Comparative Psych Exam 2

Different components of cognition (including experimental evidence) (look at pic)

Cognition-

Different components of cognition (including experimental evidence) (look at pic)

Cognition-

The ability of an animal to separate itself from the moment in which it is living contemplate the past predict the future and act accordingly 

• It involves intelligence, numeric abilities, language, problem solving, etc 

• Includes all forms of knowing awareness (perceiving, conceiving, imagining, problem solving)  

• How to measure internal mental states?  

• Imaging (PET, MRI, etc)  

• Drawback – interpretation when comparing  

• Measure behavioral outcomes (observations or direct experimentation)  

• Theory of mind- and what it allows the animal to do

• the capacity to attribute mental states to others  

• What does this allow an animal to do? -> communication, mating (seeing if a male or female is into you), important to social hierarchies and dominance hierarchy   

• The mind body problem- the physical mechanical operations of the brain and how does it come to be what we see today 

• Mirror Self- Recognition Task  

• If organism can use the mirror to access something on itself it can’t normally see (like look inside of its ear) then they are overcoming the mind body task  

• Put a mark of red on an animal and see if they are looking and exploring it in the mirror  

• The elephants are able to pass it  

• The dot test is done with apes and birds and it works just like in a kid  

  • People debate about what this means 

• Gaze Following  

• Deals with understanding knowledge states: if someone is looking over there then maybe it is worth looking there too to see what he is looking at 

• Did a study with a bunch of diff monkeys and test this sort of thing  

• In the condition where the test monkey could see that the test monkey was looking at something then they followed his gaze  

• Could just be classical or operant conditioning at play here  

• If the animal can use the gaze following to understand knowledge states  

• Brauer study dominant and subordinate study: had a testing arena when they had treats in the middle of the 2: one treat the dominant couldn't see the other it could: looking at where the subordinate goes-> goes to the one the dominant one can't see shows knowledge states  

• Santos monkey picks the quiet box deals with attributing knowledge states  

• Evidence of them using knowledge states 

• Deception  

• Can animals be deceptive? What conditions would be necessary for us to consider a behavior actively deceptive?  

• Yes: doing a behavior the dogs in order to trick the other dogs so that way it can get a treat  

• active deception in primates 

• Wheeler (2009) :Put food on a platform: if they find a feeder that is full of food by themseleves then they send out fake alarm calls to get everyone else away 

• Van Elsakeret al. (2000)  :All females outrank men: capuncin monkeys: the males hid the treats from the females and then get them out later when girl gone to eat 

• le Roux et al. (2015) :When mating both males and females give out calls: when lower ranked mates mate above their rank then they are silent so they don't get yelled at for going above their rank  

• Empathy  

• What is empathy and how should we define it? 

• The ability to project or feel the emotions of another animal  

• Usually empathy motivates helping  

• We think the basis for empathy is mimicry  

• Emotional contagion -> 1 baby starts crying then all the other animals starts crying  

  • Mirror neurons- fire when you perform an action and when you see someone else perform an action  

• Are learning and memory cognition?  

• In some ways yes and some ways no 

• Does it depend on the type of memory? 

• Semantic- memory for random facts and things (ehh) 

• Procedural – muscle memory; learning to perform a physical task  

  • Episodic – your personal autobiographically memories (more cognitively different) 

• Time place learning  

• The ability to associate a reward or behavioral consequence with a specific location and time, and use that information to return to the location at the specified time in the future  

• When you feed a pet in the kitchen at a certain time -> they know the time and beg to be fed  

  • Ex the tropical bees and sugar water: they show up 20 min before the time and they stay and drink it; no sugar water then they show up and then quickly leave  

• Cognitive Maps  

• A mental representation of an animal's landscape used for calculating optimal routes  

• Does it demonstrate cognitive ability?  

