Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Specificity Of The Cardiac Response To Conspecific Vocalizations In Chimpanzees, Gary G. Berntson, Sarah T. Boysen

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Heart rate measures were used to examine the functional response of young chimpanzees and orangutans to acoustic stimuli, including white noise and chimpanzee vocalizations (threat, stress, and alarm). The initial response of the animals to all stimuli was characterized by a prominent cardiac deceleration and an increase in heart period variability. The deceleratory responses persisted with repeated presentations of the noise, stress, and alarm stimuli. In contrast, the response of chimpanzees to the conspecific threat stimulus reverted over trials to a notable cardiac acceleration. This acceleratory response was not attributable to potential patterns of evoked somatic responses. The features of …

Numerical Competence In A Chimpanzee (Pan Troglodytes), Sarah T. Boysen, Gary G. Berntson

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A chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes), trained to count foods and objects by using Arabic numbers, demonstrated the ability to sum arrays of 0-4 food items placed in 2 of 3 possible sites. To address representational use of numbers, we next baited sites with Arabic numbers as stimuli. In both cases performance was significantly above chance from the first sessions, which suggests that without explicit training in combining arrays, the animal was able to select the correct arithmetic sum for arrays of foods or Arabic numbers under novel test conditions. These findings demonstrate that counting strategies and the representational use of numbers …

Conspecific Recognition In The Chimpanzee (Pan Troglodytes): Cardiac Responses To Significant Others, Sarah T. Boysen, Gary G. Berntson

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The ability of a chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) to recognize photographs of conspecifics was evaluated with heart-rate measures. Heart rate was recorded before, during, and after viewing photographs of an aggressive chimpanzee, a friendly companion animal, and an unfamiliar chimpanzee. The subject displayed a differential pattern of heart-rate response to the stimulus animals, without prior experience with the photographs. Responses to the aggressive animal were acceleratory, which suggests a defensive response. Respiratory sinus arrhythmia suggested that this response was associated with sympathetic activation. In contrast, responses to the familiar animal were minimal, whereas cardiac deceleration was observed in response to the …

Comprehension Of "Absence" By An African Grey Parrot: Learning With Respect To Questions Of Same/Different, Irene M. Pepperberg

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An African Grey parrot, Alex, learned to report on the absence or presence of similarity and difference between two objects. Alex was shown pairs of objects that were (a) totally dissimilar, (b) identical, or (c) similar or different with respect to one of three attributes (color, shape, or material). In the first two cases, he responded to the respective queries of "What's same?" or "What's different?" with the vocalization "none," and in the third case he responded with the appropriate category label ("color," "shape," or "mah-mah" [matter]). His accuracy was 80.9% to 83.9% for pairs of familiar objects not used …

Eavesdropping By Bats: The Influence Of Echolocation Call Design And Foraging Strategy, Jonathan Balcombe, M. Brock Fenton

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We used playback presentations to free-flying bats of 3 species to assess the influence of echolocation call design and foraging strategy on the role of echolocation calls in communication. Near feeding sites over water, Myotis lucifugus and M. yumanensis responded positively only to echolocation calls of conspecifics. Near roosts, these bats did not respond before young of the year became volant, and after this responded to presentations of echolocation calls of similar and dissimilar design. At feeding sites Lasiurus borealis responded only to echolocation calls of conspecifics and particularly to "feeding buzzes". While Myotis, particularly subadults, appear to use the …

Cardiac Correlates Of Individual Recognition In The Chimpanzee (Pan Troglodytes), Sarah T. Boysen, Gary G. Berntson

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The ability of a chimpanzee to recognize individuals depicted in photographs was evaluated through the use of heart rate measures. Heart rate was recorded before and during photographic projections of human caregivers, familiar individuals, strangers, and blank control slides. In the absence of explicit training or reinforcement, the chimpanzee displayed a differential pattern of heart rate response to the stimulus categories. Although heart rate responses to all stimuli were predominantly deceleratory, the photographs of caregivers yielded consistently larger responses than other stimuli. Results indicate that the chimpanzee is able to recognize individual humans from novel photographic representations and that heart …

Visual Evoked Potentials In The Great Apes, Sarah T. Boysen, Gary G. Berntson

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No abstract provided.

