Animal CognitionPub Date : 2024-03-02DOI: 10.1007/s10071-024-01835-z
Laure Tosatto, Joël Fagot, Dezso Nemeth, Arnaud Rey
{"title":"Chunking as a function of sequence length.","authors":"Laure Tosatto, Joël Fagot, Dezso Nemeth, Arnaud Rey","doi":"10.1007/s10071-024-01835-z","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-024-01835-z","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Chunking mechanisms are central to several cognitive processes. During the acquisition of visuo-motor sequences, it is commonly reported that these sequences are segmented into chunks leading to more fluid, rapid, and accurate performances. The question of a chunk's storage capacity has been often investigated but little is known about the dynamics of chunk size evolution relative to sequence length. In two experiments, we studied the dynamics and the evolution of a sequence's chunking pattern as a function of sequence length in a non-human primate species (Guinea baboons, Papio papio). Using an operant conditioning device, baboons had to point on a touch screen to a moving target. In Experiment 1, they had to produce repeatedly the same sequence of 4 movements during 2000 trials. In Experiment 2, the sequence was composed of 5 movements and was repeated 4000 times. For both lengths, baboons initially produced small chunks that became fewer and longer with practice. Moreover, the dynamics and the evolution of the chunking pattern varied as a function of sequence length. Finally, with extended practice (i.e., more than 2000 trials), we observed that the mean chunk size reached a plateau indicating that there are fundamental limits to chunking processes that also depend on sequence length. These data therefore provide new empirical evidence for understanding the general properties of chunking mechanisms in sequence learning.</p>","PeriodicalId":7879,"journal":{"name":"Animal Cognition","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2024-03-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140011990","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Animal CognitionPub Date : 2024-03-02DOI: 10.1007/s10071-024-01843-z
Justin T Richard, Isabelle Pellegrini, Rachael Levine
{"title":"Belugas (Delphinapterus leucas) create facial displays during social interactions by changing the shape of their melons.","authors":"Justin T Richard, Isabelle Pellegrini, Rachael Levine","doi":"10.1007/s10071-024-01843-z","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10071-024-01843-z","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Beluga whales are considered unique among odontocetes in their ability to visibly alter the appearance of their head by changing the shape of the melon, but only anecdotal observations are available to evaluate the use or potential function of these melon shapes. This study of belugas in professionally managed care aimed to establish an ethogram for the repertoire of categorizable melon shapes and then evaluate their potential function as intentional communication signals by determining if they were produced and elaborated during social interactions of varying behavioral contexts while in the line of sight of a recipient. Five different melon shapes were reliably identified in video observations of the primary study population (n = 4) and externally validated in a second aquarium population (n = 51). Among the 2570 melon shapes observed from the primary study subjects, melon shapes occurred 34 × more frequently during social interactions (1.72 per minute) than outside of social interactions (0.05 per minute). Melon shapes occurring during social interactions were performed within the line of sight of a recipient 93.6% of the time. The frequency of occurrence of the different melon shapes varied across behavioral contexts. Elaboration of melon shapes through extended duration and the occurrence of concurrent open mouth displays varied by shape type and across behavioral contexts. Melon shapes seem to function as visual displays, with some characteristics of intentional communication. This ability could yield adaptive benefits to belugas, given their complex social structure and hypothesized mating system that emphasizes pre-copulatory female mate choice.</p>","PeriodicalId":7879,"journal":{"name":"Animal Cognition","volume":"27 1","pages":"7"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2024-03-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10907495/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140012044","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 : 2024-03-02DOI: 10.1007/s10071-024-01838-w
Samara Danel, Nancy Rebout, Léna Bureau, Timothée Zidat, Dora Biro, Francesco Bonadonna
{"title":"Responses to novelty in wild insular birds: comparing breeding populations in ecologically contrasting habitats.","authors":"Samara Danel, Nancy Rebout, Léna Bureau, Timothée Zidat, Dora Biro, Francesco Bonadonna","doi":"10.1007/s10071-024-01838-w","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10071-024-01838-w","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Islands have always provided ideal natural laboratories for assessing ecological parameters influencing behaviour. One hypothesis that lends itself well to testing in island habitats suggests that animals frequenting highly variable environments should be motivated to approach and interact with (i.e. explore) novelty. Intra-species comparisons of populations living in ecologically different island habitats may, thus, help reveal the factors that modulate animals' responses to novelty. In this study, we presented novel objects to two geographically isolated breeding populations of the black-faced sheathbill (Chionis minor), a