Marina Davila Ross, one of the researchers who studied the gorillas, believes that playing tag gives the gorillas a chance to work out how best to relate to others in social situations. For example, if they just tapped another gorilla they might not run away at all; but if they hit a bit harder they would run away. This suggests that the gorillas were learning where the boundaries of acceptable behaviour were – an important skill when you have to get along with each other!

So just as with human children, it may be that games like this teach gorillas important social lessons for their adult life. Not to mention having fun.

Source:

Van Leeuwen, E., Zimmermann, E. and Davila Ross, M. (2010) Responding to inequities: gorillas try to maintain their competitive advantage during play fights, Biology Letters.

We have quoted broadcaster and farmer John Humphrys before but his remark is well worth repeating because this clip shows you exactly what he’s talking about:
“They tear about the field, kicking their legs into the air …For six months they have lived in sheds, slept in stalls, stood on concrete. Now, once again, they have the grass beneath their feet. They seem, quite literally, to be full of the joy of spring. It lifts the spirits to watch them.”

Photo courtesy of Tasikoki Wildlife Rescue

We are finding out more and more about animals who use ‘tools’ in their daily lives. Animals in a group may also learn from each other and pass this information on to each other. Scientists call this ‘cultural transmission’.

The first documented case of wild orangutans making and using tools was reported from a population of orangutans in Indonesia in 1996. They used tools which they had crafted either for extracting insects or seeds to eat.

Researchers then went on to look at how tool-use varied between orangutans living in different regions. They compared the tool-use of orangutans at six different areas. It was found that the different orangutan populations behaved differently and these differences were greatest between groups living furthest apart. Orangutans who lived in larger groups and who were socially tolerant used tools more than those who were isolated.

Photo courtesy of Tasikoki Wildlife Rescue

The evidence suggested that the differences in behavior were cultural: firstly, because the extent of the differences increased with distance, and secondly, because the extent of the orangutans’ tool-use increased according the amount of social contact in their group. Social contact increases the amount of cultural transmission.

This video clip shows orangutans at a sanctuary copying behaviours they learned through observing their human counterparts. They learned how to manoeuvre a canoe, paint, wash with soap and even use a saw!

Orangutans are fascinating animals but their future is under threat. Their rainforest habitat is being cut down at an alarming rate for logging and agriculture, including plantations of palm oil, a vegetable oil widely used in food and everyday products. You may wish to choose products which do not contain palm oil. Some companies claim to use sustainably-produced palm oil.

Sources:

van Schaik C.P., Fox,E.A., Sitompul AF. (1996). Manufacture and use of tools in wild Sumatran orangutans – implications or human evolution. Naturwissenschaften 83: 186-188.

van Schaik C.P., Knott C.D., (2001) Geographic variation in tool use on Neesia fruits in orangutans. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 114:331-342

van Schaik C.P., van Noordwijk M.A., Wich, S.A. (2006) Innovation in wild Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii). Behaviour 143: 839-876

van Schaik C.P., Ancrenaz M., Borgen G., Galdikas B., Knott C.D., Singleton I., Suzuki A., Utami S.S., Merrill M. (2003). Orangutan cultures and the evolution of material culture. Science 299: 102-105

Animal welfare is a crucial issue because sentient animals are capable of experiencing emotions such as fear, pain, joy and contentment.  

Some animal scientists specialise in investigating the range of emotions that animals can feel. The findings can help support campaigns to give sentient animals the recognition that they deserve. 

Until relatively recently, some scientists thought it was impossible to scientifically study animal emotion, and anyone who did so was thought to be wrongly attributing human thoughts  and feelings to animals (anthropomorphism).  Recently scientists like Franz de Waal have paved the way for the study of animal emotion. They think it is important to acknowledge the similarities between humans and other animals.  

Researchers borrowed techniques used in human psychology to study the emotions of sheep. Generally, we think we can tell what a human is feeling from the expression on their face – researchers therefore looked for similar clues in the position of the sheep’s ears. 

Surprises, boredom and predictability all affected the ears positions of the sheep. If the sheep had certain expectations of what was going to happen next, or a sense of control over the situation, this could affect their reactions. They were found to experience fear, anger, rage, despair, boredom, disgust and happiness.

This is very similar to humans, and the researchers believe it’s safe to assume that sheep do not only show emotions but also ‘feel’ them too.   

Source

Veissier, I., Boissy, A., Desire, L., Greiveldinger, L. (2009) Animals’ emotions: studies in sheep using appraisal theories. Animal Welfare: 18, pp 347-354.

Culture and tradition are two seemingly unlikely words to use when talking about rat behaviour but that is exactly what we are going to do in this blog post.

Many people dislike rats, regarding them as vermin and, as such, we wage war on them every day.This persecution has provided a surprising opportunity for another fascinating insight into the lives of sentient animals.

