Topic 8: Animal Cognition PDF

 Topic 8: Learning About the Cognitive Skills of Animal complex mental concepts like beliefs, knowledge, and problem solving. When you have completed this topic, yo...

 Topic 8: Learning About the Cognitive Skills of Animal complex mental concepts like beliefs, knowledge, and problem solving. When you have completed this topic, you should be able to: Sand Wasps describe examples of tasks used to assess cognitive skills in different Let’s begin with a fairly simple story about sand animal species wasps. When a female sand wasp is ready to lay demonstrate a thorough understanding an egg, she first digs a chamber in a sand dune, of the cognitive skills demonstrated by then plugs the hole, then flies away, finds a some animals caterpillar, paralyses the caterpillar, carries it to discuss how different scientific her chamber, unplugs the chamber, and places the perspectives influence knowledge caterpillar inside. Her preparations complete, she acquisition lays an egg on top of the caterpillar, replugs the chamber, and goes about her business. When the egg hatches, the hungry larva is able to feed on In our last topic, we discussed how the dominance the caterpillar. of behaviourism as an approach to studying behaviour effectively prevented Western scientists This is a complex sequence of events, but it does from studying animals for their own sake – mostly not appear amazing, until it is revealed that the by convincing them that animals are the biological sand wasp often has 2 or 3 chambers operating equivalent of an empty black box, reacting at once in different places, with each larva at a unconsciously to stimuli in the environment. Over different stage of development. Every morning time, however, scientists interested in animal she unplugs and checks each one to see how behaviour largely rejected behaviourism in favour much caterpillar is left. When it looks like the larva of other approaches. One of these is cognitive might run out of food, she finds another psychology, a branch of psychology particularly caterpillar, paralyses it, and puts it in the relevant concerned with studying internal mental chamber (Baerends, 1959). processes, such as problem solving, memory, Think carefully about the skills you would require knowledge, perception, and language. Another is if you were to perform these same behaviours. cognitive ethology, a branch of ethology Here we have a sand wasp, with a brain the size concerned with observing animals under fairly of a pin head, which appears to be able to weigh natural conditions in an effort to understand their up the size of a shrinking caterpillar relative to the thought processes, consciousness, beliefs, or size of a growing larva, and remember where each rationality. chamber is and what action is needed at each so As you can imagine, the rejection of behaviourism that she can behave appropriately. Pretty in favour of cognitive psychology and cognitive amazing! Perhaps everything that the sand wasp ethology has totally changed the way that many does could be automatic rather than providing scientists think about animals, the research evidence of cognition – reasoning or mental questions that they ask, the way that they problem solving – but we would certainly rely on investigate these questions, and how they mental problem solving to engage in similar interpret the results. This has led to some really behaviours. And even if sand wasps do perform stunning findings, several of which we will explore complex tasks using some kind of autopilot, this in this topic. See if you can describe the does not seem to be the case for some amazing capabilities of these animals without using really little spiders called jumping spiders. These arachnids really challenge our assumptions about how much brain power is needed for animals to the jumping spider is sneaking up on its be smart. If they were any larger they would be unsuspecting prey and, importantly, only ever really scary! happens when jumping spiders are stalking a live spider. If they are just raiding an empty web to eat left behind insects or egg sacs, they do not bother using clever tactics like this. This makes it look like they are analysing their environment and making a decision about the most appropriate behaviour – is this something spiders should be able to do? Another tactic used by jumping spiders is something called aggressive mimicry. They use their legs to mimic the kind of vibrations that a trapped insect would make, thereby convincing the owner of the web to approach a place where it can easily be captured and eaten. This might not Australian Jumping spiders (Portia fimbriata) seem impressive, but studies have shown that jumping spiders eat a range of different spiders Jumping spiders are incredible little animals that and that these prey spiders are each sensitive to eat other spiders as well as insects, including different kinds of vibrations. So, what do our those much larger than they are. They have an clever jumping spiders do? They climb onto a web impressive visual system, dependent on four pairs and systematically ‘try out’ a range of signals until of