Cognitive enrichment device provides evidence for intersexual differences in collaborative actions in Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus)
Social living, long lifespan and advanced cognitive skills provided favourable conditions for the development of pro-social behaviours and cooperative activities in cetacean. Dolphins have been observed to collaborate for various purposes, finding food, finding mates or raising and teaching younger individuals. This study investigated the potential impact of demographic factors (sex and age), social factors […]
Multiple assessments of personality and problem-solving performance in captive Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) and African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana)
Animal personality has been shown to predict many behavioral responses across taxa, but the relationship between personality and performance on cognitive tasks remains unclear. To address this gap, we investigated whether personality predicted problem-solving performance and learning in captive Asian and African savanna elephants. We leveraged 3 novel problem-solving tasks to assess success rate, latency […]
Testing use of a potential cognitive enrichment device by an Indo‐Pacific bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops aduncus)
Cognitive enrichment aims to provide animals with opportunities to use their cognitive skills and to promote behaviors associated with positive wellbeing. Cooperation in mammals has been recorded during various behavioral contexts such as hunting, mating, playing, and parental care. Coordinated activity, often with some level of problem‐solving action included, is required during cooperation. To investigate […]
Why do Dophins Play?
Play is an important aspect of dolphin life, perhaps even an essential one. Play provides opportunities for dolphin calves to practice and perfect locomotor skills, including those involved in foraging and mating strategies and behaviors. Play also allows dolphin calves to learn important social skills and acquire information about the characteristics and predispositions of members […]
General Intelligence as a Domain-Specific Adaptation
General intelligence (g) poses a problem for evolutionary psychology’s modular view of the human brain. The author advances a new evolutionary psychological theory of the evolution of general intelligence and argues that general intelligence evolved as a domain-specific adaptation for the originally limited sphere of evolutionary novelty in the ancestral environment. It has accidentally become […]
Rapid solving of a problem apparatus by juvenile black-throated monitor lizards (Varanus albigularis albigularis)
It is widely accepted that providing stimulus enrichment is an important part of the development and maintenance of behavior and well being in mammals. However, extending this idea to non-avian reptiles has barely been explored, certainly as an aid to cognitive development. Monitor lizards have a reputation for being highly curious and intelligent lizards, but […]
Individual variation in spontaneous problem-solving performance among wild great tits
Behavioural traits generally and cognitive traits in particular are relatively understudied in an evolutionary ecological context. One reason for this is that such traits are often difficult to characterize among large numbers of individuals, without the influence of diverse environmental effects swamping intrinsic individual differences. We conducted standardized assays on a natural population of great […]
How well do dingoes, Canis dingo, perform on the detour task?
The [`]detour task’ assesses spatial problem-solving abilities, requiring the subject to travel around a transparent barrier to obtain a reward. Recent studies have found that domestic dogs, Canis familiaris, generally perform poorly on this task, and fail to improve performance significantly after repeated trials or generalize problem-solving strategies when conditions are reversed. In contrast, wolves, […]
The challenge of challenge: Can problem solving opportunities enhance animal welfare?☆
Cognitive mechanisms are an important part of the organization of the behavior systems of animals. In the wild, animals regularly face problems that they must overcome in order to survive and thrive. Solving such problems often requires animals to process, store, retrieve, and act upon information from the environment—in other words, to use their cognitive […]
Great apes’ (Pan troglodytes, Pan paniscus, Gorilla gorilla, Pongo pygmaeus) understanding of tool functional properties after limited experience
Primates’ understanding of tool functionality has been investigated extensively using a paradigm in which subjects are presented with a tool that they must use to obtain an out-of-reach reward. After being given experience on an initial problem, monkeys can transfer their skill to tools of different shapes while ignoring irrelevant tool changes (e.g., color). In […]