Animal CognitionPub Date : 2025-06-28DOI: 10.1007/s10071-025-01973-y
Tatjana Hoehfurtner, Anna Wilkinson, Sophie A. Moszuti, Oliver H.P. Burman
{"title":"Evidence of mood states in reptiles","authors":"Tatjana Hoehfurtner, Anna Wilkinson, Sophie A. Moszuti, Oliver H.P. Burman","doi":"10.1007/s10071-025-01973-y","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10071-025-01973-y","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>There is increasing evidence that non-human animals experience ‘free-floating’ mood states, but such evidence is lacking in reptiles, hindering the debate as to their affective capacity and with subsequent implications for welfare. Here, we investigated the presence of a mood state in a species of reptile, the red-footed tortoise (<i>Chelonoidis carbonaria</i>), using a spatial cognitive judgement bias task — an approach reliably used to determine background mood — alongside their behavioural response in anxiety tests. Our results showed that, as found in mammals and birds, individuals kept in appropriate conditions showed an optimistic mood, approaching ambiguous locations more rapidly when these were positioned closer to a rewarded location. This finding was reflected in associations between cognitive bias performance and behaviour in the concurrent anxiety tests, with more optimistic individuals showing less anxious behaviour in response to novelty. These findings significantly extend contemporary knowledge of the affective and cognitive capacity of reptiles and have important implications, not only for informing the management of reptiles but also for furthering our understanding of phylogenetic pathways of affective state.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7879,"journal":{"name":"Animal Cognition","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12206180/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144526128","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Animal CognitionPub Date : 2025-06-25DOI: 10.1007/s10071-025-01970-1
Elisabeth H. M. Sterck, Sophie M. Kamp, Ive Rouart, Lisette M. van den Berg, Dian G. M. Zijlmans, Tom S. Roth, Brad J. Bushman
{"title":"Reactions to social videos in long-tailed macaques","authors":"Elisabeth H. M. Sterck, Sophie M. Kamp, Ive Rouart, Lisette M. van den Berg, Dian G. M. Zijlmans, Tom S. Roth, Brad J. Bushman","doi":"10.1007/s10071-025-01970-1","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10071-025-01970-1","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Animals can obtain important social information by observing social interactions among conspecifics. Depending on the social content, such as familiarity with the conspecifics and the type of interaction, the receiver’s attention, and possibly also movement and stress response, might differ. Moreover, these behavioural responses may vary depending on the individual’s own characteristics. By showing video fragments with different social content (i.e., run, conflict, sit, groom) of group members and strangers, we measured the reaction of captive long-tailed macaques living in multi-generational groups. In addition, we explored how an individual’s social and self-directed behaviour in its social group was related to reactions to these videos. Subjects paid more attention to videos of group members than strangers, especially more subordinate and less stress sensitive (i.e., low stress response when observing natural aggression) individuals. Self-directed behaviour was higher for younger individuals seeing strangers, but not group members, and for individuals with high levels of baseline self-directed behaviour and little grooming. Regarding context, the monkeys paid more attention to videos with active and aggressive content compared to sitting and grooming videos. Altogether, monkeys living in multi-generational groups show high interest in gathering social information on group members, and this is modulated by their social role and personal ability to handle social situations.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7879,"journal":{"name":"Animal Cognition","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12198264/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144482905","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Animal CognitionPub Date : 2025-06-20DOI: 10.1007/s10071-025-01971-0
Masahiro Sasaki, Hinano Kinoshita, Akitsugu Konno
{"title":"Do as I do imitation in a steller sea lion Eumetopias jubatus","authors":"Masahiro Sasaki, Hinano Kinoshita, Akitsugu Konno","doi":"10.1007/s10071-025-01971-0","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10071-025-01971-0","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The present study explored whether a well-socialized Steller sea lion named Hama could reproduce similar actions with human demonstrations using the “Do as I do” (DAID) paradigm. Hama had learned 50 types of behaviors, but her social learning ability was unknown. In Study 1, we trained Hama to produce simultaneous DAID responses. After introducing the DAID training, we conducted four tests to confirm Hama’s acquisition of demonstrator-matching behavior. We found that Hama successfully acquired the action-matching ability for human actions, not only with three trained actions but also with six out of seven untrained actions (see Test 1 and Test 2). Moreover, Hama’s DAID performance was stable regardless of the familiarity of human demonstrators (see Test 1 and Test 2). Hama successfully performed two completely novel body actions that were not included in her prior learning repertoire, but failed to replicate