Santos Laurie R, Mahajan Neha, Barnes Jennifer L
Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA.
J Comp Psychol. 2005 Nov;119(4):394-403. doi: 10.1037/0735-7036.119.4.394.
The authors examined how 2 lemur species (Eulemur fulvus and Lemur catta) reason about tools. Experiment 1 allowed subjects to use 1 of 2 canes to retrieve an inaccessible food reward. Lemurs learned to solve this problem as quickly as other primates. Experiment 2 then presented subjects with novel tools differing from the originals along one featural dimension. Subjects attended more to tools' sizes than to their colors and made no distinction between tools' shapes and textures. Experiments 3 and 4 presented problems in which some of the tools' orientations had to be modified relative to the food. Subjects performed well on these problems, sometimes modifying the position of the tool. These results are discussed in light of the performance of other primates on this task.
作者研究了两种狐猴（褐狐猴和环尾狐猴）如何对工具进行推理。实验1让受试狐猴使用两根手杖中的一根来获取够不到的食物奖励。狐猴学会解决这个问题的速度与其他灵长类动物一样快。实验2随后向受试狐猴展示了在一个特征维度上与原始工具不同的新型工具。受试狐猴更多地关注工具的大小而不是颜色，并且对工具的形状和质地没有区分。实验3和实验4提出了一些问题，其中一些工具的方向必须相对于食物进行调整。受试狐猴在这些问题上表现良好，有时会调整工具的位置。根据其他灵长类动物在这项任务中的表现对这些结果进行了讨论。