eyes. Whereas most spiders cannot see very one works, making the spider they want to eat much and rely on chemical and tactile cues, move in their direction. They then maintain this jumping spiders can see and discriminate particular vibration, either until the spider gets between things up to 30 body lengths away – within catching range, or until it stops moving in including whether a potential prey animal is facing the desired direction, in which case the jumping towards them or not. Most importantly for us, spider reverts back to again trying out a range of jumping spiders catch their prey by using a range different signals. What this suggests is that of strategies that seem remarkably flexible. The jumping spiders begin with a range of inbuilt behaviours that they demonstrate, when they signals but use them flexibly and in response to occur in humans, are attributed to complex and feedback from their prey to get what they want. highly developed mental processes like intent, Again we can ask - is this something spiders planning, and deceit. These are summarised in a should be able to do? book chapter by Wilcox and Jackson (1998). Jumping spiders often hunt by invading the webs of other spiders. They either eat the other spiders or steal insect prey caught in the web. This is not as easy as it sounds as most spider webs are incredibly sensitive to slight movements and most spiders perceive their world by interpreting vibration patterns transmitted via their webs. This means that they can tell when another spider, like a jumping spider, is approaching and must be either attacked or avoided. Jumping spiders counter this early warning system by waiting until Other examples also suggest that jumping spiders there is a gust of wind before moving across can work things out in their very small heads another spider’s web. This disguises the fact that rather than behaving automatically. For example, when hunting prey, they often take a detour around a rock or tree. This is relatively common in placed on a platform above a prey spider. From vertebrate animals, but it means that the animal the platform are two potential detour tracks, only has to keep some kind of representation of the one of which leads to the prey. The jumping situation in its mind’s eye (do spiders even have a spiders choose the correct track more often than mind?). Sometimes the spider goes in the the incorrect track in these experiments, even if complete opposite direction to where the prey is they have absolutely no experience in the located. This is a fairly sophisticated thing to do experimental set up and have to walk past the and even human infants take some time to figure entrance of the incorrect track to get to the out something called object permanence. It correct one. This suggests that the spiders use the requires them to understand that an object will visual information they are able to gather about most likely stay in the same place even when they the environment to make plans in their head and can no longer see it. then act on these plans in a deliberate manner. These are advanced cognitive skills that most people would expect to see only in humans or other primates. Here is a quote from Wilcox and Jackson, who spend their lives studying Jumping Spiders (Portia fimbriata): “When we began research on Portia, few thoughts would have seemed more foreign to us than that one day we would seriously be discussing cognition in a spider. Yet, over and over again, Portia has defied the popular image of spiders as simple animals with rigid behaviour. One of the challenges of this work has now become to clarify As an example of how clever jumping spiders are, where the limits lie in Portia’s cognitive ability, but consider what they sometimes do to capture a the greater challenge is to understand how it is particular species of prey spider, called Argiope that an animal with so little in the way of a brain appensa. Appensa typically builds its web close to can nevertheless do so much.” (p. 428) a tree trunk and then sits waiting for prey insects. It is incredibly sensitive to intruders on its web and is not impressed by the aggressive mimicry that other prey spiders fall for, responding instead by shaking the web violently until the intruder either falls off or retreats. To overcome this obstacle, when jumping spiders come across an Appensa web, they tend to back off and then detour to a point above the web. This often requires an extensive trek of over a meter or more that might take more than an hour and that might take the jumping spider out of sight of the prey Check out this video, where you can see the spider and its web. The jumping spider then walks spider’s hunting abilities that appear to require out onto an overhanging twig or branch and more advanced cognitive skills than automatic drops a silk line close to the existing Appensa sensory responses or instincts. Could it be web. It uses this to swing itself towards the evidence of a higher mental ability than expected? Appensa web so that it can grab the tasty spider from thin air, never actually touching the web Parrots While sand wasps and spiders challenge