Escalation of feline predation along a gradient from avoidance through "play" to killing.

O’Brien, Dennis P.; Pellis, Vivien C.; Teitelbaùm, Philip; Wolgin, David L.; Kennedy, Susan

doi:10.1037/0735-7044.102.5.760

Cited by 35 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Consistent with this possibility, Lorenz (1981) has described exploration in terms of an approach-avoidance conflict, caused by a competition between a flight response and another self-preservational mechanism such as hunger, causing a relatively fixed distance from which an ambiguous object can be safely observed, cautiously approached, and probed in order to discover its fitness-relevant properties. It has been additionally suggested that the mutual inhibition of attack and flight tendencies is responsible for the restrained, gentle, and ritualized manner in which, for example, cats play with life prey (Pellis et al, 1988)…”

Section: A Developmental and Evolutionary View On A Capacity For Objementioning

confidence: 99%

Consciousness: a neural capacity for objectivity, especially pronounced in humans

Dijker

2014

Front. Psychol.

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Consciousness tends to be viewed either as subjective experience of sensations and feelings, or as perception and internal representation of objects. This paper argues that neither view sufficiently acknowledges that consciousness may refer to the brain’s most adaptive property: its capacity to produce states of objectivity. It is proposed that this capacity relies on multiple sensorimotor networks for internally representing objects and their properties in terms of expectancies, as well as on motivational and motor mechanisms involved in exploration, play, and care for vulnerable living and non-living objects. States of objectivity are associated with a very special phenomenal aspect; the experience that subjective aspects are absent and one is “just looking” at the world as it really is and can be. However, these states are normally closely preceded and followed by (and tend to be combined or fused with) sensations and feelings which are caused by activation of sensory and motivational mechanisms. A capacity for objectivity may have evolved in different species and can be conceived as a common basis for other elusive psychological properties such as intelligence, conscience, and esthetic experience; all three linked to crucial behaviors in human evolution such as tool making, cooperation, and art. The brain’s pervasive tendency to objectify may be responsible for wrongly equating consciousness with feelings and wrongly opposing it to well-learned or habitual (“unconscious”) patterns of perception and behavior.

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Section: A Developmental and Evolutionary View On A Capacity For Objementioning

confidence: 99%

Consciousness: a neural capacity for objectivity, especially pronounced in humans

Dijker

2014

Front. Psychol.

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“…Two hypotheses regarding the occurrence of other types of object play in animals are the ''misdirected foraging behavior'' hypothesis and the ''motor training'' hypothesis. According to the misdirected foraging hypothesis, play in captive or domesticated animals is motivationally directed to objects as if they were food [e.g., Hall, 1998;Pellis, 1991;Pellis et al, 1988]. In the case of captive otters, they become increasingly excited by the approaching feeding time and devote less time to social play and more time to playing with objects as ''pseudo-feeding behavior'' [Pellis, 1991].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Age‐specific functions of Stone Handling, a solitary‐object play behavior, in Japanese Macaques (Macaca fuscata)

Nahallage

Huffman

2006

American J Primatol

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Stone handling (SH) in Japanese macaques, a form of solitary-object play, is newly acquired only by young individuals, and is the first example of a directly nonadaptive behavior that is maintained as a behavioral tradition within free-ranging provisioned social troops. We report here the first systematic investigation of this behavior in a stable captive social troop, the Takahama troop, which is housed in an outdoor enclosure of the Primate Research Institute (PRI), Kyoto University, Japan. This study was conducted to evaluate relevant competing hypotheses regarding the function of object play (e.g., misdirected foraging behavior and motor training) to explain the proximal causes and ultimate function(s) of SH. The "misdirected foraging behavior" hypothesis can be ruled out because of the lack of a clear temporal relationship between feeding and the occurrence of SH in any age class. Age-related differences in SH performance and behavioral patterns were observed, suggesting possible differences in the immediate cause and ultimate function between young and adults. Young individuals engaged in frequent bouts of short duration, involving locomotion and vigorous body actions throughout the day, which is typical for play by young in general. This pattern of behavior is consistent with the motor training hypothesis, which states that play occurs during the development of motor and perceptual skills and is thus potentially critical for neural and cognitive development. This practice is continued by those who acquire it at an early age, with adults engaging in significantly fewer but longer bouts that involve more stationary, complex manipulative patterns, almost exclusively in the late afternoon. We propose that for adults, at the proximate level SH is psychologically relaxing, but ultimately functions to maintain and regenerate neural pathways, and potentially helps to slow down the deterioration of cognitive function associated with advanced age in long-lived provisioned and captive macaques.

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“…Whereas the cat and ferret are both carnivore hunters, they appear to have completely differing hunting styles. Noticing a possible prey, the cat will make small eye and body adjustments to fixate its visual attention on the prey as it begins to quietly inch closer for an attempted capture (23,45). In contrast to the cat, the ferret is a far-sighted nocturnal hunter that never stays still but is quickly exploring its environment with rapid up-and-down head movements (23,32,42).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Anatomic and physiological characteristics of the ferret lateral rectus muscle and abducens nucleus

Bishop

McClung²,

Goldberg³

et al. 2007

Journal of Applied Physiology

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The ferret has become a popular model for physiological and neurodevelopmental research in the visual system. We believed it important, therefore, to study extraocular whole muscle as well as single motor unit physiology in the ferret. Using extracellular stimulation, 62 individual motor units in the ferret abducens nucleus were evaluated for their contractile characteristics. Of these motor units, 56 innervated the lateral rectus (LR) muscle alone, while 6 were split between the LR and retractor bulbi (RB) muscle slips. In addition to individual motor units, the whole LR muscle was evaluated for twitch, tetanic peak force, and fatigue. The abducens nucleus motor units showed a twitch contraction time of 15.4 ms, a mean twitch tension of 30.2 mg, and an average fusion frequency of 154 Hz. Single-unit fatigue index averaged 0.634. Whole muscle twitch contraction time was 16.7 ms with a mean twitch tension of 3.32 g. The average fatigue index of whole muscle was 0.408. The abducens nucleus was examined with horseradish peroxidase conjugated with the subunit B of cholera toxin histochemistry and found to contain an average of 183 motoneurons. Samples of LR were found to contain an average of 4,687 fibers, indicating an LR innervation ratio of 25.6:1. Compared with cat and squirrel monkeys, the ferret LR motor units contract more slowly yet more powerfully. The functional visual requirements of the ferret may explain these fundamental differences.

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Escalation of feline predation along a gradient from avoidance through "play" to killing.

Cited by 35 publications

References 43 publications

Consciousness: a neural capacity for objectivity, especially pronounced in humans

Consciousness: a neural capacity for objectivity, especially pronounced in humans

Age‐specific functions of Stone Handling, a solitary‐object play behavior, in Japanese Macaques (Macaca fuscata)

Anatomic and physiological characteristics of the ferret lateral rectus muscle and abducens nucleus

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