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Articles 31 - 60 of 129
Full-Text Articles in Other Animal Sciences
The Applicability Of The Self-Fulfillment Account Of Welfare To Nonhuman Animals, Babies, And Mentally Disabled Humans, Tatjana Visak, Jonathan Balcombe
The Applicability Of The Self-Fulfillment Account Of Welfare To Nonhuman Animals, Babies, And Mentally Disabled Humans, Tatjana Visak, Jonathan Balcombe
Sentience Collection
In this paper we will argue that generality is a virtue of Haybron’s account of welfare. Indeed, reflecting on the applicability of his theory to nonhuman animals will give us a better understanding of its applicability to humans. We will first focus on self-fulfillment and suggest an interpretation of Haybron’s account according to which the self-fulfillment of an individual consists in the fulfillment of the aspects of the self that are applicable to that particular individual. This makes Haybron’s account of welfare applicable to all sentient beings. Then we will focus on sub-personal nature-fulfillment and argue that the same interpretation …
Are Apes’ Responses To Pointing Gestures Intentional?, Olivia Sultanescu, Kristin Andrews
Are Apes’ Responses To Pointing Gestures Intentional?, Olivia Sultanescu, Kristin Andrews
Sentience Collection
This paper examines the meaningfulness of pointing in great apes. We appeal to Hannah Ginsborg’s conception of primitive normativity, which provides an adequate criterion for establishing whether a response is meaningful, and we attempt to make room for a conception according to which there is no fundamental difference between the responses of human infants and those of other great apes to pointing gestures. This conception is an alternative to Tomasello’s view that pointing gestures and reactions to them reveal a fundamental difference between humans and other apes.
Social Learning In Juvenile Lemon Sharks, Negaprion Brevirostris, Tristan L. Guttridge, Sander Van Dijk, Eize Stamhuis, Jens Krause, Samuel Gruber, Culum Brown
Social Learning In Juvenile Lemon Sharks, Negaprion Brevirostris, Tristan L. Guttridge, Sander Van Dijk, Eize Stamhuis, Jens Krause, Samuel Gruber, Culum Brown
Sentience Collection
Social learning is taxonomically widespread and can provide distinct behavioural advantages, such as in finding food or avoiding predators more efficiently. Although extensively studied in bony fishes, no such empirical evidence exists for cartilaginous fishes. Our aim in this study was to experimentally investigate the social learning capabilities of juvenile lemon sharks, Negaprion brevirostris. We designed a novel food task, where sharks were required to enter a start zone and subsequently make physical contact with a target in order to receive a food reward. Naive sharks were then able to interact with and observe (a) pre-trained sharks, that is, ‘demonstrators’, …
Does True Syntax Or Simple Auditory Object Support The Role Of Skylark Song Dialect?, Elodie F. Briefer, Fanny Rybak, Thierry Aubin
Does True Syntax Or Simple Auditory Object Support The Role Of Skylark Song Dialect?, Elodie F. Briefer, Fanny Rybak, Thierry Aubin
Sentience Collection
Parallels between birdsong and human language are numerous and include particular temporal arrangements of acoustic units and the existence of dialects. In animal communication, modifications of the temporal ordering of existing acoustic units have rarely been clearly linked with changes in information content, particularly in a natural environment. Here, we show that the organization of birdsong units (‘syllables’) in sequences supports interindividual relationships within skylark communities. We manipulated the temporal arrangement of song dialect variants (‘shared phrases’) in the skylark, Alauda arvensis, a songbird with a very large repertoire of syllables and complex song. When tested with playback experiments performed …
Grey Parrot Number Acquisition: The Inference Of Cardinal Value From Ordinal Position On The Numeral List, Irene M. Pepperberg, Susan Carey
Grey Parrot Number Acquisition: The Inference Of Cardinal Value From Ordinal Position On The Numeral List, Irene M. Pepperberg, Susan Carey
Sentience Collection
No abstract provided.