our In laboratory-based experiments testing this traditional views of invertebrate cognitive capacity, captive jumping spiders have been capabilities, an even more sophisticated example of what some animals can do comes from many combined these labels to identify, refuse, request years of study involving Alex, an African Grey and categorise more than a hundred different Parrot (Psittacus erithacus). Alex died in 2007, items. He had concepts of bigger and smaller, of but his unique contribution to human science was category, of sameness and difference, of absence amazing– perhaps he even deserved a Nobel of information, and of number. prize! According to Pepperberg (2008), Alex showed that he knew things by answering quite complex questions. For example, he might have been shown two different coloured blocks and have been asked “Which object is bigger?” or "What object is green and has three corners?" Interestingly, Alex sometimes got questions wrong, but he occasionally seemed to do this on purpose, perhaps just to amuse himself. For example, he might have been asked to identify an object of a certain shape, and he would pick every single object except the correct one. This is actually quite a clever thing to do and not something he could have done by chance, and it Alex was trained by Irene Pepperberg, a scientist demonstrates that his correct responses were not who was halfway through a doctorate in just automatic. Instead, he appeared to be actually theoretical chemistry when she decided she thinking and making decisions about how to wanted to do something different. She found respond. He also showed a certain level of herself watching television shows about animals intentionality involving requests. For example, if and how smart they were, particularly shows he said he wanted a grape and was given a small about chimps using sign language and dolphins piece of banana, the person he was working with communicating nonverbally with their human often ended up wearing the banana. handlers. She also saw a program about birds and how they learn to sing and communicate and she remembered that she’d had birds as a child and that many of them had talked to her. She decided that what she wanted to do was investigate language acquisition in birds. Nearly thirty years later she is still following her dream and, in the meantime, has contributed to a profound shift in what we might mean by the phrase ‘bird-brained’. She has also written several books. One of these, called The Alex Studies (1999), discusses Alex’s abilities. Another, called Alex and Me (2008), details her relationship with Alex. Both are In one experiment described by Pepperberg interesting reading for developing anthro- (2008), Alex was being trained to sound out zoologists. phonemes, to see if he understood that his labels were made up of sounds that could be Alex was able to identify about 50 different recombined in different ways to make up new objects using English labels. He could also label words. He had a bunch of magnetic letters that seven colours, five shapes, and quantities up to were being used to spell out words and he was six. He had functional use of phrases like "I want doing a demonstration for some scientists. X" and "I wanna go Y", where X and Y, Pepperberg asked him to spell out some letters respectively, are object or location labels. He and he did this correctly and then said "Want a nut." Instead of rewarding him with the requested seem to be able to recognise large numbers of nut the researchers went straight on to the next individuals, and they can remember them question. Alex tolerated this rudeness another sufficiently well to track complex social two or three times and then appeared to become relationships over long periods of time. This is no quite frustrated at not being rewarded for his mean feat with Corvids – humans often have good behaviour. According to Pepperberg he got trouble telling individual birds apart. very slitty eyed, looked straight at her and said ‘Want a nut, Nnnn, Uh, Tttt. It was just like he was thinking, "Hey, stupid, do I have to spell it for you?" but the important point is that he had spontaneously begun sounding out the letters in a completely different context than the one he was being trained in using shapes. This kind of cognitive generalisability – using a skill learned in one context to solve a problem in another - was previously attributed only to primates. In this video you can see Alex in action. Take note of what Alex does that could be construed as play. Genuine play is typically believed only to exist among animals with highly developed cognitive abilities? Should we rethink this conclusion or do we need more evidence? Corvidae Alex is not the only smart bird around. Many incredible experiments have been done with birds from the Corvidae family, which includes jays, ravens, rooks, and crows. These birds have been studied by Nathan Emery and Nicola Clayton, who wrote an article in Science reviewing their research (2004). Corvids live in large, complex hierarchical societies, consisting of permanent flocks containing up to several thousand Transitive inferences have