Showing papers in "Animal Behaviour in 2011"

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors review evidence on four aspects of the play-welfare relationship: play indicates the absence of fitness threats, play acts as a reward and flags up the presence of opioid-mediated pleasurable emotional experiences; play brings immediate psychological benefits and long-term fitness and health benefits, and thus improves current and future welfare; and play is socially contagious and therefore capable of spreading good welfare in groups.

TL;DR: In this article, an index to objectively assess the stability of a dominance hierarchy is proposed, which allows visualizing dominance relationships and the detection of rank dynamics, and it allows ranking hierarchies to be computed.

TL;DR: It is demonstrated for the first time that environmental enrichment can induce an optimistic cognitive bias in rats previously housed in standard caging, possibly indicative of a more positive affective state.

TL;DR: How new genetic tools in microbial ecology make it possible to test long-standing hypotheses in behavioural ecology is focused on, and future research directions at the interface of microbial and behavioural ecology are highlighted.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors show how to maintain a high potential cost of cheating without imposing extra realized cost (i.e., a handicap) on honest signallers at the equilibrium.

TL;DR: The results suggest that song repertoire size does correlate with one measure of cognitive performance, but more detailed song analyses and further cognitive tests are required to answer the questions raised by the findings.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors conducted standardized assays on a natural population of great tits, Parus major, to quantify and characterize individual variation in problem-solving performance, a simple cognitive trait often linked to innovative foraging ability.

TL;DR: The results suggest that personality can be considered as a new static factor influencing within-group hierarchies and the need to take several traits into account to provide full descriptions of individual personality is discussed.

TL;DR: This work found strong correlations between activity levels and boldness suggesting that selection may act on a suite of traits in concert (sensu behavioural syndromes) and suggests that the activity–boldness syndrome is likely to be domain specific.

TL;DR: It is found that parental personality traits and the combination of personalities within breeding pairs had positive effects on correlates of (foster) offspring fitness (body mass and condition), and these nongenetic parental effects were pervasive and carried over into the next generation.

TL;DR: A systematic review of the primate communication literature reveals that vocal, gestural and facial signals have attracted differing theoretical and methodological approaches, rendering cross-modal comparisons problematic.

TL;DR: The authors found that women with lower voices were perceived as more dominant and that this relationship was linear, while higher pitched voices were more attractive up to an optimal pitch; female voices above ca. 280 Hz were rated as less attractive.

TL;DR: The results show that the concept of collective personality is applicable to colonies of social insects, and that personality differences among colonies can have important consequences for their long-term survival and reproduction.

TL;DR: This study uses network measurements to investigate cross-species variations in the social style of macaques, and finds that networks had higher modularity in intolerant species, indicating that kin-related partners interacted more frequently in subgroups of these species than in those of tolerant species.

TL;DR: The results suggest that, although the domestication process may have shaped the dog’s human-directed communicative abilities, the later selection for specific types of work might also have had a significant impact on their emergence.

TL;DR: It is suggested that the tendency of a prey to escape, when initiated even by a few individuals in a cohesive group, elicits self-organized density waves, which are efficient in confusing predators.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors measured personality traits in 15 tame fallow deer, using novel object tests (NO), behavioural observations (BO) and personality ratings (PR), and found that boldness dimensions were found using PR and NO, dominance dimensions using BO and PR, and a flexibility dimension was found using BO.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the collective departure of wild chacma baboons, Papio ursinus, from their sleeping sites, and found that the departure process appeared to be coordinated through the cue of individuals "moving off" with no role for specific vocal or visual signalling.

TL;DR: It is suggested that, despite seeming to be inefficient, in chimpanzees, conformity may benefit them, possibly by assisting with the maintenance of group relations, and the first evidence that chimpanzees show such conservatism even when the new method employs the identical required behaviour as the first, but for a different reward is provided.

TL;DR: Examination of association patterns of male African elephants in all-male groups suggested that males associate with other males of similar age in part because sparring may facilitate the development and maintenance of motor and psychological responses to sudden and unexpected events that occur during play; this may help prepare males for male–male competition.

TL;DR: It is concluded that social bonding in the nonmating season may build reputations among partners that are crucial for cooperation in risk-prone agonistic coalitions against other males and long-term reciprocity mediated by emotional book keeping may be the basic mechanism.

TL;DR: This study provides experimental evidence that spotted hyaenas can use contact calls to distinguish among individuals and conformed to predictions of game theory by increasing vigilance to playbacks of multiple unfamiliar intruders.

TL;DR: A reduction in sea water pH disrupts the resource assessment and decision-making processes of hermit crabs, indicating that the ability to acquire a vital resource may be influenced by both naturally occurring environmental cycles and anthropogenically induced environmental change.

TL;DR: It is found that plumage signalling is a ubiquitous form of communicating status or fighting ability across bird species with different plumage types and is significantly influenced by the dominance assessment method used in the source study (direct or indirect).

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a general model of collective animal motion that includes social connections as preferential reactions between individuals and illustrate the possible impact of underlying social networks on the collective motion of animals.

TL;DR: Although there is little intercorrelation amongst males’ performance scores of these tasks, males with better scores for two integrative measures of these cognitive tasks had higher mating success, which is a good indicator of reproductive success in this species.

TL;DR: Results suggest that combined visual/seismic components of multimodal displays may serve as ‘backup signals’, ensuring reception under different environmental conditions.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined whether male eastern Hermann's tortoises, Eurotestudo boettgeri, were more aggressive in male-male confrontations and bolder towards humans.

TL;DR: In this article, the movement patterns of broadnose sevengill sharks, Notorynchus cepedianus, were monitored with acoustic and satellite technology in coastal areas of southeast Tasmania, Australia.