Azure-winged magpies’ decisions to share food are contingent on the presence or absence of food for the recipient

Abstract

Helping others is a key feature of human behavior. However, recent studies render this feature not uniquely human, and describe discoveries of prosocial behavior in non-human primates, other social mammals, and most recently in some bird species. Nevertheless, the cognitive underpinnings of this prosociality; i.e., whether animals take others’ need for help into account, often remain obscured. In this study, we take a first step in investigating prosociality in azure-winged magpies by presenting them with the opportunity to share highly desired food with their conspecifics i) in a situation in which these conspecifics had no such food, ii) in a situation in which they too had access to that highly desired food, and iii) in an open, base-line, situation where all had equal access to the same food and could move around freely. We find that azure-winged magpies regularly share high-value food items, preferably with, but not restricted to, members of the opposite sex. Most notably, we find that these birds, and specifically the females, seem to differentiate between whether others have food or do not have food, and subsequently cater to that lack. Begging calls by those without food seem to function as cues that elicit the food-sharing, but the response to that begging is condition-dependent. Moreover, analyses on a restricted dataset that excluded those events in which there was begging showed exactly the same patterns, raising the possibility that the azure-winged magpies might truly notice when others have access to fewer resources (even in the absence of vocal cues). This sharing behavior could indicate a high level of social awareness and prosociality that should be further investigated. Further studies are needed to establish the order of intentionality at play in this system, and whether azure-winged magpies might be able to attribute desire states to their conspecifics.

Carrion Crows and Azure-Winged Magpies Show No Prosocial Tendencies When Tested in a Token Transfer Paradigm

“…All of the transfers occurred in the non-social control condition and were transferred either to an empty compartment or through the outer wire mesh of the aviary, where no potential recipients were present in both cases. This result contradicts our main hypothesis that the crows and magpies would behave prosocially towards their group members, as has been observed in the wild [31,32] and demonstrated experimentally in captive birds in the group service paradigm for both species [45,55] and in a naturalistic food provisioning experiment with azure-winged magpies [39]. Given that prosocial behavior has been shown to depend on the context and/or on the specific group, when tested in other non-human animals (e.g., chimpanzees [11,61,62]), it is possible that the subjects were not motivated to act prosocially in the context of the current experiment.…”

“…Systematic observations of food provisioning during free interactions revealed that multiple corvid species and one parrot species actively provided food to conspecifics, regardless of bond status, sex, and kinship [35][36][37]. In restricted setups, where only one donor bird received food, pinyon jays and azure-winged magpies actively provided food to their conspecifics [38,39]. The azure-winged magpies even took into account whether the potential recipients had access to food of their own or not and preferentially gave their own food to the group members, when no food was available in the recipients' compartment [39].…”

“…In restricted setups, where only one donor bird received food, pinyon jays and azure-winged magpies actively provided food to their conspecifics [38,39]. The azure-winged magpies even took into account whether the potential recipients had access to food of their own or not and preferentially gave their own food to the group members, when no food was available in the recipients' compartment [39]. Similarly, tool-using Goffin's cockatoos were found to regularly provide tools to their group members [40].…”

“…Both species exhibited high rates of prosocial food deliveries when tested in the group service paradigm [45,55]. Additionally, azure-winged magpies actively provided food to their group members in a naturalistic food provisioning experiment [39]. Consequently, we predicted that, if the animals understand the contingencies of this specific task, as it was demonstrated in African grey parrots, the crows and magpies would transfer tokens to their group members once their own access to the exchanging experimenter was blocked.…”

Performance of Azure-winged magpies in Aesop’s fable paradigm

“…Researchers have recently shown interest in the physical and social cognitive ability of Azure-winged magpies. They have explored the cognitive ability of Azure-winged magpies through string-pulling tasks 27 , mirror tasks 28 , and cooperation and prosocial behavior 29 . These studies showed that Azure-winged magpies have certain physical cognition, including but not limited to perception and spatial cognition.…”