been demonstrated not individuals. Just like chimps, these birds can make just in birds but in fish and other animals that live inferences about their social position, using in social groups. Birds also show many other information they obtain by watching other birds. impressive cognitive feats, like remembering This is called a transitive inference. What happens where they have stored seeds in up to 20,000 in these experiments is that one bird watches different places for up to nine months and using other pairs of birds interacting, maybe through tools to access desired resources. Even one-way glass or a wire divider. They might see counterespionage is evident. If one bird knows that bird A always beats bird B in a fight, but that that she is being watched by another bird when bird B always beats bird C. So, the social hierarchy she hides food, she will often come back and is A-B-C. If the target bird, bird D, is then put in rehide it somewhere else when the other bird is with bird B and loses its first fight, it works out not around. Amazingly, if an experiment is set up that it had better not pick a fight with bird A, who so that some birds have a chance to steal food has already been seen to be tougher than bird B. but others do not, the ones with a criminal past If it is put in with bird A it immediately backs down become much more suspicious of other birds and from any confrontation, without needing to fight are more likely to re-hide food. It seems like they to figure out it is going to get whipped. Corvids use their own behaviour to make inferences about how others might act in the same circumstances. The sneaky bird assumes other birds are sneaky, while the trustworthy bird assumes others can be trusted. Watch this video of clever crows and see if you can figure out what is going on in their brains. Canines Another animal that is being studied by cognitive scientists around the world is the dog. Dogs are terrific to work with because they are friendly and easy to manage but they were largely overlooked by scientists for a long time, until scientists who This means that he was able to work out in his owned dogs as pets began to report that their head that because the other items all had names dogs were capable of remarkable cognitive feats. he was familiar with, the new word must refer to This encouraged them to begin studying dog the new object. This is a very high-level cognitive cognition more carefully, leading to many skill – requiring more thinking skills than we interesting discoveries. Here are just a few of the previously thought dogs were capable of. If you things that have now been documented. think this is unique to Rico, think again. A study by John Pilley and Alliston Reid (2011) showed that a dog in South Carolina, named Chaser, learned the names of OVER 1000 objects, and could also do the exclusion learning thing. In addition to those skills, she even learned to categorise different items as ‘toy’ or ‘not toy’ and, within the toy category, she learned whether a given toy is a ‘ball’ (shaped like a globe) or a ‘frisbee’ (a 2D circle). You can watch Chaser in action here. As another example of canine cognition, consider a series of experiments conducted in Hungary, by Many owners think that their dog can understand Zsofia Viranyi and colleagues (2008) using hand- what they say much of the time. According to reared wolves and dogs. In one experiment food Juliane Kaminski and her colleagues (2004), a was hidden in one of two similar containers and Border Collie called Rico demonstrated that he the animals were shown where it was by the knew the labels of over 200 different items, experimenters, who either tapped on the correct mainly different types of balls and toys. If the container or pointed to it from a distance. Both experimenters hid a number of objects around the wolves and dogs could find the food easily if the house and ask Rico to fetch one of them, he knew experiment tapped on the container, but only the exactly which one to get and was correct on dogs could easily follow a pointing gesture. average 37 out of 40 times. Further to this, if six Instead of looking at the hand, they went to where or seven familiar items were placed in a room, the experimenter was pointing. This is quite a along with one new one, and Rico was asked to clever thing to do and other species, including fetch ‘the X’, using a word he was unfamiliar with, other primates, generally fail this task. he almost always figured out that this meant to get the unfamiliar object – he did this correctly on In a different experiment by the same research seven out of every ten tries, linking the novel word group, the animals first learned to access a food to the novel object based on exclusion learning. treat by either opening a bin or pulling a bit of string, tied to a lump of meat, out from a wire grate (Miklosi and colleagues, 2003). Both Nonhuman primates (and elephants and dolphins) species could do this after training. When the bin In a previous topic we discussed how modern was glued shut or the string tied down the wolves humans are particularly good at using symbols – just kept persisting