• Hard to say: maybe some are making it in a complex map but maybe some are classically conditioned to learn where to go  

• Problem Solving- Tool Use  

• Tool use is the exertion of control over a freely manipulable external object (the tool) with the goal of (1) altering the physical properties of another object, substance, surface or medium (the target, which may be the tool user or another organism) via a dynamic mechanical interaction, or (2) mediating the flow of information between the tool user and the environment or other organisms in the environment. (NOT AN EXAM Q) 

  • Evidence of planning ahead in primates for testing like bringing certain rocks to help smash nuts  

• Counting  

• Various levels of difficulty  

• Easy for them to pick between more vs less then  

• Does seem to be some counting ability  

• Used a violation of expectation  

• Animals look at something longer if they find it surprising or interesting  

• They do a magic show for the animal  

  • Put egg plants behind a curtain and show them putting one behind and either secretly add or take 1 away and the animals stare longer at the things that are shocking (the ones that don't have the correct number of eggplants) 

do animals understand probabilities

• Yes but with the same cognitive biases that humans have  

  • Some evidence that animals can work in relative terms  

Factors influencing animal intelligence  

what makes a good test

Intelligence- some combo of quickness to learn, to remember, and solve problems  

• Good test 

• Replicability Should get the same results every time you take it  

• Validity is it actually measuring what you are reporting it to measure  

• It should have good predictive value it should be able to predict other things well  

• In animal sense 

• Must be ecologically valid: must be a task the animal can perform and have a evolutionary relevance to the species  

• Ex making a giraffe like a predator is stupid 

garner’s theory of multiple intelligence

can be bad at 1 but good at something else  

• Evolutionary Co-option in communication   

• Evolutionary Co-option  and what it happens through

• Co-option is the evolutionary adoption of something the animal already does or has for use in a diff form (ex communication) 

• Happens through  

• Ritualization – to give something meaning 

  The intent of the signal must be the same every time  

• Stereotyping- reduction of variation: boil it down till no variation left  

• Redundancy- communicating through more than 1 means  :Multiple signals trying to get the point across :Reinforces the message helping to eliminate confusion  :Ex dogs will urinate and scratch to mark their territory  

• Communication strategy that has ritualization stereotyping and redundancy  

• Ex honey bee waggle dance 

Different communication modalities (including benefits and drawbacks) 

• Chemical Signals (Taste and Smell)

 

• Pheromones- chemical signals used in transmitting information WITHIN a species  

• Carbon based chains  

• Vary in size and polarity  

• Small and less polar: likely to be better as airborne signal and break down rapidly : more volatile  

• Ex sex attractants that moths put out  

• Larger and more polar: "sticky" more H bonds less volatile/ evaporate slower : stick around longer  

• Ex good for territory marking  

• Chemical signals work well in all environments, can linger, can travel far distances 

• One of the first systems to evolve  

• What are the advantages and disadvantages?  

• Advantages  

• Can be good for a signal to be long lasting  

• Works well in all environments can work anywhere  

• Very little chemical noise  

• Disadvantage  

• Can be bad to be long lasting -> lead to eavesdropping  

• Almost no control over its dispersal  

• Its slow acting  

• Chemical signals must remain simple by the nature of its chemical structure 

• Tactile Signals  

• Touching is efficient; but requires close proximity (speedy but only if you are nearby) 

• Functionally no "noise" in this system  

• Can happen in most environments: light or dark 

  • Both affiliative (hi we are friends I'll help you out ex grooming) and aggressive  (someone hurting you) 

• Audible Signals  

• Sound is vibration through a medium  

• Energy required to make the vibrations is medium dependent  

• Drawbacks: Speed is highly medium dependent : Dissipation: further it has to travel the more energy it loses: a drawback to sound: loose its loudness  : Can get absorbed by other sources too lowering the intensity  

• Benefits: work well in any context: not subject to obstacles like being behind someone  

• Nonlinearity: relationship between pitch and volume is not linear and sort of not 1 to 1 relationship  

• Body size limits sound amplitude  

• Largest animals tend to the loudest one  

• Use low-frequency sounds  

• Pitch and amplitude  

• Sound Production – 4 common mechanisms  

• 1. Vibrating a drum – like membrane  

• 2. Stridulating a file and scraper  :Think of violin ex in crickets: equipped with a  scraper then an adj body part has a file like structure :Both the file and the scraper together –stridulatory organ  Pitch altered by how fast you move the structures over one another  