actions involving object manipulation (see Test 3). She showed no response in control trials without demonstrations, providing partial evidence for negative control (see Test 4). In Study 2, we introduced Hama to performing non-simultaneous DAID responses, which involved suppressing immediate simultaneous actions following the demonstrator and then reproducing the actions upon the verbal cue “Go.” She accurately performed the DAID response even when she delayed her response until the demonstrator’s demonstration was completed (Test 5). Importantly, she reproduced the action accurately when visual contact between the demonstrator and herself was blocked after the demonstration, eliminating the Clever Hans effect as a potential influence on her simultaneous DAID response (Test 6). However, she could not reproduce small or untrained actions (Test 7). These results suggest that Hama may be able to accurately map human action sequences in body-oriented actions to some extent. This study provides the first evidence of motor imitation ability in captive pinnipeds.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7879,"journal":{"name":"Animal Cognition","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12181110/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144332340","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Animal CognitionPub Date : 2025-06-17DOI: 10.1007/s10071-025-01965-y
Lily Johnson-Ulrich, Sofia Forss
{"title":"How cognitively demanding is the urban niche? Reconsidering exaptation and habituation","authors":"Lily Johnson-Ulrich, Sofia Forss","doi":"10.1007/s10071-025-01965-y","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10071-025-01965-y","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Urbanization is hypothesized to create a myriad of cognitive challenges for animals because it creates novel environmental conditions in evolutionary terms. The consensus is that these novel urban challenges act as drivers for increased cognitive abilities. However, scant empirical data validates the idea that urban environments are cognitively demanding relative to native ones. In this short communication we draw the attention to the fact that for some large-brained urban inhabitants the urban environment may instead provide “easy” exploitable niches, where these species can thrive because they already have the necessary cognitive tools in place. As such, evolutionary seen, such species are “exapted” to occupy a less challenging urban niche. As follows, while a species’ cognition may facilitate its persistence under urbanization, it does not necessarily mean that urban populations face selective or developmental drivers for improved cognition in urban living. We further point out the potential bias anthropogenic habituation can bring about when intraspecific comparisons are made between urban and nonurban populations and suggest that researchers must focus on precisely which species-specific aspects of the environment are novel when making predictions about the consequences of urbanization on cognitive traits.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7879,"journal":{"name":"Animal Cognition","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12174247/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144315768","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Animal CognitionPub Date : 2025-06-13DOI: 10.1007/s10071-025-01968-9
Ke Deng, Qiao-Ling He, Tong-Liang Wang, Ji-Chao Wang, Jian-Guo Cui
{"title":"Context-dependent frequency alteration in a treefrog","authors":"Ke Deng, Qiao-Ling He, Tong-Liang Wang, Ji-Chao Wang, Jian-Guo Cui","doi":"10.1007/s10071-025-01968-9","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10071-025-01968-9","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Acoustic communication is widespread across various taxa, playing crucial roles in intrasexual competition, social interaction, and territorial defense. For anurans (frogs and toads), female choice and male-male competition heavily rely on acoustic signals. It has been demonstrated that males of many species alter the spectral traits of their calls to enhance competitiveness during vocal interaction. However, how male frogs adjust the spectral traits of their calls in different competitive contexts remains unclear. Using playback experiments, we investigated how male Hainan frilled treefrogs (<i>Kurixalus hainanus</i>) adjust the dominant frequency of their advertisement calls in response to different call types from conspecifics. We found that males with higher dominant frequencies significantly decreased their frequency, whereas males with lower frequencies increased their frequency, with the greatest magnitude of frequency adjustment occurring during exposure to aggressive calls. Further analysis revealed that the dominant frequency during the playback of aggressive calls shifted closer to the population average compared to the <i>spontaneous</i> (no experimental manipulation) period. This pattern was not observed during the playback of advertisement or compound calls, indicating that males selectively alter spectral traits in response to perceived competition. These findings suggest that frequency adjustments facilitate the ability of male <i>K</i>. <i>hainanus</i> to maintain female attraction by suppressing their vocalizations. This study supports that male <i>K</i>. <i>hainanus</i> use frequency alteration to dishonestly signal body size and has an implication for understanding how male frogs enhance competitiveness during vocal interaction by adjusting the spectral traits of their calls.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":7879,"journal":{"name":"Animal Cognition","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12165976/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144293228","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Animal CognitionPub Date : 2025-06-13DOI: 10.1007/s10071-025-01972-z
