Some animals are more equal than others: Validation of a new scale to measure how attitudes to animals depend on species and human purpose of use.

Globally, many millions of animals are used by humans every year and much of this usage causes public concern. A new scale, devised to measure attitudes to animal use in relation to the purpose of use and species, the Animal Purpose Questionnaire (APQ), was completed by in total 483 participants, 415 British nationals and 68 participants from 39 other countries. The APQ was presented in two survey formats, alongside an established Animal Attitudes Scale (AAS). In both surveys, participants also provided demographic details to provide a context to their attitudes to animals. As might be expected, and consistent with the validity of the new scale, overall scores on the AAS and APQ were highly correlated. However, the APQ provided a more differentiated measure of attitudes to animal use across a variety of settings. The results showed that there was overall higher levels of agreement with the use of animals in medical research and basic science, less endorsement for food production and pest control, and the use of animals for other cultural practices was generally disapproved of, irrespective of species. Participants overall disagreed with the use of rabbits, monkeys, badgers, tree shrews (survey 1), chimpanzees, dogs, dolphins and parrots (survey 2), but were neutral about the use of rats, mice, pigs, octopus, chickens, zebrafish (survey 1), carp, chickens, pigs, pigeons, rabbits and rats (survey 2). Interactions between species and purpose were largely driven by the consideration of using diverse species for food production. In general, females and vegetarians expressed less agreement with the use of animals with some differences by purpose of use. Pet keeping consistently predicted reduced willingness to use animals for basic science (only). The APQ provides a new tool to unpack how public attitudes depend on the intersectionality of demographics, species and purpose of use.

Scalable rules for coherent group motion in a gregarious vertebrate.

Individuals of gregarious species that initiate collective movement require mechanisms of cohesion in order to maintain advantages of group living. One fundamental question in the study of collective movement is what individual rules are employed when making movement decisions. Previous studies have revealed that group movements often depend on social interactions among individual members and specifically that collective decisions to move often follow a quorum-like response. However, these studies either did not quantify the response function at the individual scale (but rather tested hypotheses based on group-level behaviours), or they used a single group size and did not demonstrate which social stimuli influence the individual decision-making process. One challenge in the study of collective movement has been to discriminate between a common response to an external stimulus and the synchronization of behaviours resulting from social interactions. Here we discriminate between these two mechanisms by triggering the departure of one trained Merino sheep (Ovis aries) from groups containing one, three, five and seven naïve individuals. Each individual was thus exposed to various combinations of already-departed and non-departed individuals, depending on its rank of departure. To investigate which individual mechanisms are involved in maintaining group cohesion under conditions of leadership, we quantified the temporal dynamic of response at the individual scale. We found that individuals' decisions to move do not follow a quorum response but rather follow a rule based on a double mimetic effect: attraction to already-departed individuals and attraction to non-departed individuals. This rule is shown to be in agreement with an adaptive strategy that is inherently scalable as a function of group size.

Quantifying and modelling social learning processes in monkey populations

La existencia de supuestas tradiciones en las poblaciones animales sigue sin resolverse enausencia de métodos que permitan aislar los mecanismos de transmisión social en losgrupos sociales. Aquí tratamos este problema mediante la cuantificación del efecto quejugaron dos procesos de aprendizaje social, el realce del estímulo y el aprendizajeobservacional, en la adopción de un comportamiento novedoso de recolección en gruposde monos de la familia Callitrichidae. Simulamos el efecto de estos procesos en unmodelo de cara a explicar la extensión de un comportamiento novedoso y para seleccionarque parámetros del modelo proporcionaban el mejor ajuste a los datos del mono.Nuestro análisis revela evidencias para los procesos asociales y el realce estimular, perono para aprendizaje observacional. Las latencias empleadas en la solución de las tareascovarió con la fuerza de los procesos asociales, pero no con la de los procesos sociales.Más aún, el modelo solo requirió los parámetros de los factores no sociales para ajustarlos datos. El modelo y los datos de difusión mostraron ambos curvas desaceleradas dedifusión. Finalmente, discutimos la relación entre los procesos asociales y sociales y ladinámica de la difusión cultural(AU)

