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Not bird-brained: Chickens use prior experience to solve novel timing problems

Despite differences between bird and human brain anatomy, birds have recently demonstrated capacities thought to be uniquely human, including planning and problem-solving. Many avian demonstrations of ‘complex’ behaviors rely on species-specific behavior (e.g., caching, tool use), or use birds who h...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Wiles, Lisa, Cowie, Sarah, Bizo, Lewis
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10075458/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37018168
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282667
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author Wiles, Lisa
Cowie, Sarah
Bizo, Lewis
author_facet Wiles, Lisa
Cowie, Sarah
Bizo, Lewis
author_sort Wiles, Lisa
collection PubMed
description Despite differences between bird and human brain anatomy, birds have recently demonstrated capacities thought to be uniquely human, including planning and problem-solving. Many avian demonstrations of ‘complex’ behaviors rely on species-specific behavior (e.g., caching, tool use), or use birds who have evolved largely in similarly undomesticated circumstances (e.g., pigeons). In the present experiment, we asked how a species domesticated thousands of years ago, chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus), used past experience to navigate novel problems in the double-bisection task. The double-bisection task which has been used extensively with pigeons, allowing a comparison of signatures of chicken and pigeon performance on the same task. Our findings revealed chickens, like pigeons, show flexible learning that is sensitive to the broader context in which events occur. Further, as with pigeons, our chickens’ patterns of performance could be divided into two distinct categories which may reflect differences in the specific behaviors in which organisms engage during a timing task. Our findings demonstrate remarkable similarity in how chickens and pigeons use past experience to navigate novel problems. Further, these findings add to a growing body of knowledge suggesting the simplest forms of learning common across species–operant and respondent conditioning–are more flexible than is typically assumed.
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spelling pubmed-100754582023-04-06 Not bird-brained: Chickens use prior experience to solve novel timing problems Wiles, Lisa Cowie, Sarah Bizo, Lewis PLoS One Research Article Despite differences between bird and human brain anatomy, birds have recently demonstrated capacities thought to be uniquely human, including planning and problem-solving. Many avian demonstrations of ‘complex’ behaviors rely on species-specific behavior (e.g., caching, tool use), or use birds who have evolved largely in similarly undomesticated circumstances (e.g., pigeons). In the present experiment, we asked how a species domesticated thousands of years ago, chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus), used past experience to navigate novel problems in the double-bisection task. The double-bisection task which has been used extensively with pigeons, allowing a comparison of signatures of chicken and pigeon performance on the same task. Our findings revealed chickens, like pigeons, show flexible learning that is sensitive to the broader context in which events occur. Further, as with pigeons, our chickens’ patterns of performance could be divided into two distinct categories which may reflect differences in the specific behaviors in which organisms engage during a timing task. Our findings demonstrate remarkable similarity in how chickens and pigeons use past experience to navigate novel problems. Further, these findings add to a growing body of knowledge suggesting the simplest forms of learning common across species–operant and respondent conditioning–are more flexible than is typically assumed. Public Library of Science 2023-04-05 /pmc/articles/PMC10075458/ /pubmed/37018168 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282667 Text en © 2023 Wiles et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Wiles, Lisa
Cowie, Sarah
Bizo, Lewis
Not bird-brained: Chickens use prior experience to solve novel timing problems
title Not bird-brained: Chickens use prior experience to solve novel timing problems
title_full Not bird-brained: Chickens use prior experience to solve novel timing problems
title_fullStr Not bird-brained: Chickens use prior experience to solve novel timing problems
title_full_unstemmed Not bird-brained: Chickens use prior experience to solve novel timing problems
title_short Not bird-brained: Chickens use prior experience to solve novel timing problems
title_sort not bird-brained: chickens use prior experience to solve novel timing problems
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10075458/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37018168
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282667
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