Lecture 14

Question 1

What are the steps of animal cognition?

Answer 1

• Acquire information
• Perception - interprets something or someone, realizes or understands
• Storing of information
• Utilize

Question 2

How to measure cognition in animals?

Answer 2

• Behavioural measures
• Physiological measures
• “Asking the animal”

Question 3

How can we ask the animal?

Answer 3

• Preference testing
• Working for resources

Question 4

What is important to social cognition and what can happen if you mix unfamiliar animals?

Answer 4

Memory and recognition
* Aggression/fighting
* Subordinate animals avoiding dominance (if there is a hierarchy)
* Frienships
* Dam + offspring

Question 5

If animals have the ability to recognize other individuals, they appear to have the ability of ________

Answer 5

social cognition

Question 6

What does it mean to recognize someone?

Answer 6

• Remembering previous encounters
• An understanding of the object or event (perception)

Question 7

What is recall?

Answer 7

Ability to form a mental image of an object in its absence
* ex. birds: recognized pictures of individuals at different angles
* Sheep: recognized frontal and profile views

Question 8

What is memory?

Answer 8

Involves new CNS activities
* strengthening of synaptic connectivity
* Fresh production or reconstruction of neural pathway

Question 9

What happens if there is an information overload?

Answer 9

filtering of info occurs at receptor level and the corticol region of the brain

cannot remember everything

Question 10

What do you use to examine brain activity?

Answer 10

electroencephalograph

Question 11

What is a behavioural observation to test for cognition and recognition?

Answer 11

Operant condition to determine if animals can distinguish between individuals

Question 12

What did the test on ewes show for recognition?

Answer 12

• human vs sheep: ewes preferred the sheep picture
• same breed vs diff. breed: ewes preferred same breed picture
• ram vs ewe picture: estrous ewe preferred ram, anestrous ewe preferred ewe
  Sheep show species, breed and individual recognition

Question 13

What is the most important sense for chickens and sheep?

Answer 13

• chickens = vision
• sheep = smell

Question 14

Examples of animals classifying others

Answer 14

• elephants show more interest in tusks/skulls of their own species
• Ducklings recognize calls from own species
• Hens try to avoid chickens from other strains, more aggressive towards them, more sexual attention to chickens within their strain

Question 15

Can demonstrating new skills have negative effects?

Answer 15

• puppy picks up bad behaviour
• stereotypies - ex. tailbiting, cannibalism in chickens

Question 16

What is the age that is most important for learning?

Answer 16

critical age

Question 17

What situations does recognition complexity differ?

Answer 17

• Situation 1 : cattle from numerous farms may be mixed at a sale yard and fighting starts (simplest from of cognition)
• Situation 2 : In a flock of adult hens, a submissive avoids a dominant (more complex)
• Situation 3 : friendships
• Situation 4: mother-offspring (most complex)

Question 18

What happened in the study of horses exposed to familiar and unfimilar animals?

Answer 18

If horses recognized the call they would look for a longer period of time.

horses use vision and sound to recall

Question 19

What are demonstrators?

Answer 19

The animal that demonstrates

demonstrating to naive animals with the result of learning that specific behaviour suggests an even higher level of cognitive ability

Question 20

What can demonstrators do?

Answer 20

• Refining search skills
• influencing preferences
• factors involved in learning social behaviour

-senses - also learn from own experiences
-environment

-age effect - imprinting - learning is critical in young animals

-relationship - maternal is most important when young and decreases over time

-social status - learn faster from dominant