Mother Goats Do Not Forget Their Kids’ Calls, Elodie F. Briefer, Mónica Padilla De La Torre, Alan G. Mcelligott
Mother Goats Do Not Forget Their Kids’ Calls, Elodie F. Briefer, Mónica Padilla De La Torre, Alan G. Mcelligott
Sentience Collection
Parent–offspring recognition is crucial for offspring survival. At long distances, this recognition is mainly based on vocalizations. Because of maturation-related changes to the structure of vocalizations, parents have to learn successive call versions produced by their offspring throughout ontogeny in order to maintain recognition. However, because of the difficulties involved in following the same individuals over years, it is not clear how long this vocal memory persists. Here, we investigated long-term vocal recognition in goats. We tested responses of mothers to their kids’ calls 7–13 months after weaning. We then compared mothers’ responses to calls of their previous kids with …
Individual Prey Choices Of Octopuses: Are They Generalist Or Specialist?, Jennifer A. Mather, Tatiana S. Leite, Allan T. Batista
Individual Prey Choices Of Octopuses: Are They Generalist Or Specialist?, Jennifer A. Mather, Tatiana S. Leite, Allan T. Batista
Sentience Collection
Prey choice is often evaluated at the species or population level. Here, we analyzed the diet of octopuses of different populations with the aim to assess the importance of individual feeding habits as a factor affecting prey choice. Two methods were used, an assessment of the extent to which an individual octopus made choices of species representative of those population (PSi and IS) and 25% cutoff values for number of choices and percentage intake of individual on their prey. In one population of Octopus cf vulgaris in Bermuda individuals were generalist by IS=0.77, but most chose many prey of the …
Why (And How) Personalities In Invertebrates?, Jennifer A. Mather
Why (And How) Personalities In Invertebrates?, Jennifer A. Mather
Sentience Collection
No abstract provided.
Blood Cortisol Concentrations Predict Boldness In Juvenile Mulloway (Argyosomus Japonicus), Vincent Raoult, Culum Brown, Amina Zuberi, Jane E. Williamson
Blood Cortisol Concentrations Predict Boldness In Juvenile Mulloway (Argyosomus Japonicus), Vincent Raoult, Culum Brown, Amina Zuberi, Jane E. Williamson
Sentience Collection
There is a growing interest in animal personality because individual variation is the substrate of the evolutionary process. Despite revelations that personality traits affect key fitness variables, little is known about the proximate mechanisms generating consistent behavioural differences between individuals. Boldness, the propensity to take risks, is one of the most widely studied aspects of personality in fishes. We assessed the position of juvenile Argyosomus japonicus on the ‘‘boldness–shyness’’ continuum by repeatedly recording the time taken to exit a refuge and explore a novel environment. Stress-related hormone concentrations after exposure to a mild stressor were analysed 1 month before behavioural …
Social Effects On Vocal Ontogeny In An Ungulate, The Goat, Capra Hircus, Elodie F. Briefer, Alan G. Mcelligott
Social Effects On Vocal Ontogeny In An Ungulate, The Goat, Capra Hircus, Elodie F. Briefer, Alan G. Mcelligott
Sentience Collection
Vocal plasticity is the ability of an individual to modify its vocalizations according to its environment. Humans benefit from an extreme form of vocal plasticity, allowing us to produce a wide range of sounds. This capacity to modify sounds has been shown in three bird orders and in a few nonhuman mammal species, all characterized by complex vocal communication systems. In other mammals, there is no evidence for a social impact on vocal development. We investigated whether contact calls were affected by social environment and kinship during early ontogeny in goats, a highly vocal and social species. To test the …
Tool Use In Fishes, Culum Brown
Tool Use In Fishes, Culum Brown
Sentience Collection
Tool use was once considered the sole domain of humans. Over the last 40 years, however, it has become apparent that tool use may be widespread across the animal kingdom. Pioneering studies in primates have shaped the way we think about tool use in animals, but have also lead to a bias both in terms of our expectations about which animals should be capable of using tools and the working definition of tool use. Here I briefly examine tool use in terrestrial animals and consider the constraints of the current working definition of tool use in fishes. Fishes lack grasping …
Confronting Language, Representation, And Belief: A Limited Defense Of Mental Continuity, Kristin Andrews, Ljiljana Radenovic
Confronting Language, Representation, And Belief: A Limited Defense Of Mental Continuity, Kristin Andrews, Ljiljana Radenovic
Sentience Collection
According to the mental continuity claim (MCC), human mental faculties are physical and beneficial to human survival, so they must have evolved gradually from ancestral forms and we should expect to see their precursors across species. Materialism of mind coupled with Darwin’s evolutionary theory leads directly to such claims and even today arguments for animal mental properties are often presented with the MCC as a premise. However, the MCC has been often challenged among contemporary scholars. It is usually argued that only humans use language and that language as such has no precursors in the animal kingdom. Moreover, language is …
The Evolution Of Lateralized Foot Use In Parrots: A Phylogenetic Approach, Culum Brown, Maria Magat
The Evolution Of Lateralized Foot Use In Parrots: A Phylogenetic Approach, Culum Brown, Maria Magat
Sentience Collection
Cerebral lateralization refers to the division of cognitive function in either brain hemisphere and may be overtly expressed as behavioral asymmetries, such as handedness. The evolutionary history of laterality is of considerable interest due to its close link with the development of human language. Although considerable research effort has aimed at the proximate explanations of cerebral lateralization, considerably less attention has been paid to ultimate explanations. The extent to which laterality is constrained by phylogeny or shaped by ecological forces through natural selection has received little attention. Here, the foot preference of 23 species of Australian parrots was examined to …