Animals in a group may learn from each other and pass this information on from one generation to the next –  scientists call this ‘cultural transmission’.  However, the behaviour they learn may not necessarily be picked up by a different group of the same species. There are many examples of rats doing just that!

We try to exterminate rats using poisons such as warfarin which makes them bleed to death. But, you can’t fool a rat! In some parts of England rats became impossible to exterminate even with new sophisticated poisons because they learn what is safe to eat by picking up cues from other rats and the environment.

Rats use each other as taste testers, eating food that familiar rats have eaten and avoiding foods that made them sick.  They must know another rat very well and spend time with them to learn that food should be avoided. If a stranger rat is severely ill, a rat will still eat the food because they don’t know them and so can’t pick up on their subtle cues.

In one experiment on a group of wild rats, scientists first observed the rats regularly eating two types of food (X and Y). They then poisoned food X with a solution that made the rats temporarily ill but did not kill them.  The entire colony gave up eating food X even when it was no longer poisoned and this behaviour continued for many generations, long after the rats who were originally poisoned were gone. It is this ability to learn from each other and pass this knowledge on to young rats which keeps them alive and thriving in the face of our numerous attempts at ‘pest’ control.

In another example of cultural transmission in rats, Joseph Terkel found a unique group of rats in Israel who only ate pine cone seeds and he wanted to see if this behaviour was culturally transmitted. The rats were very skilled at stripping the pine cones of their seeds with a  “no fuss, no waste” technique.

When he bred some of these rats, he found that those who had never been shown the special technique of opening pine cones were unable to survive on them because they used too much energy opening them up.  He knew that this behaviour wasn’t genetic because rat pups born to mothers who could strip pine cones effectively were swopped with the pups of mothers who couldn’t.  He found that only the pups that were raised by a mother who knew the pine cone stripping technique learned how to do it.   So the pine cone eating technique was culturally passed from one generation to the next, just as in human society.

Sources:

1. Terkel, Joseph. Cultural Transmission of Feeding Behavior in the Black Rat (Rattus rattus). Social Learning in Animals: The Roots of Culture. Ed. Cecelia M. Heyes and Bennett G. Galef. San Diego: Academic P, 1996. 17-48.
2. Dawkins, M.S. (1998) Through Our Eyes Only. Oxford University Press. Pp 43-52.

Note:

Compassion in World Farming is opposed to any animal experimentation that causes pain or suffering to animals. However, where such experiments increase our understanding of animal sentience, we will report them in the long term interest of all animals.

In past experiments these crows have figured out how to use tools, such as hooks to retrieve food, and have even made tools by bending pieces of metal when ready-made hooks weren’t available. But in a recent study, the crows have solved a more complicated puzzle where they had to use a series of tools in the correct order.

In this test, they were presented with four horizontal transparent tubes. One tube contained the prize – a treat that was visible to the crow but completely out of reach. The other tubes contained hooked sticks of increasing length – which were also out of reach. One small hooked stick lay in the test area, with which the the crow could make a start on the tricky puzzle of getting to the treat.

Absolutely independently the crow worked out that she needed to use the smallest tool to extract the medium-size one, then the medium-size one to extract the longest tool, which she was finally able to use to reach the treat.

Now researchers at the University of Oxford have observed New Caledonian Crows using tools in their natural environment. The crows use tools for many purposes such as fishing out beetle larvae from dead wood. It has even been shown that they use tools more often than their beaks for some tasks. Like their laboratory counterparts, wild crows appear to be able to match the right tool to the job using longer tools for deeper holes and preferring to select leaf stems over twigs.  Adult crows were more adept at using tools, suggesting they have the ability to learn and to improve their techniques over time.

Sources

1.Bluff, L.A., Troscianko, A., Weir, A.S., Kacelnik, A., Rutz, C. (2010)  Tool use by wild New Caledonian crows at natural foraging sites. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2009.1953

2. Behavioural Ecology Research Group at Oxford University

Armed with a snowball

For our special Christmas day post, we found a rather lovely fact about Japanese Macaque monkeys….

Young Macaques have been seen to make and throw snowballs, just like people do! Scientists could find no reason why they would do this, other than simply because it is fun!

Not only that, but back in the 1960s, these Japanese Macaques saw their human counterparts bathing in hot springs, and must have decided that this was a great idea. In the freezing temperatures they endure, a hot tub seems to be a relaxing and enjoyable social occasion.

Just another little similarity between different species – it seems many like to have fun, whether we have fur, feathers or plain old human clothes…

Wishing you a Compassionate Christmas!

