Pigs (Sus scrofa domesticus) categorize pictures of human heads

Wondrak, Marianne; Conzelmann, Elin; Veit, Ariane; Huber, Ludwig

doi:10.1016/j.applanim.2018.05.009

Cited by 15 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…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%

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

et al. 2020

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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.

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Section: Performing Competently-performing Poorly: Cognitive Skills Amentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Performing Competently–performing Poorly: Cognitive Skillmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

et al. 2020

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“…In certain species, particularly domestic species which share a long evolutionary history with human beings, studies are beginning to investigate not only recognition of conspecifics but also of human faces. The tasks completed in these studies varied in their difficulty, from pigs simply differentiating between a human face and the back of the head 9 , to dogs or sheep recognizing the face of a person known in real life from an image [10][11][12] .…”

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confidence: 99%

“…For both inter and intra specific recognition, real people 10 or photographs 7,9,12 have been used. The advantage of the latter is that it excludes any risk of interference from other sensory information, particularly olfactory cues.…”

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confidence: 99%

Female horses spontaneously identify a photograph of their keeper, last seen six months previously

Lansade

Colson

Parias

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

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Horses are capable of identifying individual conspecifics based on olfactory, auditory or visual cues. However, this raises the questions of their ability to recognize human beings and on the basis of what cues. This study investigated whether horses could differentiate between a familiar and unfamiliar human from photographs of faces. Eleven horses were trained on a discrimination task using a computer-controlled screen, on which two photographs were presented simultaneously (32 trials/ session): touching one was rewarded (S+) and the other not (S−). In the training phase, the S+ faces were of four unfamiliar people which gradually became familiar over the trials. The S− faces were novel for each trial. After the training phase, the faces of the horses' keepers were presented opposite novel faces to test whether the horses could identify the former spontaneously. A reward was given whichever face was touched to avoid any possible learning effect. Horses touched the faces of keepers significantly more than chance, whether it was their current keeper or one they had not seen for six months (t = 3.65; p < 0.004 and t = 6.24; p < 0.0001). Overall, these results show that horses have advanced human facerecognition abilities and a long-term memory of those human faces.

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“…Touchscreen computers have proved to be a popular technology, widely used with a variety of captive non-human animals in zoos and wildlife centresexamples include grey parrots [68], black bears [83] and tortoises [57]. They have also been deployed in research facilities to test cognitive abilities and prosocial behaviours -examples include keas [62], pigeons [36], kune kune pigs [86], and wolves [14].…”

Section: Context and Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ethics and Power Dynamics in Playful Technology for Animals

French

Hirskyj-Douglas

Väätäjä

et al. 2021

Academic Mindtrek 2021

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Technology (digital or otherwise) is a great enabler; it bridges gaps and opens doors and, in the process, alters the reality within which it and its users exist. As technology aimed at non-human animals is becoming commonplace, questions about its efficacy and the ethical implications of its use are becoming ever more pertinent. To explore these issues, we conducted a workshop in which speculative design was used as a means of debating ways through which play, a widespread phenomenon across animal species, can be used as a tool for enabling interspecies communication. We describe the context for this discussion, the methods used, and present a set of speculative designs that illustrate aspects of ethics, equality, and appropriate play in order to provoke further reflection and discussion. CCS CONCEPTS• Social and professional topics -User characteristics • Humancentered computing -Interaction design -Interaction design theory, concepts and paradigms

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Pigs (Sus scrofa domesticus) categorize pictures of human heads

Cited by 15 publications

References 49 publications

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

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

Female horses spontaneously identify a photograph of their keeper, last seen six months previously

Ethics and Power Dynamics in Playful Technology for Animals

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