• 3. Vibrating a membrane in air flow  :Human vocal chords  :Reed in a clarinet  

• 4. Hitting a substrate  :Using the environment to create the noise  :Ex beavers using their tails to make noise on water  

• Infrasound  

• Below what humans can  

• Orcas and elephants  

• Things id group identity  

  • Sex age 

• Ultrasound 

• Problems that must be overcome to use it  

• High frequency =short wavelength 

• High freq =less energy  

• 2 main uses:  

• Bats, rats, mice, and moths = mating and parenting communication  

• Echolocation  

• Advantages  using ultrasound  

• Don't require a lot of energy  

• Bc of short wavelength much mor efficient of bouncing back  

  • Signals dissipate quickly which is goof for this type of location  

• Auditory "Noise"  

• Huge problem in the environment  

• How can we get around this strategies:   

• Restrict range of production and perception  

• Neural ability to sort through both noise and signal  

• Use in specific contexts  

• Modern problem: anthropogenic noise (human drived noise)   

• Visual Signals  

• Pros: move quickly, cheap to produce  

• Cons: require light, easily blocked, don't linger  

• 3 main categories:  

• Pattern on animals surface (including color)  

• Movement of animals body  

  • Creation of own light source (bioluminescence) 

• Producing Color Signals 

• •Pigments- chemicals with c bound structures: either just c or c and n 

• Longer the chain darker the pigment generally   

• Pterins (whites, yellows, reds)  

• Quinones (yellows, reds, oranges)  

•  Malanins(yellowish-brown, brown, black) 

•  Carotenoids (yellows, oranges, reds) 

• Blue greens are not as common as red oranges and browns  

• These are almost exclusively seen in birds  

• There are structure that can create blues as opposed to a pigment  

• The structure itself absorbs all other colors and reflects back blue  

• Visual noise- any sort of no intended movement or color 

• What is a multimodal signal?  

• A multimodal signal is composed using 2 or more signaling modalities  

• Ex watching a movie (hearing and sight) 

• Ex: honey bee waggle dance 

• Involves visual and auditory cues  

• 3 components to the signal 

• The angle (tells the degree from the sun) 

• The amount of time it does this dance indicates the distance  

  • The quality (if it is of good quality it will wiggle harder and faster) 

•  Factors in honest signaling   

• Honest Signaling  

• Signals that enhance survival or reproduction will be favored  

• What happens if a signal isn't honest  

• Someone could die/get punished: whether it is the false signlaer or the person getting the false signal (they die) 

• Can lead to an evolutionary arms race  

• Cheetah and the gazella cheetah gets faster so gazella gets faster and this goes on and on  

• Recall Theory of Mind  

• Ex of active deceit in primates: the monkeys gave off false signal of predators so it can hog all of the food  

• Costly Signals=Honest Signals 

• The handicap principle states that if only high quality males can exhibit a costly trait and survive, then that trait is an indicator to females of good genes. 

• Ex peacock tail feather 

• More necessary when goals of signaler and receiver are not aligned 

• If goals aligned then there is no reason deceive 

• Navigation vs. Orientation and the factors necessary to successfully accomplish both  

• navigation

• Navigational- moving with a specific destination  

• In order to navigate need 2 pieces of info  

• need to know where you currently are  

• Need to know how to get where you wanna go  

• guided movement from 1 location to another   but without a specific goal in mind  

• Navigation is guided movement from one location to another, typically using a compass or landmarks. 

• To be able to navigate, an organism needs to know at least two things: its current location and the location of its goal. Thus, navigation is not the same as simply moving in a randomly chosen direction, even if that movement is in a straight line 

• Use environmental clues like landmarks  

orientation

• Orientation – knowing the direction of where you are and knowing the direction in which you need to go: not goal directed/not super helpful 

• Orientation is a word that indicates movement in a given direction— classically, movement in a compass direction, although a variety of stimuli that have nothing to do with compass direction may also elicit orientation 

• Movement in a given direction  

• Navigation vs orientation ex  

• If an orienting animal is moving north and it is displaced to the east, it will start from its new location and continue to move due north. If a navigating animal is moving north and is displaced to the east, it will adjust its direction of movement toward the northwest and correct its path, moving to the northwest; in so doing, it will reach the same destination that it had prior to being displaced 

