College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Penryn Campus, Penryn, Cornwall, TR10 9FE, UK.
Sci Rep. 2019 Apr 30;9(1):6710. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-43247-x.
According to the social intelligence hypothesis, understanding the challenges faced by social animals is key to understanding the evolution of cognition. In structured social groups, recognising the relationships of others is often important for predicting the outcomes of interactions. Third-party relationship recognition has been widely investigated in primates, but studies of other species are limited. Furthermore, few studies test for third-party relationship recognition in the wild, where cognitive abilities are deployed in response to natural socio-ecological pressures. Here, we used playback experiments to investigate whether wild jackdaws (Corvus monedula) track changes in their own relationships and the relationships of others. Females were presented with 'infidelity simulations': playbacks of their male partner copulating with a neighbouring female, and their male neighbour copulating with another female, against a congruent control. Our results showed substantial inter-individual variation in responses, but females did not respond more strongly to infidelity playbacks, indicating that jackdaws may not attend and/or respond to relationship information in this experimental context. Our results highlight the need for further study of relationship recognition and other cognitive traits that facilitate group-living in the wild, particularly in non-primates and in a wider range of social systems.
根据社会智力假说，理解社交动物所面临的挑战是理解认知进化的关键。在结构化的社会群体中，识别他人的关系通常对于预测互动结果很重要。在灵长类动物中，第三方关系识别已得到广泛研究，但对其他物种的研究有限。此外，很少有研究在野外测试第三方关系识别，因为认知能力是针对自然社会生态压力而产生的。在这里，我们使用回放实验来研究野生寒鸦（Corvus monedula）是否会跟踪自己和其他鸟类关系的变化。雌性寒鸦被呈现“不贞模拟”：播放雄性伴侣与邻居雌性交配，以及雄性邻居与另一只雌性交配的录音，与一致的对照录音相对照。我们的结果显示出个体间反应存在很大的差异，但雌性对不贞录音的反应并不强烈，这表明寒鸦可能不会在这种实验环境中关注和/或对关系信息做出反应。我们的结果强调了需要进一步研究关系识别和其他认知特征，以促进野外的群体生活，特别是在非灵长类动物和更广泛的社会系统中。