The Question Of Animal Awareness, Francoise Wemelsfelder

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The problem of animal awareness lies at the interface of science and philosophy. As a starting point for the study of phenomena such as awareness, mind, consciousness, etc., we hardly have any reference other than our own human experience and in the context of a nondualistic ontology this can be justified. In philosophy and psychology it appears to be very difficult to give direct operational definitions of terms such as consciousness, etc. So we might expect this to be even more difficult in the study of animals. A detailed knowledge of animals and their behaviour is necessary in order to …

Animal Boredom: Is A Scientific Study Of The Subjective Experiences Of Animals Possible?, Françoise Wemelsfelder

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The aim of this paper is to explore the relationship between different meta-scientific frameworks and the science of animal welfare. Animal Boredom 117 During the past few years, I have become more and more convinced that the great difficulty science has in studying subjective experience in its objects, might be related to the denial of any role to subjective experience in the observer as an interpretational guide. Can a quality in the world around us be observed, when this same quality is deliberately excluded from the process of observing?

As a practical example for the discussion described above, the phenomenon …

The Problem Of Pain: What Do Animals Really Feel?, Dana H. Murphy

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Much of the contention and confusion that seem inevitably to arise whenever the subject of pain in animals comes up appear to stem principally from problems with the word "pain" itself. When used to describe responses in humans, "pain" can mean any subset of an incredibly broad spectrum of sensations and emotions, ranging from the instantaneous, galvanizing effect of a dentist drill hitting the nerve in a molar, to more airy notions such as the "pain" of rejection or "painfully" embarrassing situations. Humans even use concepts as abstruse as the German term, weltschmerz, or "world pain," which denotes a vaguely …

Social And Cognitive Capabilities Of Nonhuman Primates: Lessons From The Wild To Captivity, William C. Mcgrew

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All anthropoid primates in nature lead highly sociable lives. In infancy and childhood this is characterized by stability and familiarity for both sexes; in adulthood either one or the other sex changes groups. The natal group provides a social network of matrilineal kinship; after sexual maturity incest avoidance and exogamy are the rule. Important differences exist across species and between the sexes in mating strategies. In most species, males emigrate, but in others females do so. Male sexual behavior is based on competition between peers; females exercise choice in selecting sexual partners. Normal development of sexual behavior and maternal caretaking …

Abnormal Behavior As An Indication Of Immaterial Suffering, Hans Hinrich Sambraus

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Reactive abnormal behavior is the convincing proof of immaterial suffering for the ethologist. We consider abnormal that behavior which does not correspond to, or is without object, which appears with sharply increased or decreased frequency, or which is abnormal in its motor pattern. Moreover, much reactive abnormal behavior manifests itself in stereotypies, i.e., the movement is repeated continuously in the same way. Among wild animals and in traditional forms of animal production abnormal behavior is unknown. However, it is encountered often in animals in intensive husbandry systems, and it can be demonstrated that abnormal behavior is actually brought about by …

Stress: What Is It And How Can It Be Quantified?, T. H. Friend

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An animal may be considered to be in a state of stress if abnormal behavior or extreme adjustments in its behavior or physiology are necessary in order to cope with adverse aspects of its environment. Methods used to determine if an animal is stressed can be either behavioral or physiological. Behavioral methods may be highly erroneous due to their subjective nature since alterations in behavior do not necessarily prove that an animal is stressed. There is no single measure of stress that can be used in all situations at this time. Every measure must be critically evaluated to ensure that …

The Communication Of Play Intention: Are Play Signals Functional?, Marc Bekoff

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No abstract provided.