sedentary land-based bird that frequents remote sub-Antarctic islands. In the first population (Chionis minor ssp. crozettensis), the \"Crozet group\" (Baie du Marin, Ile de la Possession, Crozet Islands), breeding pairs inhabit a variable habitat close to penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus) colonies. In the second population (Chionis minor ssp. minor), the \"Kerguelen group\" (île Verte, Morbihan gulf, Kerguelen Islands) breeding pairs live in penguin-free territories. In this latter population, the environment is less variable due to the presence of a broad intertidal zone which ensures year-round food availability. At both Kerguelen and Crozet, at least one breeding partner in all pairs approached at least one of the novel objects, and we found no significant differences in the latency of approach between the two populations. However, sheathbills at Crozet touched objects significantly more than birds at Kerguelen, and were also faster to touch them. We discuss how environmental variability, along with other potential influencing factors, may favour exploration of novelty in this wild insular bird.</p>","PeriodicalId":7879,"journal":{"name":"Animal Cognition","volume":"27 1","pages":"4"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2024-03-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10907422/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140011986","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 : 2024-03-02DOI: 10.1007/s10071-024-01864-8
Dêverton Plácido Xavier, Filipa Abreu, Antonio Souto, Nicola Schiel
{"title":"Choosing the best way: how wild common marmosets travel to efficiently exploit resources","authors":"Dêverton Plácido Xavier, Filipa Abreu, Antonio Souto, Nicola Schiel","doi":"10.1007/s10071-024-01864-8","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10071-024-01864-8","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>While foraging, animals have to find potential food sites, remember these sites, and plan the best navigation route. To deal with problems associated with foraging for multiple and patchy resources, primates may employ heuristic strategies to improve foraging success. Until now, no study has attempted to investigate experimentally the use of such strategies by a primate in a context involving foraging in large-scale space. Thus, we carried out an experimental field study that aimed to test if wild common marmosets (<i>Callithrix jacchus</i>) employ heuristic strategies to efficiently navigate through multiple feeding sites distributed in a large-scale space. In our experiment, we arranged four feeding platforms in a trapezoid configuration with up to 60 possible routes and observe marmosets’ decisions under two experimental conditions. In experimental condition I, all platforms contained the same amount of food; in experimental condition II, the platforms had different amounts of food. According to the number and arrangement of the platforms, we tested two heuristic strategies: the Nearest Neighbor Rule and the Gravity Rule. Our results revealed that wild common marmosets prefer to use routes consistent with a heuristic strategy more than expected by chance, regardless of food distribution. The findings also demonstrate that common marmosets seem to integrate different factors such as distance and quantity of food across multiple sites distributed over a large-scale space, employing a combination of heuristic strategies to select the most efficient routes available. In summary, our findings confirm our expectations and provide important insights into the spatial cognition of these small neotropical primates.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7879,"journal":{"name":"Animal Cognition","volume":"27 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-03-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10907437/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140012045","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 : 2024-03-02DOI: 10.1007/s10071-024-01846-w
Kathrin S Kopp, Patricia Kanngiesser, Rahel K Brügger, Moritz M Daum, Anja Gampe, Moritz Köster, Carel P van Schaik, Katja Liebal, Judith M Burkart
{"title":"The proximate regulation of prosocial behaviour: towards a conceptual framework for comparative research.","authors":"Kathrin S Kopp, Patricia Kanngiesser, Rahel K Brügger, Moritz M Daum, Anja Gampe, Moritz Köster, Carel P van Schaik, Katja Liebal, Judith M Burkart","doi":"10.1007/s10071-024-01846-w","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10071-024-01846-w","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Humans and many other animal species act in ways that benefit others. Such prosocial behaviour has been studied extensively across a range of disciplines over the last decades, but findings to date have led to conflicting conclusions about prosociality across and even within species. Here, we present a conceptual framework to study the proximate regulation of prosocial behaviour in humans, non-human primates and potentially other animals. We build on psychological definitions of prosociality and spell out three key features that need to be in place for behaviour to count as prosocial: benefitting others, intentionality, and voluntariness. We then apply this framework to review observational and experimental studies on sharing behaviour and targeted helping in human children and non-human primates. We show that behaviours that are usually subsumed under the same terminology (e.g. helping) can differ substantially across and within species and that some of them do not fulfil our criteria for prosociality. Our framework allows for precise mapping of prosocial behaviours when retrospectively evaluating studies and offers guidelines for future comparative work.</p>","PeriodicalId":7879,"journal":{"name":"Animal Cognition","volume":"27 1","pages":"5"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2024-03-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10907469/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140011989","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 : 2024-03-02DOI: 10.1007/s10071-024-01854-w
