Cognitive Ethology I

Cognition: The ways in which animals take in information about

the world through the senses, process and retain the information,
and use the information to guide behavior

Cognition involves perception, learning, memory, and decision-making

Cognitive Ethology asks two key questions about animal cognition:

1. Are cognitive abilities adapted to the environment and species ecology?

Cognitive ecology view

Yes cognitive abilities shaped by natural selection

2. How far do various cognitive abilities extend taxonomically?

– Do other taxa possess cognitive abilities seen in humans?
– How distantly in the evolutionary tree do we see this cognitive ability ?

How does cognition evolve?

Test Case 1 for the cognitive ecology hypothesis:
Face recognition learning in paper wasps
Elizabeth Tibbetts and colleagues

P. fuscatus is a highly social species

with a dominance hierarchy maintained
by aggression

Individual females have distinctive

facial patterns
Test Case 1 for the cognitive ecology hypothesis: face
recognition learning in paper wasps

P. metricus is a solitary species

with little aggression among
females

Individual females do not have

distinctive facial patterns
Test Case 1 for the cognitive ecology hypothesis: face
recognition learning in paper wasps
Observation:
the social species has
evolved distinctive facial
patterns and the solitary
species has not
Hypothesis: the social
species has evolved facial
patterns to aid individual
identification that is needed
to maintain the dominance
hierarchy

The key test is whether the social species can USE

the facial patterns for facial recognition
 Sheehan and Tibbetts
Wasp facial recognition experiment

P. fuscatus
fuscatus versus fuscatus
P. fuscatus

Y maze

The task is to learn to avoid the

shock by learning which face is
associated with the shock
P. fuscatus P. metricus

subject
wasp
Face recognition learning occurs in some species
of paper wasps, but not others

Females of Polistes fuscatus learn to

associate a particular face of a
female of their species with a safe
refuge in a T-maze.

Females of Polistes metricus

perform at roughly chance levels

Why can’t we conclude at this point

that P. fuscatus has superior facial
learning skills?
Face recognition learning occurs in some species
of paper wasps, but not others

Females of P. metricus perform

no better when required to
recognize faces of their own
species than they do when
required to recognize faces of P.
fuscatus
Support for the cognitive ecology hypothesis:
The cognitive ability of face recognition has evolved in one species but not
the other due to the species social system
(Sheehan and Tibbetts 2010, 2011)
Test case 2 for the cognitive ecology hypothesis:
Caching birds
Clark’s nutcracker
Family Corvidae
(crows, ravens, jays, nutcrackers)

-Caching species
-Many small caches of pine seeds

Clark’s nutcracker might make 7000 caches, and

would need to recover about half, or 3500, to
survive the winter
How might nutcrackers recover caches?
1. Using random search
2. Using olfactory cues from cache
3. Using soil features
4. Caching in specific types of sites, then
focusing search there
5. Remembering the location of each cache
Hypothesis: nutcrackers rely on enhanced spatial
memory to recover caches
Russell Balda and Alan Kamil: Tested captive nutcrackers in a flight cage
Predictions:
If nutcrackers find caches by remembering,
only the bird that has made the cache should
be good at recovering it.

If any of hypotheses 1-4 are correct, birds

should be good at recovering caches even if
they did not make them.
Orange & Red: allowed to cache
Blue & Green: did not cache
Experimenter removed some caches and added
their own
Why did they do this?
Results: Caching individuals are better at finding cached seeds

Non-caching
birds:

Caching birds:
Remembering hypothesis supported:
Nutcrackers located caches by
remembering where they put them

Orange: 44 of 44 recovered caches were

made by Orange

Red: 52 of 55 recovered caches were

made by Red
Non-caching birds did better (~10%) than predicted by random search (0.4%)
Other experiments indicated that non-cachers were using tricks like looking for soil disturbances, and
searching near large objects.
Hypothesis 1: nutcrackers rely on spatial memory to
recover caches ✓

Hypothesis 2: caching species of birds have evolved

superior spatial memory
Tests:
– Compare performance on spatial memory tasks between
caching, non-caching species
– Compare sizes of brain regions devoted to spatial memory
between caching, non-caching species
 Spatial memory task

Spatial Delayed Nonmatch to Sample

1. One of two pecking keys is illuminated, then both go out

2. Delay
3. Choose the key that wasn’t illuminated previously

Retention interval (latency)—the length of time that the subject could remember the
right answer
 Spatial memory task
Figure shows the results at the retention interval that each
individual had mastered after several thousand trials
Caching
-Nutcracker retained memory longer nutcracker
-Scrub jay did no better than the pigeon

Sometimes
Caching

scrub jay

pigeon Non-caching
Comparison of brain structures
Comparison of hippocampal volume in caching & non-caching corvids and parids:
Do caching species have larger hippocampi for their body size?

= corvids

= parids

expect caching species (dark symbols) to be

above the line, with larger hippocampal
volumes for their body size; and non-
caching species (open symbols) on or below
the line
Hypothesis 1: nutcrackers rely on spatial memory to
recover caches ✓

Hypothesis 2: caching species of birds have evolved

superior spatial memory mixed support
Tests:
– Compare performance on spatial memory tasks
between caching, non-caching species ✓
– Compare sizes of brain regions devoted to spatial
memory between caching, non-caching species X
Test case 3 for the cognitive ecology hypothesis:
Domestic dogs

Domestication hypothesis:
Domestic dogs have been selected
for skills of social cognition and
communication with humans
Why?

Brian Hare’s hypothesis: domestic dogs have evolved the ability to

understand and follow human gestures
Task: ability to follow human cues
Brian Hare compared dogs to chimps

Dogs do quite well at following human cues

Chimps perform closer to chance level

-Gesture toward object with food

-Gaze at object with food
-Mark object with food using a wooden block
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC67kf4cm1U

start 9:28
 Hare’s hypotheses to explain success of dogs:

1. Canid generalization: all canids are good at interpreting social cues

genetic
2. Human exposure: dogs are good at interpreting human cues because
more exposure during lifetime learned
3. Domestication: selection during domestication has led to evolution
of better cognitive abilities evolved
 Dogs vs. wolves
Brian Hare tested the canid generalization hypotheses using dogs and
wolves raised by humans

Which
hypothesis is
supported?

No cue given

Another experiment: compared dogs that had been raised by human families vs. dogs
that were litter-reared: did not find a difference in their performance on the task of
following human cues
 Theory of mind
Definition: Having a theory of mind allows us to understand that others have
beliefs, motivations, and intentions that are different from our own, enabling
us to engage in social interaction as we interpret the mental states and infer
the behaviors of those around us.

• Various tests developed by developmental psychologists show when children

have developed Theory of Mind

• Human children typically develop Theory of Mind between 3 and 5 years old

• A long-standing debate among animal cognition researchers: is Theory of

Mind a unique adaptation of human cognition, or do other animals possess it?
Test for Theory of Mind in Ravens:
Thomas Bugnyar, Stephan Reber, and Cameron Buckner (2016) Nature

Aware that unseen others may be

Raven spying on them, even if they cannot see
calls the rival ravens, if they know there is a
way for them to be seen.
Ravens cache food
If a raven is guarding its food hoard
Raven and can hear but not see other ravens,
calls and there is an open peephole, it will
guard it more carefully.

1. Open peephole + raven calls

If peephole is covered, they behave as
2. Closed peephole + raven calls
Raven if they understand that they are not
calls being watched.