The ontogenesis of lateralized behavior in the domestic cat, Felis silvestris catus

For the first time, the development of paw preferences in the domestic cat, Felis silvestris catus, is explored. Twelve cats were tested at ages 12 weeks, 6 months, and 1 year on a challenge requiring them to use one of their paws to retrieve food. To control for repeated testing of the same cats at different ages, the subjects' paw preferences were compared with those of cats tested just once, at 6 months (n = 11) or 1 year (n = 14) of age. Analysis revealed a significant effect of age on the distribution of cats' paw preferences. Cats were significantly more likely to be ambilateral than paw preferent at 12 weeks and at 6 months but more likely to display a lateral bias in paw use at 1 year. There was a significant positive correlation between cats' paw preferences at 6 months and at 1 year. Lateralized behavior was strongly sex related. Females had a greater preference for using their right paw; males were significantly more inclined to adopt their left. Analysis revealed no significant difference in the direction or strength of paw preferences of cats tested longitudinally or cross-sectionally at 6 months or 1 year of age. Findings indicate that cats develop paw preferences by 1 year and hint at a relative stability in preferred paw use over time. The strong sex effect observed strengthens the case for the influence of a biological mechanism in the emergence of motor asymmetry in cats.     

Differential effects of environmental enrichment on the open-field behavior of wild and domestic Norway rats.

Early postweaning experience in an enriched environment had a greater influence on the open-field behavior and body weight of wild Norway rats than of their domestic counterparts. Genetic changes accompanying the domestication process may have reduced the relative impact of postweaning experience on the development of the domestic rat's response to changes in its environment.     

Effect of color in rearing and testing environment on the behavior of young domestic chicks.

Young domestic chicks were reared individually in compartments of four different colors and then tested either in a color-preference test with stationary objects (N equals 128) or with a moving stimulus (N equals 128). For each type of test we used four background colors in the test arena. The dependent variables included color preferences, following behavior and emotional responses of the young chicks. The results showed no significant effects of the color of the arena-background in either test situation. The color of the rearing compartment was a significant factor affecting color preferences in the test with stationary objects. In both test situations the colors red, and then green, were the most potent in affecting the color preferences and emotional responses exhibited by the chicks.     

Thinking chickens: a review of cognition,emotion, and behavior in the domestic chicken

Domestic chickens are members of an order, Aves, which has been the focus of a revolution in our understanding of neuroanatomical, cognitive, and social complexity. At least some birds are now known to be on par with many mammals in terms of their level of intelligence, emotional sophistication, and social interaction. Yet, views of chickens have largely remained unrevised by this new evidence. In this paper, I examine the peer-reviewed scientific data on the leading edge of cognition, emotions, personality, and sociality in chickens, exploring such areas as self-awareness, cognitive bias, social learning and self-control, and comparing their abilities in these areas with other birds and other vertebrates, particularly mammals. My overall conclusion is that chickens are just as cognitively, emotionally and socially complex as most other birds and mammals in many areas, and that there is a need for further noninvasive comparative behavioral research with chickens as well as a re-framing of current views about their intelligence.     

The local organization of behavior: dissociations between a pigeon's behavior and self-reports of that behavior

The purpose of the experiment was to study the relation between what an organism does in a setting that demands temporal patterning of behavior and what it reports it has done. More specifically, a pigeon produced two classes, shorter and longer, of temporal patterns of key pecks (interresponse times) on a center key. Occasionally, a symbolic matching-to-sample probe arranged on side keys asked the pigeon whether its most recent pattern was a shorter or longer one. The longer reinforced pattern was always three times as long as the shorter one and the two patterns were reinforced equally often. Absolute duration of reinforced patterns was varied. In some conditions, interresponse-time distributions on the center key were bimodal, indicating a clear behavioral adaptation to the contingency, yet a bird did not report very well by appropriate side-key responding what its most recent interresponse time had been. In other conditions, the interresponse-time distributions were less clearly bimodal, yet a bird reported more accurately its previous interresponse time as shorter or longer. Thus, there was a dissociation between how well behavior on the center key conformed to the schedule requirement and how well a bird reported what it was doing on the center key. In addition, as absolute duration of the reinforced patterns was increased, a bird categorized its most recent pattern less well even as its preference for the shorter pattern increased dramatically. These results were interpreted as an example of the phenomenon of dissociation between tacit knowledge and knowledge.     

Flexible search behavior in domestic cats (Felis catus): a case study of predator-prey interaction

Domestic cats (Felis catus) were administered an object permanence task in a novel and a familiar situation to investigate flexibility (i.e., pause behavior and searching by following a path opposite of that taken by the object when it disappeared) in search behavior. Pause and opposite search were assumed to be independent, equiprobable, and randomly exhibited (i.e., random model). The random model predicted that cats would exhibit flexible behavior on 75% of the trials. The results revealed that flexible behavior occurred on 69% of the trials in the novel situation, but only on 52% of the trials in the familiar setting in which pauses were less frequent and shorter than in the novel situation. Thus, the random model provided a good fit of the data in the novel but not in the familiar situation. It is argued that pause and opposite search reflect decision processes when cats are dealing with the behavior of prey that has disappeared while being pursued.     

Pointing gestures modulate domestic dogs’ search behavior for hidden objects in a spatial rotation problem

In the spatial domain, domestic dogs are highly inclined to search at the last location where they saw an object disappear and cannot infer that a hidden object has moved imperceptibly from one location to another. In the current study, we examined whether exposure to human social cues modulates dogs’ search behavior for hidden objects. In Experiment 1, twenty dogs were first trained to find an object they saw disappear inside a stationary container in the presence (social group) or absence (non-social group) of pointing gestures. In tests, the containers were rotated 180° around a central axis. The dogs in the non-social group systematically searched at the initial (now incorrect) hiding location, whereas the dogs in the social group chose correctly significantly above chance. In Experiment 2, we tested whether pre-exposure to human pointing has an impact on dogs’ use of gestures. No gestures were given during training and both the social and non-social conditions were administered to each of the ten dogs. In contrast to Experiment 1, the performance of dogs in the social condition dropped significantly and varied substantially from one dog to another. Overall, this study suggests that dogs’ tendency to use human signals is so strong that it even outweighs their spatial bias to search where they saw an object disappear; however, this penchant to use human gestures appears to be dependent on the degree of familiarity of the dog with these signals.