Biology subjects

Ortiz, S. T.

Publications and source records attributed to Ortiz, S. T..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

Third-party imitation is not restricted to humans

Imitation of cultural practices is ubiquitous in humans and often involves faithful copying of intransitive (i.e., non-object directed) gestures and societal norms which play a crucial role in human cultural evolution. Apart from learning these directly from a tutor, humans often learn passively as third-party observers from the interactions of two or more individuals. Whether third-party imitation has evolved outside humans remains unknown. In the current study, we investigated whether undomesticated blue-throated macaws could imitate in a third-party setting. A naive test group (N=6) passively observed a conspecific demonstrator performing improbable intransitive actions in response to specific human gestural commands. Directly afterwards, the observer received the same gestural commands and performance-contingent rewards. An equally naive control group (N=5) was tested correspondingly, in the absence of third-party demonstrations. The test group learned more target actions (mean=4.16 versus mean=2.2) in response to the specific commands, significantly faster and performed them more accurately than the control group. The test group also spontaneously imitated some of the actions even before they received any gestural commands or rewards. Our findings show that third-party imitation, even for intransitive actions, exists outside humans, allowing for rapid adaption to group specific behaviours and possibly cultural conventions in parrots.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2024

Awareness of the future: Dolphins know when they need to remember for the future

In humans, awareness of an upcoming memory test enhances intentional encoding and improves memory recall. Here, we investigated whether dolphins exhibit similar future-oriented encoding of information known to be needed in the future. Dolphins were trained to remember specific, randomly assigned actions for later re-enactment, with either immediate or delayed recall. When an unexpected delay was introduced in trials anticipating immediate recall, memory was retained for only 13 seconds, suggesting working memory encoding. However, when instructed to expect delayed recall, dolphins accurately reproduced actions after delays even after 16 hours. These results suggest that dolphins, anticipating future need, intentionally encode actions to be performed in the future into long-term memory, implying prospective encoding and prospective memory capacities. Their memory also displayed key features of episodic memory: encoding occurred in a single episode, and memory was declarative, as the action itself declared its content. Moreover, dolphins more effectively recalled self-performed actions compared to gestural codifications of the same actions, mirroring the human-typical "enactment effect" and supporting episodic-like memory over semantic memory. Our findings indicate that dolphins show awareness of future memory demands and seem to use a future-oriented, episodic-like memory system, capable of storing prospectively encoded, intended actions in long-term memory.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2020

Does participation in acoustic experiments provide enrichment to animals under human care? A case study of three grey seals (Halichoerus grypus)

Both mental and physiological conditions determine the well-being state in an animal. Enrichment is a way to increase an animals well-being and may require problem solving through thinking, tolerance of ambiguity, openness, and intrinsic motivation. It is unclear if it is enriching when an animal participates in different types of research. Therefore, it is important to answer the question of whether research can be used as an enrichment tool in zoological facilities. Here, we examine if participation in psychophysical research affected the mental stimulation of three grey seals under human care. The effects varied amongst the three individuals that took part in the research, and indicated that their participation in the research task was dependent on their individual personalities and life history. Two seals indicated that their involvement in the research was positive and motivating, and therefore can be considered enriching. In comparison, the third seal displayed a tendency for frustration and low motivation. Our results indicate that research can be a powerful enrichment tool with animals that find research motivating.

animal behavior and cognition↗