Sources:

Uhlenbrook, C. (2008) Animal life the definitive visual guide to animals and their behaviour, Dorling Kindersley, London.
Primate Info Net (2009) [accessed 24 December 09)
BBC Worldwide, Monkeys Relaxing

The humpback whale was on the migratory route around the California coast when she became terribly entangled in crab trap lines. Her life was at great risk.
She was tangled up in weighted ropes up to 240 feet long around her tail, her flipper and even in her mouth. The ropes were so tight they cut into her blubber and caused visible wounds. She was completely helpless  and the weight of the traps was causing her to struggle to keep her blow hole out of the sea.

A rescue team of divers went out to her but she was in such a state  they were  unsure that they stood any chance of saving her. They were at risk themselves, as the flick of a humpback’s tail can kill a human.

But they reported that as they worked to free the unfortunate creature, she did not struggle at all and they were aware of her eyes simply following them around as they worked.

Thankfully, the rescuers were successful but must have been astonished by the whale’s heartwarming response. When she felt herself come free, she began to swim around in circles and then went up to each diver one by one and nudged them. One of the rescuers is reported as saying: “It seemed kind of affectionate, like a dog that’s happy to see you … I never felt threatened. It was an amazing, unbelievable experience.”

Her response makes us think about the common ground that humans can have with animals who might appear so very different from us. A whale-watching expert who helped co-ordinate the rescue is quoted as saying: “You hate to anthropomorphize too much  but the whale was doing little dives and the guys were rubbing shoulders with it … I don’t know for sure what it was thinking, but it’s something that I will always remember. It was just too cool.”

An interesting point about our understanding of these large sea mammals was made by Gould and Gould in their book ‘The Animal Mind’. They suggest that perhaps we have been quicker to appreciate the intelligence and sentience of primates as they are so much more similar to us in their gestures and experiences, and therefore easier for us to read. We may have been slower to understand the complexity and richness of underwater creatures simply because they appear to be so very different to us.

Humpback Whale

Sources:
San Francisco Chronice (14/12/05). Daring rescue of whale off Farallones. Accessed 17/12/09.

Gould, J. L. and Gould, C. G. (1994) The Animal Mind. Scientific American Library, New York.

Credit: Roger Steene

The veined octopus is a truly amazing underwater character. Researchers in Melbourne have discovered that they get up to some surprising antics – using coconut shells.

These octopi collect coconut shells discarded by their human neighbours, gather them under their body and then carry them and walk, rather awkwardly, for up to 20m at a time. The scientists dubbed this as ‘stilt-walking’ due to the unusual way the octopus has to use its legs whilst carrying the shells.

The octopus goes to this considerable effort so he or she has portable ‘armour’. If suddenly under threat the octopus could create instant camouflage and protection by climbing in between two coconut halves.

This is really significant, as use of tools by animals is said to be a sign of higher mental functioning, as is planning for the future. Some people used to believe that only humans had such advanced abilities, but we increasingly find that other animals have so many unsuspected abilities – including a mind of their own. (see Rooks, Pigs).

Here is another shining example of amazing animals and a valuable reminder that animals can have many hidden abilities that we are yet to notice and appreciate.

Watch original video footage here.

ITN coverage:

Source: Finn, J. K., Treganza, T. and Norman, M. D. (2009) Defensive tool use in a coconut – carrying octopus, Current Biology, 19 (23): R1069-R1070.

Julian K. Finn^{1, 2,} , Tom Tregenza^3, and Mark D. Norman¹

Animal welfare consultant Heather Pickett has written a special article for our animal sentience pages. It’s a fascinating  read  about  horses’ behaviour, cognitive abilities (such as ‘thinking’) and welfare needs.  Horses have remarkably complex social lives; with membership of a herd being of ultimate importance to them and sometimes roaming for up to 80km in one day. They are great diplomats, able to resolve many conflicts in order to keep the herd together.

Self reflection. Copyright Compassion/ Ed Posposil

Mares often form lifetime relationships, spending most of their time together. Their foals often become good friends too as a result. They have remarkable memory skills and have even been shown to understand that a 3-D image can be shown in a photograph. For example, horses had been trained to have a ‘favourite’ object (for example a soft toy or a frisbee), using treats as positive reinforcement. Then they were shown photos of a range of things, including their ‘favoured toy’, and more often than not they would choose the photo of that toy. In a similar experiment (Stone 2009), horses were found to be able to tell the difference between photos of people, even identical twins!

Domesticated horses are often kept stabled alone and fed on concentrated food that is eaten quickly, rather than grazing the whole day as they would do in more natural conditions. These factors sometimes lead to destructive behaviours such as weaving, biting the stable doors and pacing. The occurrence of these unnatural behaviours illustrates that horses, just like many other animals, need an environment that more closely fits their needs and fully takes into account their sentience and intelligence.

Download the full article Pickett, H. (2009) ‘Horses: Their Behaviour, Mental Abilities and Welfare’. animalsentience.com
Shorter version also available

Reference: Stone, S. M. (2009) Human facial discrimination in horses: can they tell us apart?  Animal Cognition, Online first.