Felipe Villa-Larenas, Miquel Llorente, Katja Liebal, Federica Amici
{"title":"Gestural communication in wild spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi)","authors":"Felipe Villa-Larenas, Miquel Llorente, Katja Liebal, Federica Amici","doi":"10.1007/s10071-024-01854-w","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10071-024-01854-w","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Gestures play a central role in the communication systems of several animal families, including primates. In this study, we provide a first assessment of the gestural systems of a Platyrrhine species, Geoffroy’s spider monkeys (<i>Ateles geoffroyi</i>). We observed a wild group of 52 spider monkeys and assessed the distribution of visual and tactile gestures in the group, the size of individual repertoires and the intentionality and effectiveness of individuals’ gestural production. Our results showed that younger spider monkeys were more likely than older ones to use tactile gestures. In contrast, we found no inter-individual differences in the probability of producing visual gestures. Repertoire size did not vary with age, but the probability of accounting for recipients’ attentional state was higher for older monkeys than for younger ones, especially for gestures in the visual modality. Using vocalizations right before the gesture increased the probability of gesturing towards attentive recipients and of receiving a response, although age had no effect on the probability of gestures being responded. Overall, our study provides first evidence of gestural production in a Platyrrhine species, and confirms this taxon as a valid candidate for research on animal communication.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7879,"journal":{"name":"Animal Cognition","volume":"27 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-03-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10907450/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140012049","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 : 2024-03-02DOI: 10.1007/s10071-024-01848-8
Paola Crespo-Bojorque, Elodie Cauvet, Christophe Pallier, Juan M. Toro
{"title":"Recognizing structure in novel tunes: differences between human and rats","authors":"Paola Crespo-Bojorque, Elodie Cauvet, Christophe Pallier, Juan M. Toro","doi":"10.1007/s10071-024-01848-8","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10071-024-01848-8","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>A central feature in music is the hierarchical organization of its components. Musical pieces are not a simple concatenation of chords, but are characterized by rhythmic and harmonic structures. Here, we explore if sensitivity to music structure might emerge in the absence of any experience with musical stimuli. For this, we tested if rats detect the difference between structured and unstructured musical excerpts and compared their performance with that of humans. Structured melodies were excerpts of Mozart's sonatas. Unstructured melodies were created by the recombination of fragments of different sonatas. We trained listeners (both human participants and Long-Evans rats) with a set of structured and unstructured excerpts, and tested them with completely novel excerpts they had not heard before. After hundreds of training trials, rats were able to tell apart novel structured from unstructured melodies. Human listeners required only a few trials to reach better performance than rats. Interestingly, such performance was increased in humans when tonality changes were included, while it decreased to chance in rats. Our results suggest that, with enough training, rats might learn to discriminate acoustic differences differentiating hierarchical music structures from unstructured excerpts. More importantly, the results point toward species-specific adaptations on how tonality is processed.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7879,"journal":{"name":"Animal Cognition","volume":"27 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-03-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10907461/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140011985","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 : 2024-03-02DOI: 10.1007/s10071-024-01845-x
Melissa Smith, Joanna C Murrell, Michael Mendl
{"title":"Spatial working memory in a disappearing object task is impaired in female but not male dogs with chronic osteoarthritis.","authors":"Melissa Smith, Joanna C Murrell, Michael Mendl","doi":"10.1007/s10071-024-01845-x","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10071-024-01845-x","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Chronic pain in humans is associated with impaired working memory but it is not known whether this is the case in long-lived companion animals, such as dogs, who are especially vulnerable to developing age-related chronic pain conditions. Pain-related impairment of cognitive function could have detrimental effects on an animal's ability to engage with its owners and environment or to respond to training or novel situations, which may in turn affect its quality of life. This study compared the performance of 20 dogs with chronic pain from osteoarthritis and 