Claire L. Peinke, Adrian M. Shrader
{"title":"Can African elephants use leaf colour as a visual cue when making foraging decisions?","authors":"Claire L. Peinke, Adrian M. Shrader","doi":"10.1007/s10071-025-01972-z","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10071-025-01972-z","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Finding food is one of the most important aspects of an animal’s life. Yet, locating it can be challenging as the availability and quality of food varies both spatially and temporarily. To overcome these challenges, mammalian herbivores may use spatial memory or senses such as smell and vision. Recent studies have found that African elephants (<i>Loxodonta africana</i>) use olfactory cues to locate food patches and to select plants to eat within these patches. However, the extent to which they may also use visual cues, such as those associated with leaf colour, a proxy for food quality, when making foraging decisions is unknown. To address this knowledge gap, we tested whether African elephants were able to discriminate differences in leaf colour (i.e., light green: high-quality new growth, dark green: lower quality old growth, brown: poor-quality senesced vegetation) over a range of distances (i.e., 3, 5, 10, 20, 40, 80 m). Testing four semi-tame elephants using visual-based choice experiments between different coloured canvases, we found that the elephants were able to discriminate colour differences at close range (i.e., <i>≤</i>10 m), but not beyond. This suggests that when feeding within a patch, African elephants may utilise the visual cues associated with leaf colour to help locate high-quality food (e.g., individual trees, branches, and leaves) and thus increase their foraging efficiency. However, as they were unable to discriminate between the different colours over distances > 10 m, it is unlikely that they use colour when making long-range foraging decisions such as selecting feeding patches.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":7879,"journal":{"name":"Animal Cognition","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12166006/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144293227","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Animal CognitionPub Date : 2025-06-05DOI: 10.1007/s10071-025-01966-x
Mark E. Hauber, Csaba Moskát
{"title":"Acoustic overtones improve the discrimination of conspecific female calls by male common cuckoos from similar heterospecific calls","authors":"Mark E. Hauber, Csaba Moskát","doi":"10.1007/s10071-025-01966-x","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10071-025-01966-x","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Acoustic communication in obligate brood parasitic common cuckoos (<i>Cuculus canorus</i>) plays an important role both in social contacts within its own and with other species (including its many hosts). For example, the female cuckoo’s bubbling call putatively mimics the call of the Eurasian sparrowhawk (<i>Accipiter nisus</i>) to serve as defence from host songbirds mobbing the parasitic female. However, several other, both raptorial and harmless, sympatric bird species also have similar vocalizations to the bubbling call (including the Eurasian kestrel, <i>Falco tinnunculus</i>, and the Eurasian green woodpecker, <i>Picus viridis</i>). Bubbling calls are also used by female cuckoos for conspecific communication with male conspecifics and so the discrimination of acoustically similar con- vs. heterospecific calls should be functionally relevant for cuckoos. We expanded upon a published playback study with all the above species’ calls presented to male cuckoos. The subjects approached the speaker in 100% when conspecific females’ bubbling calls were played back, but rarely (6–12%) did so when either acoustically similar natural calls of sympatric species were used. However, as structurally the bubbling call has no harmonic overtones, but the calls of the other species contain them, we also conducted playbacks with manipulated sound files where the harmonics were removed. Harmonic-free heterospecific calls attracted male cuckoos more often (40–50%) than natural heterospecific calls but still less so than the natural conspecific call. These results reveal the functional importance of the presence of harmonical overtones in heterospecific calls as they can serve to reduce perceptual auditory errors in male cuckoos.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7879,"journal":{"name":"Animal Cognition","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12141366/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144224072","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Animal CognitionPub Date : 2025-06-05DOI: 10.1007/s10071-025-01969-8
D. D. O’Hagan, D. Donley, S. W. Y. Yeung, C. D. Blasi Foglietti, D. Wales, D. Wintersgill, T. V. Smulders
