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Articles 121 - 150 of 383
Full-Text Articles in Evolution
Animal Cognition: Quantity Has A Quality Of Its Own, Ivaylo Borislavov Iotchev, Kauê Machado Costa
Animal Cognition: Quantity Has A Quality Of Its Own, Ivaylo Borislavov Iotchev, Kauê Machado Costa
Animal Sentience
Chapman & Huffman’s moral analysis fails to prove that the exploitation of animals or the environment is causally connected to beliefs about human capacities. Their exposition of the philosophical interpretations of animal cognition ignores historical context and confounds different levels of analysis. Their analysis of the scientific literature, from which they conclude that humans should not be considered as different from other animals, does not take into account many recent psychological and neuroscientific developments and rests upon a flawed understanding of the relationship between gradual and categorical differences, misrepresenting the two as mutually exclusive concepts.
Corticocentric Bias In Cognitive Neuroscience, Orit Nafcha, Shai Gabay
Corticocentric Bias In Cognitive Neuroscience, Orit Nafcha, Shai Gabay
Animal Sentience
Chapman & Huffman (2018) note that our tendency to categorize leads to a sense of human superiority that helps justify violence against nonhuman animals. Yet animals are turning out to have capacities previously thought to be uniquely human. We add a further factor that may contribute to the false sense of human superiority: the "corticocentric" bias of neuroscience. An evolutionary approach may help identify species similarities and differences, providing a better understanding of the uniqueness of each species.
Taking Darwinism Seriously, Carsta Simon
Taking Darwinism Seriously, Carsta Simon
Animal Sentience
Chapman & Huffman propose that dropping the categorical distinction between human and nonhuman animals may reduce the atrocious acts of humans towards nonhuman animals, but will it? Taking Darwinism seriously means accepting physical and behavioral continuity across species, including the capacity to feel pain.
Why Cod Don't Like To Sunbathe: Quantity And Quality In The Animal Kingdom, Christoph Jung
Why Cod Don't Like To Sunbathe: Quantity And Quality In The Animal Kingdom, Christoph Jung
Animal Sentience
The difference between a cod and a lizard is not just a quantitative one. The recognition of qualitative differences between species does not imply a moral ranking. Our species’ special abilities to shape the earth mean we have a special responsibility for ensuring a liveable future for all organisms, human and non-human.
Superior Or Inferior, Human Uniqueness Is Manifold, Scott Atran
Superior Or Inferior, Human Uniqueness Is Manifold, Scott Atran
Animal Sentience
Chapman & Huffman (C & H) contend that, as with all biological traits, there is evolutionary continuity underlying cognitive and social traits previously thought to be unique to humans. Yet C & H, like Darwin, appeal to a seemingly unique moral aptitude that enables humans to be kind to conspecific strangers and other species.
Crispr Knockouts Reveal An Endogenous Role For Ancient Neuropeptides In Regulating Developmental Timing In A Sea Anemone, Nagayasu Nakanishi, Mark Q. Martindale
Crispr Knockouts Reveal An Endogenous Role For Ancient Neuropeptides In Regulating Developmental Timing In A Sea Anemone, Nagayasu Nakanishi, Mark Q. Martindale
Biological Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations
Neuropeptides are evolutionarily ancient peptide hormones of the nervous and neuroendocrine systems, and are thought to have regulated metamorphosis in early animal ancestors. In particular, the deeply conserved Wamide family of neuropeptides—shared across Bilateria (e.g. insects and worms) and its sister group Cnidaria (e.g. jellyfishes and corals)—has been implicated in mediating life-cycle transitions, yet their endogenous roles remain poorly understood. By using CRISPR-Cas9-mediated reverse genetics, we show that cnidarian Wamide—referred to as GLWamide—regulates the timing of life cycle transition in the sea anemone cnidarian Nematostella vectensis. We find that mutant planula larvae lacking GLWamides transform into morphologically normal polyps …
Diel Rhythmicity Found In Behavior But Not Biogenic Amine Levels In The Funnel-Web Spider Agelenopsis Pennsylvanica (Araneae, Agelenidae), Alexander E. Demarco
Diel Rhythmicity Found In Behavior But Not Biogenic Amine Levels In The Funnel-Web Spider Agelenopsis Pennsylvanica (Araneae, Agelenidae), Alexander E. Demarco
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Quantifying individual differences in behavior and the extent that behavior is influenced by circadian control is of paramount importance in behavioral ecology. In addition, the proximate mechanisms underlying behavior are also critical in order to obtain a more complete picture of how behavior evolves. Biogenic amines (BAs) are simple nitrogenous compounds derived from amino acids and have been consistently and extensively linked to behavior. For this study, we analyzed temporal patterns of BAs in relation to the antipredator (boldness) and aggressive behavior in female Agelenopsis pennsylvanica, a funnel-web spider. Using HPLC-ED, we compared behavioral responses to temporal patterns of …
Chickens Play To The Crowd, Cinzia Chiandetti
Chickens Play To The Crowd, Cinzia Chiandetti
Animal Sentience
The time was ripe for Marino’s review of chickens’ cognitive capacities. The research community, apart from expressing gratitude for Marino’s work, should now use it to increase public awareness of chickens’ abilities. People’s views on many animals are ill-informed. Scientists need to communicate and engage with the public about the relevance and societal implications of their findings.
