Showing papers in "Animal Behaviour in 2001"

TL;DR: Chimpanzees know what conspecifics have and have not seen (do and do not know), and that they use this information to devise effective social-cognitive strategies.

TL;DR: 20 years of empirical and theoretical research on causes and functions of social influences on foraging by animals and the importance to the future of the field of integrating 'top-down' and 'bottom-up' approaches to the study of social learning is considered.

TL;DR: The results of 134 studies of optimal diet theory were reviewed to test hypotheses on factors that can explain variation in the ability of ODT to predict diets and diet shifts in response to changes in prey availability.

TL;DR: Although several factors are likely to affect chimpanzee hunting decisions and meat sharing, results indicate that primary causes will not be found through invoking simple energetic or reproductive considerations.

TL;DR: A few key ideas about animal cognition developed in a recent book are summarized and some areas in which interdisciplinary research on animal cognition is currently proving especially productive are reviewed.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors conducted a series of playback experiments with the Kanyawara chimpanzee community of the Kibale National Park, Uganda and found that the response to the playback of the ‘pant-hoot’ call of a single extragroup male depended on the number of adult males in the listening party, the location of the speaker relative to the territory edge, and each male's agonistic rank.

TL;DR: It is shown that, in respect of neocortex size, there are as many as four statistically distinct grades within the primates (including humans), and analysis of the patterns of grooming among males and females suggested that large primate social groups often consist of a set of smaller female subgroups that are linked by individual males.

TL;DR: Kroodsma et al. as discussed by the authors surveyed the experimental designs used in 50 papers published during the last several years to answer the question "What effect did the debate and subsequent consensus report have on the quality of experimental design used in animal behaviour?"

TL;DR: It is proposed that reproductive mode is a critically important factor influencing the type of genetic benefits that females gain by mating with more than one male, and that development of the embryo within the female makes polyandry for incompatibility avoidance far more important for viviparous females than for females that lay eggs.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated the inter-and intra-observer reliability of spontaneous qualitative assessments of pig, Sus scrofa, behaviour provided by nine naive observers, using an experimental methodology called "free choice profiling" (FCP).

TL;DR: Once more detailed aspects of Argos tracking data are considered, such as the speed of travel or small-scale movements, then location accuracy is likely to become a much more important issue.

TL;DR: In this article, a meta-analytical analysis of grooming behavior in 27 different social groups belonging to 14 different species revealed that a significant role in the distribution of grooming was played by attraction to high-ranking animals, attraction to kin and competition for grooming partners.

TL;DR: This article showed that Guppies would learn more effectively from familiar than unfamiliar demonstrators and well trained than poorly trained demonstrators, and demonstrated that familiarity may generate a form of directed social learning in guppy shoals, in which fish learn more effective from familiar conspecifics.

TL;DR: It is suggested that immunocompetence decreased in reproductively active males, supporting the hypothesis that males trade off immunity for reproduction and also suggesting that immuno-competence may increase in reproduced females.

TL;DR: By integrating studies of auditory distance perception and studies of sound perception in animals and humans, this work provides a framework for understanding the evolutionary implications of sound degradation in communication.

TL;DR: The results suggest that tammar wallabies perceive predators as a natural category, and this effect is more likely to reflect social behaviour than generalization of the learnt response from predator to conspecific.

TL;DR: In this article, the spatial position and rank of individuals in a group of wild tufted capuchin monkeys affect their ability to discover and exploit new food sources, and the factors that affect the finder's share and the total amount of food obtained by the finders from a newly discovered resource.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated the effects of a simple giving-up rule, using recent prey encounter rate to assess patch quality, and found that, for shallow dives, there should always be a net benefit from terminating dives early if no prey are encountered early in the dive.

TL;DR: Experimental evidence is provided for the taxonomic differences in innovative flexibility seen in anecdotal data and suggests that neophobia is an important intervening variable in response to new feeding problems.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors present the Elo-rating method which provides sequential estimations of individual dominance, based on the actual sequence of dominance interactions observed, and gives a continuous update for the process of dominance strength acquisition.

TL;DR: This is the first systematic evaluation of the role of hydrocarbon classes as recognition cues and begins to define the recognition signature within the cuticular profile for a genus regarded as a model organism for the study of recognition in animals.

TL;DR: The influence of shoal activity on shoal size preference in the zebrafish is investigated and it is found that test fish generally preferred the larger shoal, however, this preference could be reduced by presenting the larger Shoal in colder water and so reducing its activity.

TL;DR: This paper investigated the contribution of helpers in meerkats, Suricata suricatta, and found that helpers varied widely in the number of food items they gave to pups and individual differences were related to variation in foraging success as well as to sex and age.

TL;DR: Diet-based predator cues elicit different levels of activity in Pardosa that reduce predation in the presence of Hogna, which is the first evidence of diet-based chemical discrimination of predators in a terrestrial arthropod and measures the survival value of behavioural responses to predator chemical cues.

TL;DR: How shoal size affects the foraging efficiency of laboratory populations of the guppy exposed to different foraging tasks is investigated, raising the possibility that novel behavioural innovations, particularly those that require individuals to break contact with the group, may be more likely to spread in smaller than larger groups of animals.

TL;DR: The experiments show that dogs are able to rely on information provided by human action when confronted with a new task, and easily adopted the detour behaviour shown by humans to reach their goal.

TL;DR: The data indicate that assessment of neighbours does not occur solely during individual forays into other groups' territories, and helpers' participation in intergroup interactions in their own territory might provide direct benefits related to dispersal decisions as well.

TL;DR: Foraging strategies of individuals with respect to their social position in the group in a flock of nonbreeding, moulting barnacle geese, Branta leucopsis, on high Arctic Spitsbergen suggest that subordinates try to compensate for a lower energy intake by exploring and by lengthening the foraging bout.

TL;DR: Social rank appears to be an important determinant of reproductive success for female mountain goats, especially among young females, and the positive effect of dominance on kid production decreased with increasing female age.

TL;DR: In a study of male Mediterranean field crickets, Gryllus bimaculatus, this paper found that the duration of antennal fencing was necessary to initiate a fight, independent of experience and weight asymmetry between the contestants, but was prolonged after shortening the antennae by almost 90%.