Out-of-reach rewards elicit human-oriented referential communicative behaviours in family dogs but not in family pigs.
Sci Rep
; 13(1): 811, 2023 01 23.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-36690662
ABSTRACT
Human-oriented referential communication has been evidenced not only in domestic but also in some wild species, however, the importance of domestication-unrelated species' characteristics in the emergence of this capacity remains largely unexplored. One shared property of all species reported to exhibit referential communication is the efficient use of visual social signals. To assess the potential role of species-specific characteristics in the emergence of human-oriented referential communication, we compared similarly socialised companion animals from two domestic species dogs, which rely heavily on conspecific visual social signals; and pigs, which do not. We used an out-of-reach reward paradigm with three conditions both human and reward present, only human present, only reward present. Both species exhibited certain behaviours (e.g. orientation towards the human, orientation alternation between the human and the reward) more often in the human's presence. However, only dogs exhibited those behaviours more often in the simultaneous presence of the human and the reward. These results suggest similar readiness in dogs and pigs to attend to humans but also that pigs, unlike dogs, do not initiate referential communication with humans. The ability to referentially communicate with humans may not emerge in mammals, even if domesticated companion animals, that lack certain species characteristics, such as efficient intraspecific visual communication.
Texto completo:
1
Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Comunicação Animal
/
Comunicação
Limite:
Animals
/
Humans
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Sci Rep
Ano de publicação:
2023
Tipo de documento:
Article
País de afiliação:
Hungria