| 1. |
- Boehly, Thibault, et al.
(author)
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Cognitive Control in Distracted Dinosaurs
- 2023
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Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- 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.
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| 2. |
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| 3. |
- Congdon, Jenna V., et al.
(author)
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Hear them roar: A comparison of black-capped chickadee (Poecile atricapillus) and human (Homo sapiens) perception of arousal in vocalizations across all classes of terrestrial vertebrates
- 2019
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In: Journal of Comparative Psychology. - : American Psychological Association (APA). - 1939-2087 .- 0735-7036.
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Recently, evidence for acoustic universals in vocal communication was found by demonstrating that humans can identify levels of arousal in vocalizations produced by species across three biological classes (Filippi et al., 2017). Here, we extend this work by testing whether two vocal learning species, humans and chickadees, can discriminate vocalizations of high and low arousal using operant discrimination go/no-go tasks. Stimuli included vocalizations from nine species: giant panda, American alligator, common raven, hourglass treefrog, African elephant, Barbary macaque, domestic pig, black-capped chickadee, and human. Subjects were trained to respond to high or low arousal vocalizations, then tested with additional high and low arousal vocalizations produced by each species. Chickadees (Experiment 1) and humans (Experiment 2) learned to discriminate between high and low arousal stimuli and significantly transferred the discrimination to additional panda, human, and chickadee vocalizations. Finally, we conducted discriminant function analyses using four acoustic measures, finding evidence suggesting that fundamental frequency played a role in responding during the task. However, these analyses also suggest roles for other acoustic factors as well as familiarity. In sum, the results from these studies provide evidence that chickadees and humans are capable of perceiving arousal in vocalizations produced by multiple species.
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| 4. |
- Jensen, Thomas Rejsenhus, et al.
(author)
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Knowing a fellow by their bellow : acoustic individuality in the bellows of the American alligator
- 2024
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In: Animal Behaviour. - 0003-3472. ; 207, s. 157-167
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Identity cues in animal calls are essential for conspecific vocal individual recognition. Some acoustically active species mainly show reliable identity cues in their vocalizations because of variation in anatomy and life history. Long and strenuous-to-produce vocalizations may be particularly effective for showing identity cues because sustaining such calls may reveal individual anatomical differences in sound production. It is largely unknown whether reptiles possess acoustic individuality despite some groups being vocal. We analysed 814 bellows from 47 American alligators, Alligator mississippiensis, extracting spectral characteristics and manually corrected contours of the fundamental frequency. Recognition was up to 66% correct with a supervised classifier (random forest) and 61% with unsupervised clustering (chance = 2.1%), indicating that individual alligators have highly distinct bellows. Alligators were distinguished primarily based on the call spectrum, fundamental frequency contour and amplitude modulation, which also provided information about the animal's size. Neither manual supervision of acoustic analyses nor supervised training on labelled data was necessary to achieve reasonable accuracy, which has promising potential for identification of individuals via passive acoustic monitoring for research and conservation purposes. Additionally, our results highlight the importance of studying the utilization of acoustic individuality in the social lives of crocodylians.
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| 5. |
- Miller, Rachael, et al.
(author)
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Socio-ecological correlates of neophobia in corvids
- 2022
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In: Current Biology. - : Elsevier BV. - 0960-9822. ; 32:1, s. 4-85
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Behavioral responses to novelty, including fear and subsequent avoidance of novel stimuli, i.e., neophobia, determine how animals interact with their environment. Neophobia aids in navigating risk and impacts on adaptability and survival. There is variation within and between individuals and species; however, lack of large-scale, comparative studies critically limits investigation of the socio-ecological drivers of neophobia. In this study, we tested responses to novel objects and food (alongside familiar food) versus a baseline (familiar food alone) in 10 corvid species (241 subjects) across 10 labs worldwide. There were species differences in the latency to touch familiar food in the novel object and novel food conditions relative to the baseline. Four of seven socio-ecological factors influenced object neophobia: (1) use of urban habitat (versus not), (2) territorial pair versus family group sociality, (3) large versus small maximum flock size, and (4) moderate versus specialized caching (whereas range, hunting live animals, and genus did not), while only maximum flock size influenced food neophobia. We found that, overall, individuals were temporally and contextually repeatable (i.e., consistent) in their novelty responses in all conditions, indicating neophobia is a stable behavioral trait. With this study, we have established a network of corvid researchers, demonstrating potential for further collaboration to explore the evolution of cognition in corvids and other bird species. These novel findings enable us, for the first time in corvids, to identify the socio-ecological correlates of neophobia and grant insight into specific elements that drive higher neophobic responses in this avian family group. Video abstract: [Figure presented]
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| 6. |
- Reber, Stephan A., et al.
(author)
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Common marmosets are sensitive to simple dependencies at variable distances in an artificial grammar
- 2019
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In: Evolution and Human Behavior. - : Elsevier BV. - 1090-5138. ; 40:2, s. 214-221
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Recognizing that two elements within a sequence of variable length depend on each other is a key ability in understanding the structure of language and music. Perception of such interdependencies has previously been documented in chimpanzees in the visual domain and in human infants and common squirrel monkeys with auditory playback experiments, but it remains unclear whether it typifies primates in general. Here, we investigated the ability of common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) to recognize and respond to such dependencies. We tested subjects in a familiarization-discrimination playback experiment using stimuli composed of pure tones that either conformed or did not conform to a grammatical rule. After familiarization to sequences with dependencies, marmosets spontaneously discriminated between sequences containing and lacking dependencies (‘consistent’ and ‘inconsistent’, respectively), independent of stimulus length. Marmosets looked more often to the sound source when hearing sequences consistent with the familiarization stimuli, as previously found in human infants. Crucially, looks were coded automatically by computer software, avoiding human bias. Our results support the hypothesis that the ability to perceive dependencies at variable distances was already present in the common ancestor of all anthropoid primates (Simiiformes).