Different types of movement   

• Idiothetic vs allothetic  

• Idiothetic info- internal to the animal: internally cued info  

• Ex path integration and homing  

• Allothetic info: info that is coming externally: environmental cues  

• Ex: light chemicals smells etc  

• Direct vs extrapolated search  

  •   

• Direct: using the goal itself as a navigational cue  

• Depends on things such as communication and interference  

• Extrapolated: figuring something out within the midst of a diff signals in an environment  

• Ex when there is a lot of noise during communication you must ignore the noise and focus on the communication

• Most common way of locating the source: 

• Triangulation  

  • Measuring the  intensity of a stimulus from 2 diff locations a combo of space and/or time  

• Simultaneous vs sequential  

• Ex of simultaneous: the human auditory system  

  • Sequential: doing it all sequential: closing eyes and moving toward the sound and repeating this until you are done  

• Stereopsis:

• the use of 2 simultaneous sensory inputs: ex the 2 eyes of humans taking in info from both sides  

• Differential importance based off of the life style of the animal  

• More forward facing the animals eyes are the better the stereopsis they have and better depth perception  

• Prey animals move eyes to the side of there head so they can have better peripheral vision: allows them to better see predators  

• A way to componsate a=would just be to constantly swivel head 

• Kineses v Taxes 

• Kineses- undirected search: doesn't have the ability to integrate info for multiple sources but can change: ok if simple species in a simple environment  

  Taxes- changes in directions of movement that are goal oriented with respect to the stimulus source  

• Orthokinesis-

• 1 direction movement but not goal directed  

• Klinokinesis-

• turning movement kinesis but not goal directed 

• Positive taxes-

• draws the animal in  

• Ex positive phototaxis- movement toward light  

• Negative taxes-

• moves the animal away 

• Ex negative aminotaxis- movement away from the wind  

• Klinotaxis-

• turning that is oriented towards a stimulus  

• Tropotaxis-

• moving towards the average of 2 goals: getting 2 stimuli and moving toward the average of the 2  

• Telotaxis-

• getting 2 sources of info but choosing 1 of them and moving towards it  

• Ex seeign 2 lights and deciding to move towards the brighter one  

• Counterturning  

• When you are forced to move around and object turning in the direction you were previously oriented in  

• A simple solution for movement around objects  

  • Ex ant in a t maze force him to turn and then he turns in the direction he is trying to go in  

• Landmarks ( a singular thing) 

• Using features of the landscape for orientation  

• Ex tinbergen and the burrowing wasps and how they use landmarks to orient themselves (using pinecone orientations as a landmark)  

• Name implies a visual landmark but they don't have to be visual: a lot of species use other things  

• What other cues could be landmarks?  

• Chemicals or smell 

• How do animals learn the landscape?  

• Familiarity, intensity/uniqueness, learning from parents, imprinting  

• Snapshot Orientation:  

• The animal remembers the visual scene of the landscape   

• Also can deal with size: relative size of a landmark I need to move closer or farther  

  • First confirmed with honeybees  

• Path Integration 

• The ability to travel to several locations and return directly to point of origin  

• Simplistic in its mechanics all the animal must do is keep track of the vectors  

  • A lot of animals can do this in the absence of landmarks or cues  

• Compass Orientation  

• It appears as if the sun and the moon move around the earth  

• 2 points of reference the north star and south star are constant orientation points  

• Animals can learn to integrate distances between them  

• Can be messed up if shift them off the daylight in the artificial environments 

  • Long traveling animals can use magnetic cues to help them determine  

• Multimodality

• - more pieces of info you have the more accurately you can calculate this info  

• Odometers  

• Any physiological or mechanical device that allows measurement of distance traveled 

• Types:  

• Optic/visual flow- peripheral info that allows you to tell you how fast you are going: speed at which you are going: optic flow ex with pick the shape and color: good for animals with good visual systems 

• Effort tracker- know how much energy you are outputting and allowing you to tell the distance   

• Step counting -  

• Ex study with short legs long legs or normal: either made the ants shorter or taller after they find food source  

  • Hypothesis over shoot or undershoot: animals know how far tongo based on stride length  

