Carrion crows learn to discriminate between calls of reliable and unreliable conspecifics

Wascher, Claudia A. F.; Hillemann, Friederike; Canestrari, Daniela; Baglione, Vittorio

doi:10.1007/s10071-015-0879-8

Cited by 17 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Recently, this cognitive prerequisite of reciprocity has been successfully shown in crows and ravens (Dufour, Wascher, Braun, Miller, & Bugnyar, ; Hillemann, Bugnyar, Kotrschal, & Wascher, ). Crows have also demonstrated to be sensitive to inequity in reward distribution and working effort (Wascher & Bugnyar, ) and learn to differentiate between reliable and unreliable cooperation partners (Massen, Ritter, et al, ; Mueller et al, ; Wascher, Hillemann, Canestrari, & Baglione, ). This shows that corvids do possess cognitive abilities necessary for reciprocal altruism and this makes them ideal candidates to test this form of cooperation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Crows and common ravens do not reciprocally exchange tokens with a conspecific to gain food rewards

et al. 2019

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Human economic transactions are based on complex forms of reciprocity, which involve the capacities to share and to keep track of what was given and received over time. Animals too engage in reciprocal interactions, but mechanisms such as calculated reciprocity have only been shown experimentally in few species. Various forms of cooperation, for example food and information sharing, are frequently observed in corvids, and they can engage in exchange interactions with human experimenters and accept delayed rewards. Here, we tested whether crows and common ravens would reciprocally exchange tokens with a conspecific in an exchange task. Birds received a set of three different types of tokens, some valuable for themselves, that is, they could exchange them for a food reward with a human experimenter, some valuable for their partner and some without value. The valuable tokens differed between the birds, which means that each bird could obtain more self‐value tokens from their partner's compartment. We did not observe any active transfers, that is one individual giving a token to the experimental partner by placing it in its beak. We only observed 6 indirect transfers, that is one individual transferring a token into the compartment of the partner (3 no‐value, 1 partner‐value and 2 self‐value tokens) and 67 “passive” transfers, that is one subject taking the token lying in reach in the compartment of the partner. Individuals took significantly more self‐value tokens compared with no‐value and partner‐value tokens. This indicates a preference for tokens valuable to focal individuals. Significantly more no‐value tokens compared with partner‐value tokens were taken, likely to be caused by experimental partners exchanging self‐value tokens with the human experimenter, and therefore, more no‐value tokens being available in the compartment. Our results presently do not provide empirical support for reciprocity in crows and ravens, most likely caused by them not understanding the potential roles of receiver and donor. We therefore suggest further empirical tests of calculated reciprocity to be necessary in corvids.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Crows and common ravens do not reciprocally exchange tokens with a conspecific to gain food rewards

et al. 2019

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“…Crows recognize group members by identity congruence between visual presentation of a group member and the subsequent playback of a contact call (Kondo et al, 2012). Because corvids can recognize individuals by sound (Wascher et al, 2015) or sight alone (Kondo et al, 2010), the most parsimonious explanation is that they first categorize acoustic and visual stimuli as belonging to an individual and later associate the auditory and visual categories for cross-modal audiovisual recognition of group members. The brain of crows is able to associate stimuli across modality and time Nieder, 2015, 2017).…”

Section: Categorization Of Bird Vocalizationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As true vocal learners, songbirds face many challenges of acoustic communication with speaking humans (Mooney, 2009). To follow an audio-vocal communication, songbirds need to recognize communication partner's characteristics, such as sex, group membership, or identity (Wascher et al, 2015;Brecht and Nieder, 2020). In short, songbirds rely both on acute hearing and cognitive abilities to classify a multitude of raw acoustic stimuli and memorize this information across time (Nieder and Mooney, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Categorical Auditory Working Memory in Crows

Wagener

Nieder

2020

iScience

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The ability to group sensory data into behaviorally meaningful classes and to maintain these perceptual categories active in working memory is key to intelligent behavior. Here, we show that carrion crows, highly vocal and cognitively advanced corvid songbirds, possess categorical auditory working memory. The crows were trained in a delayed match-to-category task that required them to flexibly match remembered sounds based on the upward or downward shift of the sounds' frequency modulation. After training, the crows instantaneously classified novel sounds into the correct auditory categories. The crows showed sharp category boundaries as a function of the relative frequency interval of the modulation. In addition, the crows generalized frequency-modulated sounds within a category and correctly classified novel sounds kept in working memory irrespective of other acoustic features of the sound. This suggests that crows can form and actively memorize auditory perceptual categories in the service of cognitive control of their goal-directed behaviors.

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“…Hence, the pair is considered unrelated. The subjects were hand-raised in captivity for the purpose of conducting studies on socio-cognitive abilities (Wascher et al, 2015) and social behaviour (Wascher et al, 2019). The crows were sexed using the P2/P8 molecular sexing method (Baglione and Canestrari, 2002), and separated into male-female pairs based on this information and behavioural observations (e.g., spatial proximity, low frequencies of aggressive behaviour, high frequencies of affiliative behaviour) in early 2012 (C. Núñez Cebrián, personal communication).…”

Section: Study Subjectsmentioning

confidence: 99%