Post-Darwin Skepticism And Run-Of-The-Mill Suicide, John Hadley
Post-Darwin Skepticism And Run-Of-The-Mill Suicide, John Hadley
Animal Sentience
Peña-Guzmán’s depiction of the opponent of animal suicide as a conservative is a straw man. It is possible to accept that animals are self-conscious and reflexive yet still reject the view that they have the mental wherewithal to commit run-of-the-mill suicide. That animal behaviour can be positioned on a continuum of self-destructive behaviour does not establish that animals can intentionally kill themselves.
An Adaptationist Perspective On Animal Suicide, Timothy P. Racine
An Adaptationist Perspective On Animal Suicide, Timothy P. Racine
Animal Sentience
Peña-Guzmán’s discussion of suicide in nonhuman animals has broad implications. In this commentary, I focus on the logical relation between suicide and intention. Proximate cause must be distinguished from ultimate function in explanations of suicide. I briefly discuss two adaptationist accounts of suicidal behavior.
Lessons From Chimpanzee Sign Language Studies, Mary Lee Jensvold
Lessons From Chimpanzee Sign Language Studies, Mary Lee Jensvold
Animal Sentience
Claims are often made about behaviors being unique to humans; the evidence usually shows they are not. Sign language studies on chimpanzees may provide a useful model for comparative studies of suicide. A productive approach to comparative studies is to focus on observable behaviors rather than getting lost in the pitfalls of vague definitions and changing measures.
Can Nondolphins Commit Suicide?, David M. Peña-Guzmán
Can Nondolphins Commit Suicide?, David M. Peña-Guzmán
Animal Sentience
This Response addresses the scientific and philosophical criticisms of my 2017 target article “Can nonhuman animals commit suicide?” It defends my key claims and explores topics (such as animal judgment, animal theory of mind, and the evolution of suicide) that did not appear in the original article. It also points out areas in which further research is needed and concludes that we should be wary of accusations of “anthropomorphism” in debates about animal suicide.
Animal Suicide: Evolutionary Continuity Or Anthropomorphism?, Antonio Preti
Animal Suicide: Evolutionary Continuity Or Anthropomorphism?, Antonio Preti
Animal Sentience
Evolutionary processes are characterized by both continuity and discontinuity. Evidence on suicide in nonhuman animals is faint and often rests on the metaphorical or anthropomorphic use of the term. Suicidal behavior might be an evolutionary jump relatively recent in our species: a byproduct of living in groups of people who are not as closely related genetically as in social groups of nonhuman mammals.
Roots Of Self-Preservation Failure In Animal Behavior, Denys Decatanzaro
Roots Of Self-Preservation Failure In Animal Behavior, Denys Decatanzaro
Animal Sentience
Affective variation from euphoria to dysphoria, best understood in humans, is also found in the behavior and neurochemistry of many other mammals. Suicide in humans typically occurs in highly dysphoric and despondent individuals. Self-injurious behavior has been observed in dysphoric and despondent nonhuman primates. In humans, suicide is facilitated by a highly-evolved neocortex giving rise to behavioral flexibility and culture. As Peña-Guzmán indicates, some other mammals also have elaborate neocortices and the capacity for cognitive insight, particularly apes, delphinids, and whales. Suicide is most likely to occur in species where individuals live in stable groups of highly interdependent kin.
Animal Suicide And "Anthropodenial", Ryan Hediger
Animal Suicide And "Anthropodenial", Ryan Hediger
Animal Sentience
Increasing understanding of the impressive cognitive and social capacities of nonhuman animals suggests the possibility that they may sometimes commit suicide. Such notions tend to be dismissed as “anthropomorphism.” That interpretive hazard, I argue, must be weighed against the opposite hazard of “anthropodenial” — “the a priori rejection of shared characteristics between humans and animals” (de Waal 2006). If animals do commit suicide, how often is it motivated precisely by the impact of humans on animal life?