with the behaviours they had objects that represent the thoughts and images been taught. The dogs quickly gave up and kept we have in our heads. Humans may be super turning to their owner in what seemed like an symbol users, but they are not the only species attempt to get help. capable of symbolic thought. Several Bonobos (Pygmy chimps) have been taught to use sign In a third study by the group in Hungary, a dog language or sign boards to communicate with named Philip was taught to imitate people (Topal human carers. It would be good for you to meet et al., 2006). Research assistants demonstrated one of these amazing animals, so please click here spins, bows, jumps and waves, all of which Philip to watch Kanzi, a bonobo, using a board covered eagerly copied even if he had never seen them in brightly coloured symbols, each one of which before. Note that chimpanzees, our closest represents something that Kanzi knows about. genetic relatives, have problems with many of these tasks. What does this brief video show? At first it seems to show that Kanzi can understand words, but be If you are really interested in dog cognition, many sceptical, is it possible that Kanzi has simply researchers have made available short clips learned, through a process of trial and error, showing experiments as they take place. These which symbol goes with which sound, with no can often be found on YouTube by searching for understanding of what the words actually mean? videos on canine cognition or dog cognition. These studies seem to tell us that, through evolution, as dogs have learned to interact closely with humans, they have acquired impressive cognitive skills, including the ability to interpret our body language, copy us and communicate with us when they think we might be useful. This says quite a bit about their internal cognitive capacities, and it also means we probably need to reconsider some of our pet keeping behaviours. We’ll come back to this later in the subject. We also need to consider that other animal species It’s good to be sceptical of things, but it turns out may be far more cognitively adept than we are that Kanzi and his relatives have other impressive currently aware of. Who knows what we might find skills. If you go to this link you can watch another out about other species if we conduct the video showing some of these skills. It’s a longer appropriate experiments? video (about 18 mins) but well worth watching. As will be clear from the second video, Panbaneesha appears to spontaneously use symbols to indicate what it is she wants from her trainer. Does this demonstrate that she can make pictures in her head, just like we can? Kanzi has also shown that he can understand novel sentences, where words he knows are combined in new and unusual ways. Dolphins are able to achieve similar feats although it is more difficult for them to demonstrate their abilities to us. Another important cognitive skill that developed After the test animal is familiar with the mirror, the particularly well in our ancestors, partly as a result scientists wait until they are sleeping and stick a of their interactions with other animals, is self- red dot on their forehead or, in the case of an awareness. Not only do we think about things elephant, a large painted cross. When the animal symbolically, but we realise that we do this – we wakes up, they watch what they do when it looks think about ourselves thinking. We understand in the mirror. If the animal reaches towards their that we are someone, that there is continuity forehead for the mark, rather than towards the between who we are when we fall asleep and who forehead of the animal in the mirror, this we are when we wake up. Nowadays we take this demonstrates that they have figured out how skill for granted, but if you think about it it’s really mirrors work and, more importantly, that they quite extraordinary. Do you think a tree knows realises that they are an individual, represented in that it is a tree? Does a bison look at other bison the mirror image. and think, ‘hey, I’m one of those things’, or does it have no concept of itself being an independent thing, within a group of other similar things? And what would the thought ‘hey, I’m one of those things’ even look like in an animal that isn’t capable of using words? It makes your brain hurt just thinking about these complex issues. Self-awareness is one of those cognitive skills that was thought to differentiate humans from all other animals, but that now appears to be shared with at least some other species. To explore self- awareness, scientists use a protocol developed by Gordon Gallup, called the mirror test. To conduct The mirror test has been tried out with quite a few this test scientists first spend some time letting an species now, with mixed results. Initially only one animal (or a human child) explore a mirror, so that elephant, Happy, passed the test. She repeatedly they can see whether the animal looks like it touched the X on her forehead, a place she could knows what the mirror can do. Often the animals not see without a mirror, but did not respond will initially try exploring the