Huber Ludwig, Gajdon Gyula K
Department for Behavior, Neurobiology and Cognition, University of Vienna, Althanstrasse 14, 1090, Vienna, Austria.
Anim Cogn. 2006 Oct;9(4):295-305. doi: 10.1007/s10071-006-0033-8. Epub 2006 Aug 15.
The ability to act on information flexibly is one of the cornerstones of intelligent behavior. As particularly informative example, tool-oriented behavior has been investigated to determine to which extent nonhuman animals understand means-end relations, object affordances, and have specific motor skills. Even planning with foresight, goal-directed problem solving and immediate causal inference have been a focus of research. However, these cognitive abilities may not be restricted to tool-using animals but may be found also in animals that show high levels of curiosity, object exploration and manipulation, and extractive foraging behavior. The kea, a New Zealand parrot, is a particularly good example. We here review findings from laboratory experiments and field observations of keas revealing surprising cognitive capacities in the physical domain. In an experiment with captive keas, the success rate of individuals that were allowed to observe a trained conspecific was significantly higher than that of naive control subjects due to their acquisition of some functional understanding of the task through observation. In a further experiment using the string-pulling task, a well-probed test for means-end comprehension, we found the keas finding an immediate solution that could not be improved upon in nine further trials. We interpreted their performance as insightful in the sense of being sensitive of the relevant functional properties of the task and thereby producing a new adaptive response without trial-and-error learning. Together, these findings contribute to the ongoing debate on the distribution of higher cognitive skills in the animal kingdom by showing high levels of sensorimotor intelligence in animals that do not use tools. In conclusion, we suggest that the 'Technical intelligence hypothesis' (Byrne, Machiavellian intelligence II: extensions and evaluations, pp 289-211, 1997), which has been proposed to explain the origin of the ape/monkey grade-shift in intelligence by a selection pressure upon an increased efficiency in foraging behavior, should be extended, that is, applied to some birds as well.
灵活运用信息的能力是智能行为的基石之一。作为一个特别具有启发性的例子，针对以工具为导向的行为展开了研究，以确定非人类动物在何种程度上理解手段 - 目的关系、物体的可供性，以及是否具备特定的运动技能。甚至具有前瞻性的规划、目标导向的问题解决和即时因果推理也一直是研究的重点。然而，这些认知能力可能并不局限于使用工具的动物，在表现出高度好奇心、物体探索与操作以及掠夺性觅食行为的动物中也可能存在。新西兰鹦鹉啄羊鹦鹉就是一个特别好的例子。我们在此回顾了对啄羊鹦鹉的实验室实验和野外观察结果，这些结果揭示了它们在物理领域令人惊讶的认知能力。在一项针对圈养啄羊鹦鹉的实验中，由于通过观察获得了对任务的一些功能性理解，允许观察经过训练的同种个体的鹦鹉的成功率显著高于未经训练的对照个体。在另一项使用拉绳任务（一种用于测试手段 - 目的理解的成熟测试）的实验中，我们发现啄羊鹦鹉能立即找到解决方案，并且在后续的九次试验中都无法对其进行改进。我们将它们的表现解释为具有洞察力，即对任务的相关功能特性敏感，从而在没有试错学习的情况下产生新的适应性反应。总之，这些发现通过展示非工具使用动物的高水平感觉运动智能，为动物王国中高级认知技能分布的持续辩论做出了贡献。我们建议，为了解释猿猴/猴子智力等级转变的起源而提出的“技术智能假说”（伯恩，《马基雅维利式智力II：扩展与评估》，第289 - 211页，1997年）应予以扩展，也就是说，也应用于一些鸟类。
