Snakes Elaphe Radiata May Acquire Awareness of Their Body Limits When Trying to Hide in a Shelter

Abstract

Body awareness was studied experimentally in the rat snakes Elaphe radiata. The experimental design required that the snakes take into account the limits of their bodies when choosing a suitable hole for penetration into the shelter. The experimental setup consisted of two compartments, a launch chamber and a shelter, separated by a partition with openings of different diameters. The diameters of the holes and/or their position in the partition were changeable. The subjects were 20 snakes divided into two groups, for one of which only the locations of the holes varied; for another, both the location of the holes and the limits of the body varied. The body was increased by feeding the snakes. In the course of the first three experimental series the snakes formed the skill of taking into account the body limits, which manifested in the reduced number of unsuccessful attempts to select holes too small for their bodies. During the fourth series, with the locations of holes randomized for each trial, the snakes demonstrated behavioral flexibility, significantly more often penetrating into the shelter from the first attempt irrespectively of the location of the suitable hole. We argue that these results demonstrate the body-awareness in snakes.

Ferrets May Learn Awareness if Their Own Body Limits

“…Unlike snakes (Khvatov et al, 2019), ferrets chose suitable holes from the very first trials of the second test, which indicates that they developed this component of body-awareness in themselves early in ontogeny. It is also curious that when solving similar problems, ferrets, like rats (Khvatov et al, 2016), made fewer mistakes than children (Brownell et al, 2017).…”

“…One of the aspects of body-awareness is the ability to take into account the limits of one's own body (Khvatov et al, 2019). In a series of experiments the animals solved the problem that required correlating the boundaries of their body with the size of the holes to penetrate into the goal compartment.…”

“…On average, children of different ages made 2.5 mistakes while solving these problems. Since 2004 we have been studying body-awareness in various animal speciesincluding rats (Khvatov et al, 2016) and snakes (Khvatov et al, 2019).…”

Редколлегия Архив Сквозное оглавление Авторам Подписка Дискуссии Публикационная этика Рецензирование Материалы Call for Papers Частые вопросы Адрес редакции: 101000, Москва, Армянский пер., 4, стр. 2 Е-mail: psychology.hse@gmail.com Организационная психология Поиск Отправить по сайту и текстам статей по авторам по названию по ключевым словам Хватов И. А. 1 1 НОЧУ ВО «Московский институт психоанализа», 121170, Россия, г. Москва, Кутузовский проспект, д. 34, стр. 14 Методические и теоретические пробл

“…В ходе наших исследований, проводившихся с 2004 г., мы изучали феномен body-awareness у различных видов животных (Хватов, 2011;Хватов и др., 2016а, 2016б;Хватов, Желанкин, 2018;Khvatov et al, 2019). Животные решали задачу на соотнесение границ собственного тела с размерами отверстий в экспериментальной установке для проникновения в определенный отсек.…”

“…Границы тела животных увеличивались различными способами. У змей это достигалось путем скармливания им пищевых объектов (крыс различного возраста) (Khvatov et al, 2019). У остальных животных это достигалось путем крепления на их тело различных инородных объектов: с помощью приклеивания (тараканы, сцинки) (Хватов, 2011; Хватов и др., 2016а), с помощью надевания попоны (жабы) (Хватов, Желанкин, 2018), с помощью внедрения в череп (крысы) (Хватов и др., 2016б).…”