Indicators Of Age, Body Size And Sex In Goat Kid Calls Revealed Using The Source–Filter Theory, Elodie F. Briefer, Alan G. Mcelligott
Indicators Of Age, Body Size And Sex In Goat Kid Calls Revealed Using The Source–Filter Theory, Elodie F. Briefer, Alan G. Mcelligott
Sentience Collection
The source–filter theory is an important framework recently applied to the study of animal vocalisations, which links the mode of vocal production to call parameters. Vocalisations can be good indicators of a sender’s characteristics, such as identity, body size, age, and even hormonal status and affective states. For these reasons, applied vocal communication research would greatly benefit from adopting the source–filter theory approach to identify key call parameters linked to physical and physiological characteristics of domestic animals. Here, we introduce the source–filter theory through a detailed analysis and interpretation of goat contact calls during development. In mammals, vocal development is …
Cerebral Lateralization Determines Hand Preferences In Australian Parrots, Culum Brown, Maria Magat
Cerebral Lateralization Determines Hand Preferences In Australian Parrots, Culum Brown, Maria Magat
Sentience Collection
Individual preference for the use of one limb over the other to explore the environment or manipulate objects is common trait among vertebrates. Here, we explore the hypothesis that limb preference is determined by the engagement of a particular cerebral hemisphere to analyse certain stimuli. We recorded the eye and foot preferences of 322 individuals from 16 species of Australian parrots while investigating potential food items. Across all species, eye preferences explained 99 per cent of the variation in foot use in Australian parrots. The vast majority of species showed significant relationships between eye and foot preferences at the population …
Comprehension Of Functional Support By Enculturated Chimpanzees Pan Troglodytes, Anna M. Yocom, Sarah T. Boysen
Comprehension Of Functional Support By Enculturated Chimpanzees Pan Troglodytes, Anna M. Yocom, Sarah T. Boysen
Sentience Collection
Studies of causal understanding of tool relationships in captive chimpanzees have yielded disparate findings, particularly those reported by Povinelli & colleagues (2000) for tool tasks by laboratory chimpanzees. The present set of experiments tested nine enculturated chimpanzees on three versions of a support task, as described by Povinelli (2000), during which food rewards were presented in different experimental configurations. In Experiment 1, stimulus pairs included a choice between a cloth with a reward on the upper right corner or with a second reward off the cloth, adjacent to a corner, with the second pair comprised of a cloth with food …
Mutual Mother–Offspring Vocal Recognition In An Ungulate Hider Species (Capra Hircus), Elodie F. Briefer, Alan G. Mcelligott
Mutual Mother–Offspring Vocal Recognition In An Ungulate Hider Species (Capra Hircus), Elodie F. Briefer, Alan G. Mcelligott
Sentience Collection
Parent–offspring recognition can be essential for offspring survival and important to avoid misdirected parental care when progeny mingle in large social groups. In ungulates, offspring anti-predator strategies (hiding vs. following) result in differences in mother–offspring interactions, and thus different selection pressures acting on the recognition process during the first weeks of life. Hider offspring are isolated and relatively stationary and silent to avoid detection by predators, whereas follower offspring are mobile and rapidly mix in large social groups. For these reasons, hiders have been suggested to show low offspring call individuality leading to unidirectional recognition of mothers by offspring and …
Personality Traits Predict Hierarchy Rank In Male Rainbowfish Social Groups, Mathieu Colléter, Culum Brown
Personality Traits Predict Hierarchy Rank In Male Rainbowfish Social Groups, Mathieu Colléter, Culum Brown
Sentience Collection
Personality traits are becoming increasingly important in explaining adaptive individual differences in animal behaviour and probably represent a leading edge of the evolutionary process. Despite the newfound interest in animal personality among behavioural ecologists, fewstudies have investigated the link between personality traits and fitness measures. We examined this link using male rainbowfish, Melanotaenia duboulayi, as a model species and found that a range of personality traits (aggression, activity and boldness) covaried with a male’s position in a hierarchy, which is directly related to reproductive success in this and many other species. Dominant fish were more aggressive, active, bold and also …
Cetaceans And Primates: Convergence In Intelligence And Self-Awareness, Lori Marino
Cetaceans And Primates: Convergence In Intelligence And Self-Awareness, Lori Marino
Sentience Collection
Cetaceans (dolphins, porpoises and whales) have been of greatest interest to the astrobiology community and to those interested in consciousness and selfawareness in animals. This interest has grown primarily from knowledge of the intelligence, language and large complex brains that many cetaceans possess. The study of cetacean and primate brain evolution and cognition can inform us about the contingencies and parameters associated with the evolution of complex intelligence in general, and, the evolution of consciousness. Striking differences in cortical organization in the brains of cetaceans and primates along with shared cognitive capacities such as self-awareness, culture, and symbolic concept comprehension, …
Pantomime In Great Apes: Evidence And Implications, Ann E. Russon, Kristin Andrews
Pantomime In Great Apes: Evidence And Implications, Ann E. Russon, Kristin Andrews
Sentience Collection
We recently demonstrated, by mining observational data, that forest-living orangutans can communicate using gestures that qualify as Pantomime. Pantomimes, like other iconic gestures, physically resemble their referents. More elaborately, pantomimes involve enacting their referents. Holding thumb and finger together at the lips and blowing between them to mean balloon is one example. Here we sketch evidence of pantomime in other great apes, methodological concerns, and sophisticated cognitive capabilities that great ape pantomimes suggest.
