Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PS, UK; Mabula Ground Hornbill Project/IUCN SSC Hornbill Specialist Group, South Africa.
FaunaStats, 16 avenue de l'Europe, Immeuble SXB1, 67300 Schiltigheim, France.
Behav Processes. 2022 Jun;199:104659. doi: 10.1016/j.beproc.2022.104659. Epub 2022 May 6.
A wide range of species relies on heterospecific visual cues to detect the location of resources like food. Although different hypotheses have been suggested to explain the emergence of this capacity in animals, results are often difficult to interpret due to the influence of other factors, such as close contact with humans. In this study, we presented eight Southern ground-hornbills (Bucorvus leadbeateri) with a two-way object-choice paradigm. The human experimenter provided a static and salient cue indicating which of the two containers was baited in four experimental conditions: (a) Touch, (b) Head, (c) Point + Head, and (d) Point. In an additional control condition (no cues given), we assessed whether subjects relied on olfactory cues to solve the task. Overall, our subjects did not spontaneously use human-given cues and their performance fluctuated near chance during the control condition. Noteworthy, most birds exhibited a side bias towards one container. We do not exclude the possibility that this species may be capable of using other cue types, or learning to use cues, after long interaction with humans is provided.
许多物种依赖于异源视觉线索来探测食物等资源的位置。尽管已经提出了多种假设来解释动物中这种能力的出现，但由于与人类密切接触等其他因素的影响，结果往往难以解释。在这项研究中，我们向八只南非地犀鸟（Bucorvus leadbeateri）展示了一个双向物体选择范式。人类实验员提供了一个静态且明显的线索，指示两个容器中的哪一个有诱饵，在四个实验条件下：(a) 触摸，(b) 头，(c) 点+头，和 (d) 点。在一个额外的对照条件（没有给出提示）下，我们评估了研究对象是否依赖嗅觉线索来解决任务。总的来说，我们的研究对象并没有自发地使用人类提供的线索，并且在对照条件下他们的表现接近随机。值得注意的是，大多数鸟类对一个容器表现出明显的偏向。我们不排除这种物种在与人类长时间互动后，可能能够使用其他类型的线索或学习使用线索的可能性。