other side of the when a colourless paint was used to draw the X. mirror, presumably looking for the unfamiliar While other elephants have not passed this animal hiding behind it. An elephant called particular test, they do seem to be self-aware and, Maxine, for example, initially swung her trunk over as a result, elephants officially join a small group and behind the wall on which the mirror was of animals capable of demonstrating self- mounted, kneeling in front of it to get her trunk awareness. Some chimps and dolphins have also under and behind it, and even attempting to passed the test, with modern human infants physically climb the wall. Later, as the elephants showing evidence of recognising their reflections began to understand the mirror and recognised from about 18 months of age. (perhaps) that they were looking at their own reflection, they tried repeating actions in front of Watch this video to see what an elephant does it, waving their trunks around and moving their when confronted with a giant mirror. heads in and out of the mirror view. They then used the mirror to investigate their own bodies. Why are these studies controversial? Maxine even used her trunk to pull her ear slowly Before ending this topic, it is worthwhile spending toward the mirror. Animals that are not capable of just a bit of time thinking about the implications self-awareness never perform actions like this, of animal cognition studies. While it’s exciting to they keep treating the animal in the mirror like a learn more about other species, this knowledge stranger. brings with it the potential for controversy. Should we be keeping species like dolphin, elephants and time. If you are interested in this field, check out nonhuman primates in captivity so that we can the journal called Animal Cognition. It contains learn more about them? Is this also an issue with wonderful reports of what animals are capable of those who study spiders and sand wasps? Why or when we ask them the right questions in really why not? More on this later! clever ways. Each species is unique and there are often marked individual differences within species. Nonetheless, when we use our highly developed cognitive skills to investigate the cognitive skills of animals, we find out that they are far more sophisticated that we previously imagined. Think back over some of the examples in this topic and try to imagine what might be going on in an animal’s head as it solves our problems. Are they thinking in pictures or words? What do thoughts look like in a spider brain or the brain of a dog? These are questions that new brain imaging Summary techniques are just beginning to be able to There are several important points to extract from answer. The next few decades are therefore likely this topic. The first is that, as we have discussed to result in even greater changes to our previously, all animals are more or less or socially ‘construction’ of animal minds. constructed by us. How our brains make sense of animals depends almost entirely on our social But, of course, this new knowledge raises thorny experiences, what we’ve learned from those questions about the ethics of doing experiments around us. This is true for ordinary people, most on animals. While the general public remains of whom believe that spiders and sand wasps are supportive of animal experimentation, twenty simple creatures who operate on autopilot and years from now we might think very differently are incapable of any form of complex thought. But about some of the ways we use and interact with it is also true for scientists. For decades the animals. This may have significant implications dominance of behaviourism as ‘the’ scientific beyond the use of animals in science, so we need approach to studying behaviour effectively to keep this in mind when we make decisions prevented scientists from studying animals for about how we want our future to be. their own sake. They were convinced that animals are the biological equivalent of an empty black box, reacting unconsciously to stimuli in the environment, and this made them uninteresting as objects of study. It was only over a long period of time that scientists interested in animal behaviour rejected behaviourism, opting for exciting new fields of inquiry such as cognitive psychology and cognitive ethology. Coming from these less constrained perspectives, what scientists have been able to demonstrate about animal cognition has been truly astounding. In this topic we reviewed some recent findings in just a few species, but evidence of high-level cognitive skills in other species is emerging all the  References and Supplementary Resources: Baerends, G. P. (1959). Ethological studies of insect behaviour. Annual Review of Entomology, 4, 207-234. Emery, N. J., & Clayton, N. S. (2004). The mentality of crows: Convergent evolution of intelligence in corvids and apes. Science, 306, 1903-1907. Grimm, D. (2011). Are dolphins too smart for captivity? Science, 332, 526-529. Kaminski, J., Call, J., & Fischer, J. (2004). Word learning in a domestic dog: Evidence for ‘fast mapping’. 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