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Hirata, S., & Celli, M. L. (2003). Role of mothers in the acquisition of tool-use behaviours by captive infant chimpanzees. Anim. Cogn., 6(4), 235–244.
Abstract: This article explores the maternal role in the acquisition of tool-use behaviours by infant chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes). A honey-fishing task, simulating ant/termite fishing found in the wild, was introduced to three dyads of experienced mother and naive infant chimpanzees. Four fishing sites and eight sets of 20 objects to be used as tools, not all appropriate, were available. Two of the mothers constantly performed the task, using primarily two kinds of tools; the three infants observed them. The infants, regardless of the amount of time spent observing, successfully performed the task around the age of 20-22 months, which is earlier than has been recorded in the wild. Two of the infants used the same types of tools that the adults predominantly used, suggesting that tool selectivity is transmitted. The results also show that adults are tolerant of infants, even if unrelated; infants were sometimes permitted to lick the tools, or were given the tools, usually without honey, as well as permitted to observe the adult performances closely.
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Hirsch, B. T. (2007). Costs and benefits of within-group spatial position: a feeding competition model. Q Rev Biol, 82(1), 9–27.
Abstract: An animal's within-group spatial position has several important fitness consequences. Risk of predation, time spent engaging in antipredatory behavior and feeding competition can all vary with respect to spatial position. Previous research has found evidence that feeding rates are higher at the group edge in many species, but these studies have not represented the entire breadth of dietary diversity and ecological situations faced by many animals. In particular the presence of concentrated, defendable food patches can lead to increased feeding rates by dominants in the center of the group that are able to monopolize or defend these areas. To fully understand the tradeoffs of within-group spatial position in relation to a variety of factors, it is important to be able to predict where individuals should preferably position themselves in relation to feeding rates and food competition. A qualitative model is presented here to predict how food depletion time, abundance of food patches within a group, and the presence of prior knowledge of feeding sites affect the payoffs of different within-group spatial positions for dominant and subordinate animals. In general, when feeding on small abundant food items, individuals at the front edge of the group should have higher foraging success. When feeding on slowly depleted, rare food items, dominants will often have the highest feeding rates in the center of the group. Between these two extreme points of a continuum, an individual's optimal spatial position is predicted to be influenced by an additional combination of factors, such as group size, group spread, satiation rates, and the presence of producer-scrounger tactics.
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Hodgson, Z. G., & Healy, S. D. (2005). Preference for spatial cues in a non-storing songbird species. Anim. Cogn., 8(3), 211–214.
Abstract: Male mammals typically outperform their conspecific females on spatial tasks. A sex difference in cues used to solve the task could underlie this performance difference as spatial ability is reliant on appropriate cue use. Although comparative studies of memory in food-storing and non-storing birds have examined species differences in cue preference, few studies have investigated differences in cue use within a species. In this study, we used a one-trial associative food-finding task to test for sex differences in cue use in the great tit, Parus major. Birds were trained to locate a food reward hidden in a well covered by a coloured cloth. To determine whether the colour of the cloth or the location of the well was learned during training, the birds were presented with three wells in the test phase: one in the original location, but covered by a cloth of a novel colour, a second in a new location covered with the original cloth and a third in a new location covered by a differently coloured cloth. Both sexes preferentially visited the well in the training location rather than either alternative. As great tits prefer colour cues over spatial cues in one-trial associative conditioning tasks, cue preference appears to be related to the task type rather than being species dependent.
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Houpt, K. A. (1990). Ingestive behavior. Vet Clin North Am Equine Pract, 6(2), 319–337.
Abstract: In summary, horses spend 60% or more of their time eating when grazing or when feed is available free choice. Grasses are their preferred food, but they supplement the grass with herbs and woody plants. Sweetened mixtures of oats and corn are the most preferred concentrate. Horses can increase or decrease the time spent eating and amount eaten to maintain caloric intake. Their intake is stimulated by drugs such as diazepam and by the presence of other horses. Horses stop eating when gastric osmolality increases; increases in plasma osmolality, protein, and glucose accompany digestion. Foals eat several times an hour and begin sampling solid food at the same time that their dam is eating. Several areas of particular importance to the equine industry have not been investigated. These areas include the effect of exercise on short- and long-term food intake and the influence of reproductive state on the feeding of mares.
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Houpt, K. A. (1995). New perspectives on equine stereotypic behaviour (Vol. 27).
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Houpt, K. A., Thornton, S. N., & Allen, W. R. (1989). Vasopressin in dehydrated and rehydrated ponies. Physiol. Behav., 45(3), 659–661.
Abstract: Six pony mares deprived of water for 24 hours showed significant increases in plasma vasopressin (2.8 pg/ml) and osmolality (9 mosmol/kg). When water was made available the ponies drank rapidly (5 of 6 drank to satiety within 90 seconds) and corrected their fluid deficits precisely. Vasopressin did not return to predehydration levels until osmolality did after 15 minutes of access to water. The horse differs from rodents and humans, but is similar to pigs in that vasopressin levels do not fall before osmolality returns to normal. Oropharyngeal factors, therefore, may not be as important in vasopressin release in horses as in other species.
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Iversen, I. H., & Matsuzawa, T. (2003). Development of interception of moving targets by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) in an automated task. Anim. Cogn., 6(3), 169–183.