Putative traditions in animal populations remain unsubstantiated in the absence of methodsto isolate the mechanisms of social transmission in social groups. Here we address thisproblem by quantifying the effect of two social learning processes, namely stimulusenhancement and observational learning, on the adoption of a novel extractive foragingbehavior in groups of callitrichid monkeys. We simulate the effect of these processes ina model for the spread of a novel behaviour and also select which model-parametersprovide the best fit to the monkey data. Our analysis reveals evidence for asocial processesand stimulus enhancement but not observational learning. The latency to solve the tasksco-varied with the strength of the asocial, but not social, processes. Further, only asocialparameters were required for the model to fit the data. Both model and monkey diffusiondata exhibited deceleratory diffusion curves. We discuss the relationship between both theasocial and social processes and the diffusion dynamics(AU)

Chimpanzees are right-handed when recording bouts of hand use.

Whether nonhuman primates exhibit population-level handedness remains a topic of considerable debate. Previous research has shown that chimpanzees are right-handed when frequencies of hand use are recorded but some have questioned the validity of this approach. In this study, we evaluated handedness in 180 captive chimpanzees for a task measuring bimanual actions. Bouts rather than frequency of hand use were recorded in each subject. Population-level right-handedness was found using both continuous and nominal scales of measurement. Neither sex nor rearing history had a significant effect on hand use. These results indicate that chimpanzees are right-handed, even when using a more conservative measure of handedness. Limitations in the use of bouts in handedness assessment are also discussed.

Can animals recall the past and plan for the future?

According to the 'mental time travel hypothesis' animals, unlike humans, cannot mentally travel backwards in time to recollect specific past events (episodic memory) or forwards to anticipate future needs (future planning). Until recently, there was little evidence in animals for either ability. Experiments on memory in food-caching birds, however, question this assumption by showing that western scrub-jays form integrated, flexible, trial-unique memories of what they hid, where and when. Moreover, these birds can adjust their caching behaviour in anticipation of future needs. We suggest that some animals have elements of both episodic-like memory and future planning.

Animal consciousness.

Dr Miriam Rothschild had an owl who became so jealous when Rothschild's daughter was born, the bird would try to attack both her and the child. Animals can often appear to have emotions, to be highly intelligent, motivated and sentient but are they conscious?

Self-consciousness and animal suffering.

Animals with relatively highly developed brains are likely to experience some degree of self-awareness and the ability to think. As well as being interesting in its own right, self-consciousness matters from an ethical point of view, since it can give rise to forms of suffering above and beyond the immediate physical sensations of pain or distress. This article surveys the evidence for animal self-consciousness and its implications for animal welfare.

[The human being from the point of view of animals or, "Who knows whether the breath of men goes upwards?" (Ecclesiastes 3:21)]. / Der Mensch in animalischer Perspektive oder "Wer weiss, ob der Odem des Menschen aufwärts fahre?" (Koh. 3,21).

The question of whether animals have souls has been asked since as early as the Old Testament. Where this is believed to be true, fiction has provided interesting models in literature: The human being as seen by animals has been a popular subject since Apuleius' 'Asinus aureus' and how man appears from the perspective of a donkey or a beetle, that is to say the perspective from below, becomes controversial. Examples may be found in all languages and centuries in Jonathan Swift, Miguel Cervantes, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Ludwig Tieck, Heinrich Heine, Viktor von Scheffel, Franz Kafka and others. Résumé at the end: How does man answer this question or his own self-questioning?

The science of animal cognition: past, present, and future.

The field of animal cognition is strongly rooted in the philosophy of mind and in the theory of evolution. Despite these strong roots, work during the most famous and active period in the history of our science-the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s-may have diverted us from the very questions that were of greatest initial interest to the comparative analysis of learning and behavior. Subsequently, the field has been in steady decline despite its increasing breadth and sophistication. Renewal of the field of animal cognition may require a return to the original questions of animal communication and intelligence using the most advanced tools of modern psychological science. Reclaiming center stage in contemporary psychology will be difficult; planning that effort with a host of strategies should enhance the chances of success.