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| 7. |
- Reber, Stephan A.
(author)
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Crocodilians Are Promising Intermediate Model Organisms for Comparative Perception Research
- 2020
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In: Comparative Cognition and Behavior Reviews. - 1911-4745. ; 15
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Crocodilians are the closest living relatives of birds and share many ecological challenges with mammalian apex predators. They evolved perception pathways that share similarities with both taxa, birds and mammals. Due to their position in the tree of life, crocodilians therefore represent a promising intermediate model for comparative research. In this review, the different modalities of perception in crocodilians are discussed: vision, audition, olfaction, gustation, sense of touch, and (the potential for) magnetoreception. The anatomy and physiology of the sensory organs are briefly described, and behavioral studies on perception summarized. Throughout the review, the similarities and differences between crocodilians and other vertebrate taxa are addressed. Overall, crocodilian sensory organs seem to have evolved for a terrestrial environment, as their eyes are adapted for vision in air, their hearing resembles that of birds, and they do not seem to use olfaction under water. A clear exception are the integumentary sensory organs, which allow them to perceive minute water movements. While crocodilian sensory organs have received quite some attention, there are relatively few behavioral studies on perception. Future research on the perceptual capacities of crocodilians will provide insight into the evolutionary origins of perception in all amniotes.
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| 8. |
- Reber, Stephan A.
(author)
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Differences Teach Us More Than Similarities : The Need for Evolutionary Thinking in Comparative Cognition
- 2024
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In: Comparative Cognition and Behavior Reviews. - 1911-4745. ; 19, s. 49-53
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Research review (peer-reviewed)abstract
- A persistent anthropocentric school of thought prevents comparative cognition from truly joining the evolutionary sciences, which often view “cognition” as an alien subject to the study of life. In this article, I argue that cognition is indeed inherent to all life and that we could study the evolution of cognitive skills like any other species-specific trait if we stop elevating convergence over differences, adopt an inclusive working definition of cognition, and choose new model organisms with a strong focus on phylogeny.
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| 9. |
- Reber, Stephan A., et al.
(author)
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Early life differences in behavioral predispositions in two Alligatoridae species
- 2021
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In: Animal Cognition. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1435-9448 .- 1435-9456. ; 24:4, s. 753-764
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Behavioral predispositions are innate tendencies of animals to behave in a given way without the input of learning. They increase survival chances and, due to environmental and ecological challenges, may vary substantially even between closely related taxa. These differences are likely to be especially pronounced in long-lived species like crocodilians. This order is particularly relevant for comparative cognition due to its phylogenetic proximity to birds. Here we compared early life behavioral predispositions in two Alligatoridae species. We exposed American alligator and spectacled caiman hatchlings to three different novel situations: a novel object, a novel environment that was open and a novel environment with a shelter. This was then repeated a week later. During exposure to the novel environments, alligators moved around more and explored a larger range of the arena than the caimans. When exposed to the novel object, the alligators reduced the mean distance to the novel object in the second phase, while the caimans further increased it, indicating diametrically opposite ontogenetic development in behavioral predispositions. Although all crocodilian hatchlings face comparable challenges, e.g., high predation pressure, the effectiveness of parental protection might explain the observed pattern. American alligators are apex predators capable of protecting their offspring against most dangers, whereas adult spectacled caimans are frequently predated themselves. Their distancing behavior might be related to increased predator avoidance and also explain the success of invasive spectacled caimans in the natural habitats of other crocodilians.
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| 10. |
- Szabo, Birgit, et al.
(author)
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Naive poison frog tadpoles use bi-modal cues to avoid insect predators but not heterospecific predatory tadpoles
- 2021
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In: Journal of Experimental Biology. - : The Company of Biologists. - 0022-0949 .- 1477-9145. ; 224:24
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- For animals to survive until reproduction, it is crucial that juveniles successfully detect potential predators and respond with appropriate behavior. The recognition of cues originating from predators can be innate or learned. Cues of various modalities might be used alone or in multi-modal combinations to detect and distinguish predators but studies investigating multi-modal integration in predator avoidance are scarce. Here, we used wild, naive tadpoles of the Neotropical poison frog Allobates femoralis ( Boulenger, 1884) to test their reaction to cues with two modalities from two different sympatrically occurring potential predators: heterospecific predatory Dendrobates tinctorius tadpoles and dragonfly larvae. We presented A. femoralis tadpoles with olfactory or visual cues, or a combination of the two, and compared their reaction to a water control in a between-individual design. In our trials, A. femoralis tadpoles reacted to multi-modal stimuli (a combination of visual and chemical information) originating from dragonfly larvae with avoidance but showed no reaction to uni-modal cues or cues from heterospecific tadpoles. In addition, visual cues from conspecifics increased swimming activity while cues from predators had no effect on tadpole activity. Our results show that A. femoralis tadpoles can innately recognize some predators and probably need both visual and chemical information to effectively avoid them. This is the first study looking at anti-predator behavior in poison frog tadpoles. We discuss how parental care might influence the expression of predator avoidance responses in tadpoles.
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