Queensland Brain Institute, University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland, Australia.
PLoS One. 2013 Dec 6;8(12):e82670. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0082670. eCollection 2013.
Handedness/footedness and side biases are a well-known phenomenon in many animals, including humans. However, these so-called biases have mostly been studied at the population level--individual biases have received less attention, especially with regard to consistency over different tasks. Here we investigate behavioral lateralization in 12 male Budgerigars, Melopsittacus undulatus, a social parrot inhabiting the Australian bushlands. We performed 5 types of experiments to investigate lateralization, in tasks that involved climbing onto a perch, or landing on perches arranged in various configurations. The birds displayed highly significant, individually varying biases. The bias displayed by any particular individual varied with the task, in strength as well as polarity. Analysis of the data revealed that the preferred foot used for climbing did not coincide with the foot that was used while landing. Thus, landing choices are probably not determined by foot bias. Furthermore, these individual preferences were overridden completely when a bird had to perform a task simultaneously with another bird.
用手习惯/脚习惯和侧偏是许多动物（包括人类）中众所周知的现象。然而，这些所谓的偏好在大多数情况下仅在种群水平上进行了研究，而个体偏好在不同任务中的一致性方面则受到的关注较少。在这里，我们研究了 12 只雄性虎皮鹦鹉（Melopsittacus undulatus）的行为侧化，虎皮鹦鹉是一种栖息在澳大利亚灌木林中的社会性鹦鹉。我们进行了 5 种实验来研究侧化，实验涉及爬上栖木或降落在以各种配置排列的栖木上。这些鸟类表现出高度显著的、个体差异的偏侧性。任何特定个体显示的偏侧性都随任务而变化，无论是强度还是极性。数据分析表明，用于攀爬的惯用脚与降落时使用的脚并不重合。因此，降落选择可能不是由脚偏侧性决定的。此外，当鸟类必须同时与另一只鸟执行任务时，这些个体偏好会被完全覆盖。