• Cognitive Map  

• An “internally visualized” landscape  

•  Difficult to distinguish between  this, landmarking, and path integration  

• "that's the only way I know how to get there" 

• Study with pigeons feed them and then take them to a new place  

• Fed controls go to rooster site to mate and others go home  

• Homing-

• Repeatedly returning to a central place (nest, territory) 

• Often after relatively shorter, localized movements  

• Distinguished from migration 

• Homed animals are bound  

• Search may make simple "tools" difficult if not impossible  

• Have to rely on more complex mind things: path integration etc  

• Rely on a hierarchy of environmental cues  

  • One of most important pieces of info = distance  

• Search styles  

• Random or undirected search-> helpful to start but after a while not very helpful  

•  grid search-> covering a number of turns, used for a shorter more concentrated area  

  • Straight line search -> covers a larger area 

• Dispersal and migration, including examples and theories explaining them  

• Migration  

• Movements of animal populations between seasonally appropriate habitats,  

•  can occur between any two habitats  

• can occur more frequently than annual (usually winter vs summer but can be more than that) 

• Can be inherrited genetically, or it can be learned  

•  Differs from dispersal (discussed next) in that return is expected  

•  Also must know the route  

• Key info: distance & direction 

• Odometers for distance  

• And for direction any compass and orientation activities  

• Bird Migration  

• Most understood/studied  

• Twice yearly occurrence –closely linked to circ annual rhythm  

• Photoperiod  

•  Key factors:  

•  Fat deposition -> store a ton of energy  

• Restlessness  

• Both of these things are hormonally regulated  

• Some species fly nonstop 

• Stopovers- some need to stop and rest for a bit and fatten themselves up before going on : these places called stopovers 

• Lot of song birds fly at night even tho active during day why?  

• To avoid predators  

  • To save energy-> no have to use energy to cool them down 

• Salmon Migration  

• Rare fish that changes from freshwater to saltwater and back!  

• How do they find their way back to natal stream?  

• Adults first need to find the coast  

• Cues used: sun geomagnetic, temperature, currents  

•  To find natal stream: must have cues from early life (olfaction) 

• That is a thing they learn early in life  

  • Trying to smell their way back to the stream they were born in  

• The Ungulates 

  •  vs monarch migration

• Purely learned from year to year  

• From parent to offspring  

• The Incredible Monarch Migration 

  • Purely genetic: since they no meet previous generation 

• Dispersal  

• The process of leaving the natal area and finding a new territory or home range  

• Climate change can be affecting  

• Intended to be 1 way  

• Risky why? -> no guarantee that you can find somewhere just as good as where you are now  

  • One of most morbid periods in an animals life  

• Who disperses?  

• Offspring vs parents: Usually it is offspring  

• Hormonal changes help tell it it is time to leave  

• Females succeed more than males bc males are happy to accept new mating partners  

• Honey bees are the opposite  

• The offspring get to stay and the queen leaves 

• Males vs females: in mammals males in birds females  

• Usually in mammals a male must go off and make own herd etc  

  • In birds male hold territory so female must find male who wanna be with 

• Why Disperse? 

• Competition :If the pop density too great might be good to go to a new place and get more resources  

• Avoiding competition :Especially want to avoid competing against own kin so genes are successful  

• Inbreeding avoidance  

• Also why 1 sex does the dispersal  

• Infanticide avoidance :If pop density to high one way to decrease it is to kill off the offspring, so to prevent children from being murdered move away  

• Forming new colonies 

3 Different trophic types and adaptions for their success  

• Herbivory :Plant eaters 

• carnivores: meat eaters

  • Saprophagy  :Scavengers/ things that eat dead organic matter 

2 types of herbivory and the adv and dis

• Browsers 

• Eat leaves bark and stems from plants  

• Eat things from higher up/not on the ground  

• Ex giraffe  

• Grazers  

• Eat grass or other things that are at ground level  

• Ex zebra  

• Browsers might have a slight adv bc that stuff is around year round even if snow covers grass 

• But for browsers the areas they are eating are higher in cellulose content and hard to digest and browsing type plants have more plant defense mechanisms  