[Fearfulness in animals--a zoological and forensic problem]. / Angst bei Tieren--ein zoologisches und ein forensisches Problem.

The recognition and the assessment of anxiety and fear in animals is discussed regarding zoological, forensic and ethical aspects. Following some definitions it is shown that fear, anxiety and other emotions are generally assessed by analogous reasoning and "Du-Evidenz". This causes scientific and forensic problems which are discussed. Towards a more adequate assessment of emotions in animals a zoological approach based on integrated ethological and stress-physiological theories and methods is proposed.

[Psychic discrepancies between animals and humans. A new light on the "autistic monad"]. / Discontinuités psychiques entre animaux et humains. Eclairage sur la "monade autistique".

Beyond obvious contrasts, cognitivist and psychoanalytical conceptions according to which austistic subjects suffer from cognitive deficiencies or from "lack of access to symbolic order", appear to meet at two points. First, they characterize autists by their lack rather than by their structure or modalities of psychological functioning. Secondly, the deficiencies they reveal--"lack of theory of mind", "absence of second order representation" or "failure of access to symbolic order"--bear witness of a particular kind of relationship the autists establish with members of their family are in relation. Comparisons between animal and human relationships allow us to specify their own characteristics: those which distinguish between "the attachment bond" (on a dyadic level) among animals and the "love bond" between humans (on a triadic level). Moreover, these comparisons allow us to specify the "autistic monad" or the kind of avoidance of all relationships autistic subjects show.

Is there teaching in nonhuman animals?

We derive a simple operational definition of teaching that distinguishes it from other forms of social learning where there is no active participation of instructors, and then discuss the constituent parts of the definition in detail. From a functional perspective, it is argued that the instructor's sensitivity to the pupil's changing skills or knowledge, and the instructor's ability to attribute mental states to others, are not necessary conditions of teaching in nonhuman animals, as assumed by previous work, because guided instruction without these prerequisites could still be favored by natural selection. A number of cases of social interaction in several orders of mammals and birds that have been interpreted as evidence of teaching are then reviewed. These cases fall into two categories: situations where offspring are provided with opportunities to practice skills ("opportunity teaching"), and instances where the behavior of young is either encouraged or punished by adults ("coaching"). Although certain taxonomic orders appear to use one form of teaching more often than the other, this may have more to do with the quality of the current data set than with inherent species-specific constraints. We suggest several directions for future research on teaching in nonhuman animals that will lead to a more thorough understanding of this poorly documented phenomenon. We argue throughout that adherence to conventional, narrow definitions of teaching, generally derived from observations of human adult-infant interactions, has caused many related but simpler phenomena in other species to go unstudied or unrecorded, and severely limits further exploration of this topic.

The importance of animal cognition in agricultural animal production systems: an overview.

To describe and then fulfill agricultural animals' needs, we must learn more about their fundamental psychological and behavioral processes. How does this animal feel? Is that animal suffering? Will we ever be able to know these things? Scientists specializing in animal cognition say that there are numerous problems but that they can be overcome. Recognition by scientists of the notion of animal awareness has been increasing in recent years, because of the work of Griffin and others. Feeling, thinking, remembering, and imagining are cognitive processes that are factors in the economic and humane production of agricultural animals. It has been observed that the animal welfare debate depends on two controversial questions: Do animals have subjective feelings? If they do, can we find indicators that reveal them? Here, indirect behavioral analysis approaches must be taken. Moreover, the linear additivity of several stressor effects on a variety of animal traits suggests that some single phenomenon is acting as a "clearinghouse" for many or all of the stresses acting on an animal at any given time, and this phenomenon might be psychological stress. Specific situations animals may encounter in agricultural production settings are discussed with respect to the animals' subjective feelings.