21 healthy control dogs in a disappearing object task of spatial working memory. Female neutered osteoarthritic dogs, but not male neutered osteoarthritic dogs, were found to have lower predicted probabilities of successfully performing the task compared to control dogs of the same sex. In addition, as memory retention interval in the task increased, osteoarthritic dogs showed a steeper decline in working memory performance than control dogs. This suggests that the effects of osteoarthritis, and potentially other pain-related conditions, on cognitive function are more clearly revealed in tasks that present a greater cognitive load. Our finding that chronic pain from osteoarthritis may be associated with impaired working memory in dogs parallels results from studies of human chronic pain disorders. That female dogs may be particularly prone to these effects warrants further investigation.</p>","PeriodicalId":7879,"journal":{"name":"Animal Cognition","volume":"27 1","pages":"13"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2024-03-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10907419/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140011987","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 : 2024-03-02DOI: 10.1007/s10071-024-01841-1
Angela Medina-García, Ellen Scherner, Molly T McDermott, Mark E Hauber, Rebecca J Safran
{"title":"Colonial breeding impacts potentially fitness-relevant cognitive processes in barn swallows.","authors":"Angela Medina-García, Ellen Scherner, Molly T McDermott, Mark E Hauber, Rebecca J Safran","doi":"10.1007/s10071-024-01841-1","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10071-024-01841-1","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Many animals breed colonially, often in dense clusters, representing a complex social environment with cognitive demands that could ultimately impact individual fitness. However, the effects of social breeding on the evolution of cognitive processes remain largely unknown. We tested the hypothesis that facultative colonial breeding influences attention and decision-making. Barn swallows (Hirundo rustica) breed in solitary pairs or in a range of colony sizes, up to dozens of pairs. We tested for selective attention to social information with playbacks of conspecific alarm calls and for decision-making with simulated predator intrusions, across a range of colony sizes from 1 to 33 pairs. We also evaluated the adaptive value of both processes by measuring seasonal reproductive success. Swallows breeding in larger colonies were more selective in their attention to social information. Birds breeding in larger colonies were also less risk averse, deciding to return more quickly to their nests after a predator approach paradigm. Finally, birds that showed higher selective attention hatched more eggs and birds that returned to their nests more quickly after a predator intrusion had more nestlings. Although we cannot fully attribute these fitness outcomes to the cognitive measures considered in this study, our results suggest that social breeding plays a role in adaptively shaping both the acquisition of social information and decision-making.</p>","PeriodicalId":7879,"journal":{"name":"Animal Cognition","volume":"27 1","pages":"15"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2024-03-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10907464/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140012047","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 : 2024-03-02DOI: 10.1007/s10071-024-01858-6
Jakub Szymkowiak
{"title":"Auditory risk recognition is socially transmitted across territory borders in wild birds","authors":"Jakub Szymkowiak","doi":"10.1007/s10071-024-01858-6","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10071-024-01858-6","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Prey species commonly assess predation risk based on acoustic signals, such as predator vocalizations or heterospecific alarm calls. The resulting risk-sensitive decision-making affects not only the behavior and life-history of individual prey, but also has far-reaching ecological consequences for population, community, and ecosystem dynamics. Although auditory risk recognition is ubiquitous in animals, it remains unclear how individuals gain the ability to recognize specific sounds as cues of a threat. Here, it has been shown that free-living birds (Wood Warblers <i>Phylloscopus sibilatrix</i>) can learn to recognize unfamiliar, complex sounds (samples of punk rock songs) as cues of a threat from conspecifics holding adjacent territories during the spring breeding season. In a playback experiment, Wood Warblers initially ignored the unfamiliar sounds, but after repeatedly hearing that these sounds trigger alarm calling reaction of neighbors, most individuals showed an anti-predator response to them. Moreover, once learned soon after nestlings hatching, the anti-predator response of parents toward previously unfamiliar sounds was then retained over the entire nestlings rearing period. These results demonstrate that social learning via the association of unfamiliar sounds with known alarm signals enables the spread of anti-predator behavior across territory borders and provides a mechanism explaining the widespread abilities of animals to assess predation risk based on acoustic cues.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7879,"journal":{"name":"Animal Cognition","volume":"27 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-03-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10907423/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140012043","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}