Continuum And Temporality, Gerard Kuperus
Continuum And Temporality, Gerard Kuperus
Animal Sentience
I fully support the continuum proposed in the target article and argue along the same lines that we should be suspicious of drawing any strict borders between human and non-human animals. Since we can say very little with absolute certainty about human intentions regarding suicide, we have no certainty about the intentions of non-human animals. Although I am very sympathetic to Peña-Guzmán’s overall argument, I suggest that time could be taken into consideration as well.
Thinking About Thinking Chickens, Lori Marino
Thinking About Thinking Chickens, Lori Marino
Animal Sentience
This response focuses on three major conceptual threads that run through the peer commentary on my target article: (1) how the use of chickens influences our views of them, (2) whether education is effective, and (3) what components of chicken psychology are most relevant to understanding who chickens are.
If Nonhuman Animals Can Suicide, Why Don’T They?, C. A. Soper, Todd K. Shackelford
If Nonhuman Animals Can Suicide, Why Don’T They?, C. A. Soper, Todd K. Shackelford
Animal Sentience
An evolutionary analysis suggests that selection is unlikely to have tolerated the capacity for intentional self-killing in nonhuman animals. The potential to escape pain by suicide would have presented a recurrent and severe adaptive problem for an animal with a reproductive future to protect. If the potential for suicide arose in the evolutionary past, anti-suicide mechanisms may have co-evolved, as we believe they have in adult humans. Peña-Guzmán’s (2017) argument that some nonhuman animals can suicide is incomplete without an account of the defences that result in the vast majority opting not to.
Chicken Minds And Moral Standing, Kristin Andrews
Chicken Minds And Moral Standing, Kristin Andrews
Animal Sentience
Some of the cognitive traits that Marino reviews are not in themselves relevant to ethics, either for chickens or human infants, but affective traits are, among them desires.
Comparative Phylogeography, Taxonomy, And Neuroanatomy Of Montane Chameleons In The Albertine Rift, Central Africa, Daniel Hughes
Comparative Phylogeography, Taxonomy, And Neuroanatomy Of Montane Chameleons In The Albertine Rift, Central Africa, Daniel Hughes
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
How do traits vary across the tree of life? Our ability to address this question is diminished if: A taxonomic group has a poorly sampled phylogeny, a species goes extinct before their systematic position is resolved, or a trait is inadequately characterized for detailed studies. In the current era of mass extinction, it is imperative to not only accelerate species discovery through traditional studies in taxonomy and expeditionary research, but also to increase rescue efforts for all types of data before poorly understood species and potentially undescribed traits are lost. Here, an integrative taxonomic approach was used and novel methods …
The Many Faces Of Fear And Vigilance, Guy Beauchamp
The Many Faces Of Fear And Vigilance, Guy Beauchamp
Animal Sentience
In the target article, I examined the relationship between vigilance and fear in prey animals. The joint occurrence of vigilance and other physiological responses to fear, such as increased heart rate and stress hormone release, would bolster the idea that vigilance can be a useful marker of fear. Nevertheless, a common theme in much of the empirical research is an uncoupling of vigilance and physiological correlates of fear. The commentators suggest several ways to refine the concepts of vigilance, fear, and risk. I discuss these refinements, which in the end will prove useful to assess further the relationship between vigilance …
On Crabs And Statistics, Jonathan Birch
On Crabs And Statistics, Jonathan Birch
Animal Sentience
I respond to commentaries by Elwood and Seth & Dienes and to a recent critique by Diggles, discussing the link between avoidance learning and sentience, the relevance of the clash between frequentist and Bayesian statistics, the risks to decapod welfare in aquaculture, and the broader concerns one may have about a “precautionary” approach to protecting invertebrates.
