Object movement re-enactment in free-ranging Kune Kune piglets

Veit, Ariane; Wondrak, Marianne; Huber, Ludwig

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2017.08.004

Cited by 11 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 66 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…On the one hand, not only in spatial learning tasks (the detour problem; Pongrácz et al, 2001) but also in object manipulation tasks (Kubinyi et al, 2003; Pongrácz, Bánhegyi, & Miklósi, 2012), dogs showed demonstrator-matching behavior after observing a human. That humans are efficient demonstrators was also shown in Miller, Rayburn-Reeves, and Zentall (2009), who found that dogs would not only manipulate the same object—a sliding door blocking access to food—but they would even match the direction of the door push (leftward or rightward) demonstrated by a human (see also, Kis, Huber, & Wilkinson, 2015; Veit, Wondrak, & Huber, 2017). This study has thus provided some evidence for imitative learning from humans, not only stimulus enhancement.…”

mentioning

confidence: 69%

Would dogs copy irrelevant actions from their human caregiver?

et al. 2018

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Companion dogs learn easily from humans, including human behavior, human communication, and some aspects of the humanmade environment. They benefit from having the opportunity to learn from humans and are able to spontaneously synchronize their behavior with that of their caregiver. Here, we tested whether pet dogs would show a special form of observational learning, one that has been considered uniquely human. Indeed, humans show overimitation, the faithful copying of causally irrelevant actions, but great apes do not. Because in humans this peculiar form of imitation is strongly motivated by social factors, such as affiliation or conformity, we hypothesized that domesticated and enculturated dogs are more likely than apes are to copy such actions, especially if shown by their affiliated caregiver. Indeed, half of the dogs replicated a causally irrelevant action that was demonstrated by their caregiver, and about the same number did this whether they saw only this action being demonstrated or being demonstrated before or after a causally relevant, functional action. The demonstration of a causally relevant action, one that is immediately followed by access to food, thus does not inhibit the copying of an action that is spatially separated and functionally opaque. Given that the copying frequency in this study was low overall, these results suggest evidence for overimitation in dogs, which might challenge the human uniqueness of this type of social learning.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 69%

Would dogs copy irrelevant actions from their human caregiver?

et al. 2018

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…These species are fairly well-studied, providing us with enough data to illustrate the main point of the present paper-that there is not always "one cognition". findings of unexpected cognitive skills such as social learning and face discrimination in domestic pigs (Veit et al 2017;Wondrak et al 2018) or size and shape discrimination in horses (Tomonaga et al 2015). Data from social carnivores show that they are capable of "numerically assessing" the odds during aggressive encounters and only engage in aggression when the odds are favorable or the resource value is high (McComb et al 1994;Benson-Amram et al 2011; see also Borrego 2017).…”

Section: Performing Competently-performing Poorly: Cognitive Skills Amentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Examples include the ability to use transitive inference—i.e., to conclude that if A > B and B > C then A > C—in cichlid fish ( Grosenick et al 2007 ), numerical competence to track shoal size in shoaling fish ( Agrillo et al 2012 ), updating rules to decide whether and from whom to learn about the location of food sources in nine-spined sticklebacks ( Pike and Laland 2010 ), and interspecific collaborative hunting in coral reef fishes ( Vail et al 2013 ). Additionally, in reptiles ( Matsubara et al 2017 ), insects ( Feinerman and Korman 2017 ; Webb 2012 ) and nonprimate mammals, there are new findings of unexpected cognitive skills such as social learning and face discrimination in domestic pigs ( Veit et al 2017 ; Wondrak et al 2018 ) or size and shape discrimination in horses ( Tomonaga et al 2015 ). Data from social carnivores show that they are capable of “numerically assessing” the odds during aggressive encounters and only engage in aggression when the odds are favorable or the resource value is high ( McComb et al 1994 ; Benson-Amram et al 2011 ; see also Borrego 2017 ).…”

Section: Performing Competently–performing Poorly: Cognitive Skillmentioning

confidence: 99%

Old and New Approaches to Animal Cognition: There Is Not “One Cognition”