• Grazers lower cellulose content and less plant defense mechanisms  

• Behavioral and gut adaptations  

• eat fruit when can get it but mostly eat leaves  

• Leaves high in cellulose 

• Only leave eaters longer digestive tract and they move slowly  

• Only fruit eats shorter digestive tract move faster and smarter 

• Smarter bc more sugar and they must remember where the fruit is leads to more intellectual adaptation  

• Carnivory  

• Meat eaters  

Sit and Wait Predation  

• Wait in hiding for a prey to wander by, rather than chasing it down 

• Advantages: 

• Conserve a lot of energy  

• Disadvantage 

• No idea when what kind and how many prey items wander into your path  

• How can it increase success?  

• Sit in an area where the prey areas go so that way they come by  

• Any lures 

• Anglur fish that dangles the little light  

• Cooperative Hunting  

• Groups of socially bonded animals working together to achieve a goal (obtaining prey)  

• What conditions are necessary for this to occur?  

• Need to be able to communicate with each other  

• Need to know what is going on in the heads of everyone else  

  • Need to live in an area where they can be together 

• Saprophagy  

• Scavengers/ things that eat dead organic matter 

• Feeding on dead or decaying material  

• Results in a scramble  

• Advantages:  

• Don't have to overcome and animals defenses  

• Don't have to stalk them hunt them chase them down and kill them  

• Disadvantages:  

• Usually results in a scramble competition  

• Whoever is the fastest at eating and digesting it get the most food  

• Whoever gets there first gets most but then more comp comes  

• Can result in dangerous situations  

• Fights between predators  

• Microscopic competition  

• Could result in toxic outputs that makes the larger animal sick: might not be good to eat 

• Optimal Foraging Theory (OFT) 

• What is the best way for an animal to act 

• Simple cost benefit analysis  

• Should be maximizing benefits and minimizing constraints  

• Benefits- carbs and stuff 

• Constraints – the energy it takes to get the food  

• Trying to figure out the point at which you switch behavior  

• Costs linear  

• Benefits co linear (like a curve upward)  

• Trying to model when an animal will continue something or switch  

• OFT predicts behaviors that maximize fitness 

• Optimal foraging theory assumes  

• Natural selection has favored feeding behaviors that maximize fitness  

• Fitness while feeding increases with energy intake rate  

  • Optimal behavior is the behavior that maximizes fitness 

• Optimal diet model  and what it assumes

• The diet model assumes  

• Foragers maximize fitness by maximizing energy intake rate  

• Food items are encountered one at a time in proportion to their abundance (can't have multiple food items encountered at once) 

• Food items  can be ranked by their profitability  

• Profitability = energy /handling time 

• Handling time= time to manipulate item prior to consumption  

• Anything greater than 1 Is good you get more energy than you expend  

• 1 you break even  

• Less than 1 is not worth it you expend more energy than its worth 

  • Average energy intake rate/item = (average energy obtained/item)/ ( avergae search time/item + avergae handling time/item) 

oft in crows ex

• Methods in crows 

• Northwestern crows (Corvus caurinus)  

• Recorded the size of clams that were eaten and the size of clams picked up but not eaten (rejected)  

• Measured handling times of differently size clams  

• Measured energy content of differently size clams 

• Results:  

• Clams > 30 mm were almost always eaten  

• Clams < 28 mm were almost always rejected    

• Seemed like 29 mm was the turning point at that point it seemed to be worth it  

• Conclusion: Observed crow diets are similar to the diet predicted by the optimal diet model 

• Marginal Value Theorem  

• The optimal patch use model assumes:  

• Foragers attempt to maximize energy intake rate  

• All patches are identical  

• Travel time between patches is constant  

• The instantaneous harvest rate declines as a forager depletes a patch: the forager experiences diminishing returns in each patch  

• The optimal patch use model predicts the optimal time to spend exploiting each patch  

• The main thing that determines it is travel time between the patches  

• A long travel time: stay in the patch you are at  

• A short travel time: move around a lot  

• Real life things to consider 

• Presence of predators -> in the patch and traveling between them  

• Missed opportunity cost  

• How much is it costing you to not switch diets etc 

• Competition with others in the patch