{"title":"Responses of coal tits (Periparus ater) to aversive food: insights into hoarding motivation and memory","authors":"D. D. O’Hagan, D. Donley, S. W. Y. Yeung, C. D. Blasi Foglietti, D. Wales, D. Wintersgill, T. V. Smulders","doi":"10.1007/s10071-025-01969-8","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10071-025-01969-8","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Food-hoarding birds hide many different food types, and are able to remember which kind of food they have hidden and where it was located. Usually, these different food types, although potentially of different value to the birds, are all palatable and would be consumed when encountered. We report on the responses of coal tits (<i>Periparus ater</i>) to peanut pieces that were made distasteful with quinine. While birds preferred eating normal peanut pieces over quinine-soaked ones, they were still very likely to hoard the distasteful nuts. Birds also did not distinguish between the two nut types when retrieving them after 30 min. These findings point towards the compulsive and automatic nature of hoarding decision, independent of the value of the food being hoarded. We discuss how high hoarding motivation may interact with eating motivation to drive natural patterns of hoarding intensity in the field. Our findings also suggest that the taste of hoarded food items is not part of the representation of the cache memory. We speculate that this may be because tasting the item and caching the item happens in separate locations and are therefore not associated with each other.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7879,"journal":{"name":"Animal Cognition","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12141390/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144224073","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Animal CognitionPub Date : 2025-06-04DOI: 10.1007/s10071-025-01959-w
Leonore Bonin, Héctor M. Manrique, Redouan Bshary
{"title":"Cleaner wrasse failed in early testing stages of both visual and spatial working memory paradigms","authors":"Leonore Bonin, Héctor M. Manrique, Redouan Bshary","doi":"10.1007/s10071-025-01959-w","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10071-025-01959-w","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Working memory (WM), an attention-based short-term storage system responsible for the manipulation and integration of past knowledge with present information for goal-directed behavior, is a key executive function and a principal predictor of general intelligence. Despite its importance, WM has not been a major research topic in animal behavior. Here, we first summarize key ideas related to WM from the social sciences for interested colleagues. Given that past methodological inconsistencies have led to mixed results and conclusions across various species, we then designed experiments that incorporate the critical components of WM, facilitating cross-species comparisons and accounting for potential ecological influences. We present such experiments on WM in an ectothermic vertebrate, the cleaner wrasse (<i>Labroides dimidiatus</i>), which faces environmental challenges potentially requiring complex cognitive adaptations. Overcoming several experimental challenges, we consistently obtained negative results across multiple experimental paradigms. As our experiments were specifically designed to test WM, our negative results call into question previous studies in other fish species that provide evidence for WM using different paradigms. More specific tests for WM should be developed to confirm the presence or absence of this executive function in other ectotherm vertebrates. The absence of WM may be a key factor underlying the significant encephalization gap between ectotherm and endotherm vertebrate species.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7879,"journal":{"name":"Animal Cognition","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12137418/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144214643","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Animal CognitionPub Date : 2025-05-27DOI: 10.1007/s10071-025-01964-z
Mingju E, Chao Shen, Nehafta Bibi, Yu Zhang, Li Liu, Xudong Li
{"title":"The influence of body condition and personality on nest defense behavior of Japanese tits (Parus minor)","authors":"Mingju E, Chao Shen, Nehafta Bibi, Yu Zhang, Li Liu, Xudong Li","doi":"10.1007/s10071-025-01964-z","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10071-025-01964-z","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>When faced with a predator, parent birds have to choose between current and future breeding. Previous studies have shown that the body condition and personality of parents influence the trade-offs. However, whether body condition and personality influence an individual’s nest defense behavior has rarely been investigated. Here, we studied whether body condition and personality affect the nest defense behavior of incubating Japanese tits (<i>Parus minor</i>). Some females exhibited intense nest defense behavior when human-simulated intruders approached. Notably, individuals exhibiting high nest defense behavior had significantly shorter tail lengths compared to individuals who did not. In addition, bold individuals would exhibit higher nest defense behavior than those showing low defense responses. Furthermore, bold individuals consistently demonstrated stronger nest defense behavior compared to shy individuals, aligning with their proactive personality traits. This pattern highlights the potential role of individual behavioral differences in shaping anti-predator strategies.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7879,"journal":{"name":"Animal Cognition","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2025-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12116613/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144155515","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}