Social Knowledge, Keith Jensen, Joan B. Silk, Kristin Andrews, Redouan Bshary, Dorothy L. Cheney, Nathan Emery, Charlotte K. Hemelrijk, Kay Holekamp, Derek C. Penn, Josef Perner, Christoph Teufel
Social Knowledge, Keith Jensen, Joan B. Silk, Kristin Andrews, Redouan Bshary, Dorothy L. Cheney, Nathan Emery, Charlotte K. Hemelrijk, Kay Holekamp, Derek C. Penn, Josef Perner, Christoph Teufel
Sentience Collection
The social milieus of animals can be complex, ranging from almost completely asocial to monogamous pairs (no mean feat) to entire societies. To adapt to a constantly shifting environment of individuals striving toward their own goals, animals appear to have evolved specialized cognitive abilities. As appealing and intuitive as the idea of social cognition is, just defi ning it is diffi cult. We attempted to delineate social cognition, speculate on its adaptive value, and come to an understanding of what we mean when we talk about complexity. Transitive inference was often brought up as an example of a cognitive ability …
Microdialect And Group Signature In The Song Of The Skylark Alauda Arvensis, Elodie Briefer, Fanny Rybak, Thierry Aubin
Microdialect And Group Signature In The Song Of The Skylark Alauda Arvensis, Elodie Briefer, Fanny Rybak, Thierry Aubin
Sentience Collection
The Skylark Alauda arvensis is a territorial species of open landscape in which pairs settle in stable and adjacent territories during the breeding season. Due to the heterogeneity of the habitat, territories are gathered in patches spaced by a few kilometres, in which each male produces very long and complex flight songs as a part of the territorial behaviour. We showed that, in a given patch, all the males (neighbours) share some particular sequences of syllables in their songs, whereas males settled in different patches (strangers) have almost no sequences in common. Such a phenomenon is known as microdialect. To …
Vocal Learning In Grey Parrots: A Brief Review Of Perception, Production, And Cross-Species Comparisons, Irene M. Pepperberg
Vocal Learning In Grey Parrots: A Brief Review Of Perception, Production, And Cross-Species Comparisons, Irene M. Pepperberg
Sentience Collection
This chapter briefly reviews what is known—and what remains to be understood—about Grey parrot vocal learning. I review Greys’ physical capacities—issues of auditory perception and production—then discuss how these capacities are used in vocal learning and can be recruited for referential communication with humans. I discuss cross-species comparisons where applicable and conclude with a description of recent research that integrates issues of reference, production and perception.
