision rules that the foragers use to choose one option over another and to track other options. We show that a large part of the sampling and decision-making process of a foraging honey bee can be explained by decomposing the choice behavior into dichotomous decision points and incorporating the cost of sampling. The results suggest that a honey bee forager, by using a few simple rules as part of a Bayesian inference process, is able to effectively deal with the complex task of successfully exploiting foraging patches that consist of dynamic and multiple options.
Address Department of Biology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA. dhruba@lamar.colostate.edu
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ISSN 1435-9448 ISBN Medium
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Notes PMID:16941157 Approved no
Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial (up) 2441
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Author Hunt, G.R.; Rutledge, R.B.; Gray, R.D.
Title The right tool for the job: what strategies do wild New Caledonian crows use? Type Journal Article
Year 2006 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.
Volume 9 Issue 4 Pages 307-316
Keywords Analysis of Variance; Animals; Comprehension; *Crows; Female; *Intelligence; Male; *Problem Solving; *Tool Use Behavior
Abstract New Caledonian crows Corvus moneduloides (NC crows) display sophisticated tool manufacture in the wild, but the cognitive strategy underlying these skills is poorly understood. Here, we investigate what strategy two free-living NC crows used in response to a tool-length task. The crows manufactured tools to extract food from vertical holes of different depths. The first tools they made in visits were of a similar length regardless of the hole depth. The typical length was usually too short to extract food from the deep holes, which ruled out a strategy of immediate causal inference on the first attempt in a trial. When the first tool failed, the crows made second tools significantly longer than the unsuccessful first tools. There was no evidence that the crows made the lengths of first tools to directly match hole depth. We argue that NC crows may generally use a two-stage heuristic strategy to solve tool problems and that performance on the first attempt in a trial is not necessarily the 'gold standard' for assessing folk physics.
Address Department of Psychology, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand. grhunt10@hotmail.com
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ISSN 1435-9448 ISBN Medium
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Notes PMID:16941156 Approved no
Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial (up) 2442
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Author Chiesa, A.D.; Pecchia, T.; Tommasi, L.; Vallortigara, G.
Title Multiple landmarks, the encoding of environmental geometry and the spatial logics of a dual brain Type Journal Article
Year 2006 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.
Volume 9 Issue 4 Pages 281-293
Keywords Animals; Association Learning/*physiology; Chickens; *Cues; Dominance, Cerebral/*physiology; *Environment; Exploratory Behavior/*physiology; Logic; Space Perception/*physiology; Spatial Behavior/physiology
Abstract A series of place learning experiments was carried out in young chicks (Gallus gallus) in order to investigate how the geometry of a landmark array and that of a walled enclosure compete when disoriented animals could rely on both of them to re-orient towards the centre of the enclosure. A square-shaped array (four wooden sticks) was placed in the middle of a square-shaped enclosure, the two structures being concentric. Chicks were trained to ground-scratch to search for food hidden in the centre of the enclosure (and the array). To check for effects of array degradation, one, two, three or all landmarks were removed during test trials. Chicks concentrated their searching activity in the central area of the enclosure, but their accuracy was inversely contingent on the number of landmarks removed; moreover, the landmarks still present within the enclosure appeared to influence the shape of the searching patterns. The reduction in the number of landmarks affected the searching strategy of chicks, suggesting that they had focussed mainly on local cues when landmarks were present within the enclosure. When all the landmarks were removed, chicks searched over a larger area, suggesting an absolute encoding of distances from the local cues and less reliance on the relationships provided by the geometry of the enclosure. Under conditions of monocular vision, chicks tended to rely on different strategies to localize the centre on the basis of the eye (and thus the hemisphere) in use, the left hemisphere attending to details of the environment and the right hemisphere attending to the global shape.
Address Department of Psychology and B.R.A.I.N. Centre for Neuroscience, University of Trieste, via S. Anastasio 12, 34100, Trieste, Italy
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ISSN 1435-9448 ISBN Medium
Area Expedition Conference
Notes PMID:16941155 Approved no
Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial (up) 2443
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Author Call, J.
Title Inferences by exclusion in the great apes: the effect of age and species Type 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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Notes PMID:16924458 Approved no
Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial (up) 2444
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