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Using the comparative approach, researchers draw inferences about the evolution of cognition. Psychologists have postulated several hypotheses to explain why certain species are cognitively more flexible than others, and these hypotheses assume that certain cognitive skills are linked together to create a generally “smart” species. However, empirical findings suggest that several animal species are highly specialized, showing exceptional skills in single cognitive domains while performing poorly in others. Although some cognitive skills may indeed overlap, we cannot a priori assume that they do across species. We argue that the term “cognition” has often been used by applying an anthropocentric viewpoint rather than a biocentric one. As a result, researchers tend to overrate cognitive skills that are human-like and assume that certain skills cluster together in other animals as they do in our own species. In this paper, we emphasize that specific physical and social environments create selection pressures that lead to the evolution of certain cognitive adaptations. Skills such as following the pointing gesture, tool-use, perspective-taking, or the ability to cooperate evolve independently from each other as a concrete result of specific selection pressures, and thus have appeared in distantly related species. Thus, there is not “one cognition”. Our argument is founded upon traditional Darwinian thinking, which—although always at the forefront of biology—has sometimes been neglected in animal cognition research. In accordance with the biocentric approach, we advocate a broader empirical perspective as we are convinced that to better understand animal minds, comparative researchers should focus much more on questions and experiments that are ecologically valid. We should investigate nonhuman cognition for its own sake, not only in comparison to the human model.

show abstract

“…Only a few studies have shown that pigs seem to be capable of social learning, either vertically (48, 49) or horizontally (55). However, in most examples, learning was directly related to food cues and could have been acquired through direct snout-snout interactions rather than visual observation.…”

Section: Cognitive Studies In Livestock Animalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Based on their foraging ecology, it would be advantageous to not only learn what to eat but also learn how to acquire und process particular food sources. Recently, it has been demonstrated that juvenile Kunekune pigs learned how to manipulate objects (i.e., open a door) to receive a reward from related adult individuals (49). However, there have not been any studies on horizontal social learning that involves problem-solving or object manipulation for pigs.…”

Section: Cognitive Studies In Livestock Animalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Farm Animal Cognition—Linking Behavior, Welfare and Ethics

Nawroth

Langbein

Coulon³

et al. 2019

Front. Vet. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Farm animal welfare is a major concern for society and food production. To more accurately evaluate animal farming in general and to avoid exposing farm animals to poor welfare situations, it is necessary to understand not only their behavioral but also their cognitive needs and capacities. Thus, general knowledge of how farm animals perceive and interact with their environment is of major importance for a range of stakeholders, from citizens to politicians to cognitive ethologists to philosophers. This review aims to outline the current state of farm animal cognition research and focuses on ungulate livestock species, such as cattle, horses, pigs and small ruminants, and reflects upon a defined set of cognitive capacities (physical cognition: categorization, numerical ability, object permanence, reasoning, tool use; social cognition: individual discrimination and recognition, communication with humans, social learning, attribution of attention, prosociality, fairness). We identify a lack of information on certain aspects of physico-cognitive capacities in most farm animal species, such as numerosity discrimination and object permanence. This leads to further questions on how livestock comprehend their physical environment and understand causal relationships. Increasing our knowledge in this area will facilitate efforts to adjust husbandry systems and enrichment items to meet the needs and preferences of farm animals. Research in the socio-cognitive domain indicates that ungulate livestock possess sophisticated mental capacities, such as the discrimination between, and recognition of, conspecifics as well as human handlers using multiple modalities. Livestock also react to very subtle behavioral cues of conspecifics and humans. These socio-cognitive capacities can impact human-animal interactions during management practices and introduce ethical considerations on how to treat livestock in general. We emphasize the importance of gaining a better understanding of how livestock species interact with their physical and social environments, as this information can improve housing and management conditions and can be used to evaluate the use and treatment of animals during production.

show abstract

Object movement re-enactment in free-ranging Kune Kune piglets

Cited by 11 publications

References 66 publications

Would dogs copy irrelevant actions from their human caregiver?

Would dogs copy irrelevant actions from their human caregiver?

Old and New Approaches to Animal Cognition: There Is Not “One Cognition”

Farm Animal Cognition—Linking Behavior, Welfare and Ethics

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About