Capuchins (Cebus Apella) Can Solve A Means-End Problem, Anna M. Yocom, Sarah T. Boysen
Capuchins (Cebus Apella) Can Solve A Means-End Problem, Anna M. Yocom, Sarah T. Boysen
Sentience Collection
Three capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) were tested on a 2-choice discrimination task designed to examine their knowledge of support, modeled after Hauser, Kralik, and Botto-Mahan’s (1999) experiments with tamarins. This task involved a choice between 2 pieces of cloth, including 1 with a food reward placed on its surface, and a second cloth with the food reward next to its surface. After reliably solving the basic problem, the capuchins were tested with various alternations of the original food reward and cloth. The capuchins were able to solve the initial task quickly, and generalize their knowledge to additional functional and nonfunctional …
Octopuses (Enteroctopus Dofleini) Recognize Individual Humans, Roland C. Anderson, Jennifer A. Mather, Mathieu Q. Monette, Stephanie R.M. Zimsen
Octopuses (Enteroctopus Dofleini) Recognize Individual Humans, Roland C. Anderson, Jennifer A. Mather, Mathieu Q. Monette, Stephanie R.M. Zimsen
Sentience Collection
This study exposed 8 Enteroctopus dofleini separately to 2 unfamiliar individual humans over a 2-week period under differing circumstances. One person consistently fed the octopuses and the other touched them with a bristly stick. Each human recorded octopus body patterns, behaviors, and respiration rates directly after each treatment. At the end of 2 weeks, a body pattern (a dark Eyebar) and 2 behaviors (reaching arms toward or away from the tester and funnel direction) were significantly different in response to the 2 humans. The respiration rate of the 4 larger octopuses changed significantly in response to the 2 treatments; …
Squid Dances: An Ethogram Of Postures And Actions Of Sepioteuthis Sepioidea Squid With A Muscular Hydrostatic System, Jennifer A. Mather, Ulrike Griebel, Ruth A. Byrne
Squid Dances: An Ethogram Of Postures And Actions Of Sepioteuthis Sepioidea Squid With A Muscular Hydrostatic System, Jennifer A. Mather, Ulrike Griebel, Ruth A. Byrne
Sentience Collection
A taxonomy of the movement possibilities for any species, within the constraints of its neural and skeletal systems, should be one of the foundations of the study of its behaviour. Caribbean reef squid, Sepioteuthis sepioidea, appear to have many degrees of freedom in their movement as they live in a three-dimensional habitat and have no fixed skeleton but rather a muscular hydrostatic one. Within this apparent lack of constraints, there are regularities and patterns of common occurrences that allow this article to describe an ethogram of the movements, postures and positions of squid. Squid have a combination of bent, …
Laterality Enhances Cognition In Australian Parrots, Maria Magat, Culum Brown
Laterality Enhances Cognition In Australian Parrots, Maria Magat, Culum Brown
Sentience Collection
Cerebral lateralization refers to the division of information processing in either hemisphere of the brain and is a ubiquitous trait among vertebrates and invertebrates. Given its widespread occurrence, it is likely that cerebral lateralization confers a fitness advantage. It has been hypothesized that this advantage takes the form of enhanced cognitive function, potentially via a dual processing mechanism whereby each hemisphere can be used to process specific types of information without contralateral interference. Here, we examined the influence of lateralization on problem solving by Australian parrots. The first task, a pebble-seed discrimination test, was designed for small parrot species that …
Animal Pleasure And Its Moral Significance, Jonathan Balcombe
Animal Pleasure And Its Moral Significance, Jonathan Balcombe
Sentience Collection
This paper presents arguments for, and evidence in support of, the important role of pleasure in animals’ lives, and outlines its considerable significance to humankind’s relationship to other animals. In the realms of animal sentience, almost all scholarly discussion revolves around its negative aspects: pain, stress, distress, and suffering. By contrast, the positive aspects of sentience – rewards and pleasures – have been rarely broached by scientists. Yet, evolutionary principles predict that animals, like humans, are motivated to seek rewards, and not merely to avoid pain and suffering. Natural selection favours behaviours that enhance survival and procreation. In the conscious, …
Recognition Of Distress In Animals – A Philosophical Prolegomenon, Bernard E. Rollin
Recognition Of Distress In Animals – A Philosophical Prolegomenon, Bernard E. Rollin
Sentience Collection
For those who continue to doubt the studiability of distress or suffering or misery in all of its forms in animals, consider the following thought experiment: If the government were to come up with a billion dollars in research funding for animal distress, would that money go a-begging? We can study these states just as we studied pain—excellent work on boredom by Franciose Wemelsfelder in a volume on laboratory animal welfare I co-edited made the methodology for such study quite explicit. (Wemelsfelder, 1990) And when the ideological scales fall from our eyes, we realize that the work of scientists like …
Understanding Norms Without A Theory Of Mind, Kristin Andrews
Understanding Norms Without A Theory Of Mind, Kristin Andrews
Sentience Collection
I argue that having a theory of mind requires having at least implicit knowledge of the norms of the community, and that an implicit understanding of the normative is what drives the development of a theory of mind. This conclusion is defended by two arguments. First I argue that a theory of mind likely did not develop in order to predict behavior, because before individuals can use propositional attitudes to predict behavior, they have to be able to use them in explanations of behavior. Rather, I suggest that the need to explain behavior in terms of reasons is the primary …