Domestication of dogs may have elaborated on a pre-existing capacity of wolves to learn from humans

http://phys.org/news/2013-12-domestication-dogs-elaborated-pre-existing-capacity.html

Previous comparative psychology suggested that wolves lacked the levels of attention to human cues that domesticated dogs excel at. However, this report suggests they have some capacity and this gave dogs a platform to build on as their domestication intensified.

Eat crow if you think I’m a bird-brain

28 November 2013 08:15 Universitaet Tübingen

• Under embargo until 28 November 2013 10:00

Scientists have long suspected that corvids – the family of birds including ravens, crows and magpies – are highly intelligent. Now, Tübingen neurobiologists Lena Veit und Professor Andreas Nieder have demonstrated how the brains of crows produce intelligent behavior when the birds have to make strategic decisions. Their results are published in the latest edition of Nature Communications.

Crows are no bird-brains. Behavioral biologists have even called them “feathered primates” because the birds make and use tools, are able to remember large numbers of feeding sites, and plan their social behavior according to what other members of their group do. This high level of intelligence might seem surprising because birds’ brains are constructed in a fundamentally different way from those of mammals, including primates – which are usually used to investigate these behaviors.

The Tübingen researchers are the first to investigate the brain physiology of crows’ intelligent behavior. They trained crows to carry out memory tests on a computer. The crows were shown an image and had to remember it. Shortly afterwards, they had to select one of two test images on a touchscreen with their beaks based on a switching behavioral rules. One of the test images was identical to the first image, the other different. Sometimes the rule of the game was to select the same image, and sometimes it was to select the different one. The crows were able to carry out both tasks and to switch between them as appropriate. That demonstrates a high level of concentration and mental flexibility which few animal species can manage – and which is an effort even for humans.

The crows were quickly able to carry out these tasks even when given new sets of images. The researchers observed neuronal activity in the nidopallium caudolaterale, a brain region associated with the highest levels of cognition in birds. One group of nerve cells responded exclusively when the crows had to choose the same image – while another group of cells always responded when they were operating on the “different image” rule. By observing this cell activity, the researchers were often able to predict which rule the crow was following even before it made its choice.

The study published in Nature Communications provides valuable insights into the parallel evolution of intelligent behavior. “Many functions are realized differently in birds because a long evolutionary history separates us from these direct descendants of the dinosaurs,” says Lena Veit. “This means that bird brains can show us an alternative solution out of how intelligent behavior is produced with a different anatomy.” Crows and primates have different brains, but the cells regulating decision-making are very similar. They represent a general principle which has re-emerged throughout the history of evolution. “Just as we can draw valid conclusions on aerodynamics from a comparison of the very differently constructed wings of birds and bats, here we are able to draw conclusions about how the brain works by investigating the functional similarities and differences of the relevant brain areas in avian and mammalian brains,” says Professor Andreas Nieder.

• Full bibliographic information:Lena Veit & Andreas Nieder: Abstract rule neurons in the endbrain support intelligent behavior in corvid songbirds. Nature Communications; DOI: 10.1038/ncomms3878.http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=136859&CultureCode=en

Canny crows know their tools

http://phys.org/news/2013-10-canny-crows-tools.html

In my chapter "Clever Corvids" i documented a range of experiments, to book publication date, that tested tool use in crows - particularly New Caledonia crows. Their use of hooked tools is a feature of their foraging and they have a very particular way of fashioning the hook tool from foliage by judicious snipping of V-branches in twigs. But debate has see-sawed ever since as to whether the crows learn this tool fashioning and use by trial-and-error, or whether they have some mental picture of
what they are doing - whether they understand it. This interesting article, about the work of a research group from the University of St. Andrews favours the latter, more profoundly interesting, interpretation of what crow tool use mentally represents. As the lead author, James St. Clair, is quoted as saying: ""We still can't say whether New Caledonian crows actually 'understand' how their tools function. But of course, this is also true of many humans I know!"

A Foxy View of Human Beauty: Implications of the Farm Fox Experiment for Understanding the Origins of Structural and Experiential Aspects of Facial Attractiveness

An independent scholar from Cambridge University Uk has just published this fascinating take on the Belyaev farm fox experiment I reported in Not A Chimp. The effects on the HPA axis in the foxes, the range of neotenic traits revealed by simply selecting for friendliness and approachability, he believes tells us important things about the evolved human appreciation of beauty and the psychological traits we associate it with.

www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/671486

DOGS AND HUMANS CO-EVOLVED

http://www.the-scientist.com//?articles.view/articleNo/35585/title/Dogs-and-Human-Evolving-Together/

Bob Wayne, from UCLA, has been a prominent researcher on the question of when, how and why dogs became domesticated by man. His new work, reported here, now puts the beginnings of this domestication circa 35,000 years ago, probably in Asia. But he goes further to note that the same sets of genes in both dogs and humans seem to have undergone positive selection around the same time, suggesting that the same biochemical, physiological, metabolic and behavioural changes necessary for domesticated lifestyles were needed in dogs (other domesticates??) and humans:

"The researchers then identified a list of genes—including those involved in digestion, metabolism, cancer, and the transmission of serotonin in the brain—that are under positive selection pressure in dogs and humans alike.

“'As domestication is often associated with large increases in population density and crowded living conditions, these ‘unfavorable’ environments might be the selective pressure that drove the rewiring of both species,” the study authors wrote. For example, “positive selection in neurological pathways, in particular the serotonin system, could be associated with the constant need for reduced aggression stemming from the crowded living environment.”'

Language protein differs in males, females

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-language-protein-differs-males-females.html

Here are details of a fascinating piece of work that showed that FOXP2 protein was elevated in the brains of baby male rats, compared to females, and resulted in more effective ultrasonic distress calls from males to their mother, resulting in her preferential care and retrieval of them to the nest. When researchers manipulated the levels of FOXP2 protein in female pup brains the situation was reversed. This work builds on a previous small study in humans which suggested that girls have higher levels of FOXP2 protein that boys in parts of their cortex associated with speech which might help to explain relative language delay in boys.

NOT A CHIMP goes Japanese!

Just received today a complimentary copy of NOT A CHIMP in its Japanese edition with the translation done by Kotaro Suzuki of Niigata University. In Japan it is titled "We Are Not Chimpanzees"!