Sentient Plants? Nervous Minds?, Arthur S. Reber
Sentient Plants? Nervous Minds?, Arthur S. Reber
Animal Sentience
The commentaries by Calvo (2018) and Mallatt & Feinberg (2017) on my 2016 target branch out from a common conceptual node like forks in a road. Calvo criticizes me for not acknowledging that plants too are likely to be sentient and claims I have fallen into the kind of category error of which I accuse others ─ a zoocentric bias that fails to grant consciousness to flora. Mallatt & Feinberg maintain that I've gone too far in granting sentience to any species that lacks a nervous system. Calvo makes some good points but there are other issues concerning plant sentience …
Anthropocentrism As Cognitive Dissonance In Animal Research?, Ellen Furlong, Zachary Silver, Jack Furlong
Anthropocentrism As Cognitive Dissonance In Animal Research?, Ellen Furlong, Zachary Silver, Jack Furlong
Animal Sentience
Harmon-Jones et al. (2017) make a thought-provoking suggestion in their commentary on Zentall (2016): Overlooked biases among researchers on animal cognition might lead them to discount the traces of higher-order cognition in animals they study. We find the suggestion both philosophically important and worth further reflection for animal scientists. Harmon-Jones et al. point to two “cognitive dissonance” biases involving the clash between the common human resistance to viewing ourselves as animals/meat-eaters and how these biases might lead to discounting possible advanced cognitive performances in the animals studied. We show how these biases might appear in cognitive research generally and argue …
Can They Suffer?, Todd K. Shackelford
Can They Suffer?, Todd K. Shackelford
Animal Sentience
We should treat sentient nonhuman animals as worthy of moral consideration, not because we share an evolutionary history with them, but because they can suffer. As Chapman & Huffman (2018) argue, humans are not uniquely disconnected from other species. We should minimize the suffering we inflict on sentient beings — whether human or nonhuman — not because they, too, are tool-makers or have sophisticated communication systems, but because they, too, can suffer, and suffering is bad.
Competing Activities As Measures Of Fear And Vigilance, Ferenc Mónus
Competing Activities As Measures Of Fear And Vigilance, Ferenc Mónus
Animal Sentience
In animal behavioural research on vigilance, visual signs of alertness are usually used to estimate perceived risk (an internal “fear” state) of free-ranging animals. Different measures of vigilance and competing activities (e.g., predator vigilance, conspecific vigilance, feeding, food handling) provide clues for better understanding vigilance behaviour. How efficiently does an animal in a vigilant/non-vigilant posture devote attention to threats or invest in other activities, such as searching for or handling food? Several species regularly withdraw to a sheltered spot when feeding in an abundant food patch, spending short periods in complete safety. Frequencies of feeding interruptions or false-alarm flights provide …
Jealousy In Dogs? Evidence From Brain Imaging, Peter Cook, Ashley Prichard, Mark Spivak, Gregory S. Berns
Jealousy In Dogs? Evidence From Brain Imaging, Peter Cook, Ashley Prichard, Mark Spivak, Gregory S. Berns
Animal Sentience
Domestic dogs are highly social and have been shown to be sensitive not only to the actions of humans and other dogs but to the interactions between them. We used the C-BARQ scale to estimate dogs’ aggressiveness, and we used noninvasive brain imaging (fMRI) to measure activity in their amygdala (an area involved in aggression). More aggressive dogs had more amygdala activation data while watching their caregiver give food to a realistic fake dog than when they put the food in a bucket. This may have some similarity to human jealousy, adding to a growing body of evidence that differences …
Researchers, Not Dogs, Lack Control In An Experiment On Jealousy, Jennifer Vonk
Researchers, Not Dogs, Lack Control In An Experiment On Jealousy, Jennifer Vonk
Animal Sentience
Cook and colleagues (2018) have developed a clever method to measure fMRI in awake dogs in response to a number of interesting stimuli. As a result, they are able to determine neural correlates of observable behavior. They report that dogs may experience something akin to jealousy because they show greater amygdala activation in response to food being given to a fake dog versus food being placed in a bucket. However, several critical controls are missing which prevent the authors from being able to speak of jealousy.
Finding The Green-Eyed Monster In The Brain Of A Dog, Peter Singer
Finding The Green-Eyed Monster In The Brain Of A Dog, Peter Singer
Animal Sentience
That dogs show behavior suggestive of jealousy has long been known and has been demonstrated under controlled conditions. Cook et al. have now shown arousal in the amygdala when dogs see a caregiver feeding another dog. This finding has ethical significance in two respects. First, the consideration shown by the investigators for the welfare of their experimental subjects sets an example for other researchers using animals. Second, the greater understanding of the emotional lives of animals should lead to more concern for their needs.
Jealousy, Competition, Or A Contextual Cue For Reward?, Thomas R. Zentall
Jealousy, Competition, Or A Contextual Cue For Reward?, Thomas R. Zentall
Animal Sentience
Emotions are difficult to assess, even in humans. The attribution of jealousy in an animal like a dog is especially difficult because performance of a particular behavior in the context of another animal receiving a reward may not be easily distinguishable from intra-species competition or simply a response to a contextual cue for the availability of reward. The authors provide distinguishing evidence in the form of fMRI data to show that in the presence of a “fake” dog being fed, there is bilateral activation in the amygdala, an area associated with anxiety, anger, fear, and even jealousy in humans.