Abstract: The experiments investigated how two adult captive chimpanzees learned to navigate in an automated interception task. They had to capture a visual target that moved predictably on a touch monitor. The aim of the study was to determine the learning stages that led to an efficient strategy of intercepting the target. The chimpanzees had prior training in moving a finger on a touch monitor and were exposed to the interception task without any explicit training. With a finger the subject could move a small “ball” at any speed on the screen toward a visual target that moved at a fixed speed either back and forth in a linear path or around the edge of the screen in a rectangular pattern. Initial ball and target locations varied from trial to trial. The subjects received a small fruit reinforcement when they hit the target with the ball. The speed of target movement was increased across training stages up to 38 cm/s. Learning progressed from merely chasing the target to intercepting the target by moving the ball to a point on the screen that coincided with arrival of the target at that point. Performance improvement consisted of reduction in redundancy of the movement path and reduction in the time to target interception. Analysis of the finger's movement path showed that the subjects anticipated the target's movement even before it began to move. Thus, the subjects learned to use the target's initial resting location at trial onset as a predictive signal for where the target would later be when it began moving. During probe trials, where the target unpredictably remained stationary throughout the trial, the subjects first moved the ball in anticipation of expected target movement and then corrected the movement to steer the ball to the resting target. Anticipatory ball movement in probe trials with novel ball and target locations (tested for one subject) showed generalized interception beyond the trained ball and target locations. The experiments illustrate in a laboratory setting the development of a highly complex and adaptive motor performance that resembles navigational skills seen in natural settings where predators intercept the path of moving prey.
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Jones, J. E., Antoniadis, E., Shettleworth, S. J., & Kamil, A. C. (2002). A comparative study of geometric rule learning by nutcrackers (Nucifraga columbiana), pigeons (Columba livia), and jackdaws (Corvus monedula). J Comp Psychol, 116(4), 350–356.
Abstract: Three avian species, a seed-caching corvid (Clark's nutcrackers; Nucifraga columbiana), a non-seed-caching corvid (jackdaws; Corvus monedula), and a non-seed-caching columbid (pigeons; Columba livia), were tested for ability to learn to find a goal halfway between 2 landmarks when distance between the landmarks varied during training. All 3 species learned, but jackdaws took much longer than either pigeons or nutcrackers. The nutcrackers searched more accurately than either pigeons or jackdaws. Both nutcrackers and pigeons showed good transfer to novel landmark arrays in which interlandmark distances were novel, but inconclusive results were obtained from jackdaws. Species differences in this spatial task appear quantitative rather than qualitative and are associated with differences in natural history rather than phylogeny.
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Kendal, R. L., Coe, R. L., & Laland, K. N. (2005). Age differences in neophilia, exploration, and innovation in family groups of callitrichid monkeys. Am. J. Primatol., 66(2), 167–188.
Abstract: The prevailing assumption in the primate literature is that young or juvenile primates are more innovative than adult individuals. This innovative tendency among the young is frequently thought to be a consequence, or side effect, of their increased rates of exploration and play. Conversely, Reader and Laland's [International Journal of Primatology 22:787-806, 2001] review of the primate innovation literature noted a greater reported incidence of innovation in adults than nonadults, which they interpreted as (in part) a reflection of the greater experience and competence of older individuals. Within callitrichids there is contradictory evidence for age differences in response to novel objects, foods, and foraging tasks. By presenting novel extractive foraging tasks to family groups of callitrichid monkeys in zoos, we examined, in a large sample, whether there are positive or negative relationships of age with neophilia, exploration, and innovation, and whether play or experience most facilitates innovation. The results indicate that exploration and innovation (but not neophilia) are positively correlated with age, perhaps reflecting adults' greater manipulative competence. To the extent that there was evidence for play in younger individuals, it did not appear to contribute to innovation. The implications of these findings for the fields of innovation and conservation through reintroduction are considered.
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Krcmar, S., Mikuska, A., & Merdic, E. (2006). Response of Tabanidae (Diptera) to different natural attractants. J Vector Ecol, 31(2), 262–265.
Abstract: The response of female tabanids to natural attractants was studied in the Monjoros Forest along the Nature Park Kopacki rit in eastern Croatia. Tabanids were caught in canopy traps baited with either aged cow, horse, sheep, or pig urine and also in unbaited traps. Tabanids were collected in a significantly higher numbers in traps baited with natural attractants compared to unbaited traps. The number of females of Tabanus bromius, Tabanus maculicornis, Tabanus tergestinus, and Hybomitra bimaculata collected from canopy traps baited with cow urine and traps baited with other natural attractants differed significantly. Females of Haematopota pluvialis were also collected more frequently in canopy traps baited with aged cow urine than in those with aged horse urine, but this difference was not significant. However, the number of females of Haematopota pluvialis collected from canopy traps baited with other natural attractants (sheep and pig urine) differed significantly when compared with aged cow urine baited traps. Canopy traps baited with aged cow urine collected significantly more Tabanus sudeticus than did traps baited with aged pig urine. Finally, the aged cow urine baited canopy traps collected 51 times more tabanids than unbaited traps, while aged horse, aged sheep, and aged pig urine baited traps collected 36, 30, and 22 times as many tabanids, respectively, than unbaited traps.
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