Cognitive Control in Distracted Dinosaurs

• Cognitive control is a skill used to control one’s own behaviour to reach a goal. We compared this skill across archosaurs by using the distraction task on American alligators, emus, chickens, and common ravens. We investigated whether the animals would still find a food reward hidden behind one of two identical opaque barriers after picking up a food distraction. Results show that all species can find the hidden food reward despite being distracted, but the presence of a distraction impaired the performance of all species except the common raven. All species being from the clade Archosauria, it suggests that cognitive control is a conserved ability which underwent little changes since their last common ancestor, allowing to draw some inferences about extinct related taxa (e.g., non-avian dinosaurs). Moreover, raven’s unflinching performance could be explained by the sharp increase in telencephalic neuron numbers which occurred in the clade Telluraves.

Ämnesord

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Biologi -- Zoologi (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Biological Sciences -- Zoology (hsv//eng)

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Biologi -- Etologi (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Biological Sciences -- Behavioural Sciences Biology (hsv//eng)

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Biologi -- Evolutionsbiologi (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Biological Sciences -- Evolutionary Biology (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Cognitive control

Distraction

Birds

Crocodylians

Dinosaurs

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