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Subadult ravens generally don't transfer valuable tokens to conspecifics when there is nothing to gain for themselves
The extent to which humans help each other is extraordinary in itself, and difficult to explain from an evolutionary perspective. Therefore, there has been a recent surge in studies investigating the evolution of prosocial behavior using a comparative approach. Nevertheless, most of these studies ha...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2015
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4484978/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26175703 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00885 |
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author | Massen, Jorg J. M. Lambert, Megan Schiestl, Martina Bugnyar, Thomas |
author_facet | Massen, Jorg J. M. Lambert, Megan Schiestl, Martina Bugnyar, Thomas |
author_sort | Massen, Jorg J. M. |
collection | PubMed |
description | The extent to which humans help each other is extraordinary in itself, and difficult to explain from an evolutionary perspective. Therefore, there has been a recent surge in studies investigating the evolution of prosocial behavior using a comparative approach. Nevertheless, most of these studies have focused on primates only, and little is known about other animal orders. In a previous study, common ravens (Corvus corax) have been shown to be indifferent to the gains of conspecifics. However, this may have been due to the experimental set-up, as many studies that use different set-ups report conflicting results within the same species. We therefore tested ravens' prosocial tendencies in a different set-up; i.e., we tested whether sub-adult ravens would transfer a token to a partner and, thereby, provide the partner with the opportunity to exchange a token for a reward. To control and test for effects of partner identity, we tested eight individuals both in a dyadic and in a group setting. Our results show that in general the ravens in our experiment did not show other-regarding preferences. However, some acts of helping did occur spontaneously. We discuss what could be the causes for those sporadic instances, and why in general prosocial tendencies were found to be almost lacking among the ravens in this set-up. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4484978 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-44849782015-07-14 Subadult ravens generally don't transfer valuable tokens to conspecifics when there is nothing to gain for themselves Massen, Jorg J. M. Lambert, Megan Schiestl, Martina Bugnyar, Thomas Front Psychol Psychology The extent to which humans help each other is extraordinary in itself, and difficult to explain from an evolutionary perspective. Therefore, there has been a recent surge in studies investigating the evolution of prosocial behavior using a comparative approach. Nevertheless, most of these studies have focused on primates only, and little is known about other animal orders. In a previous study, common ravens (Corvus corax) have been shown to be indifferent to the gains of conspecifics. However, this may have been due to the experimental set-up, as many studies that use different set-ups report conflicting results within the same species. We therefore tested ravens' prosocial tendencies in a different set-up; i.e., we tested whether sub-adult ravens would transfer a token to a partner and, thereby, provide the partner with the opportunity to exchange a token for a reward. To control and test for effects of partner identity, we tested eight individuals both in a dyadic and in a group setting. Our results show that in general the ravens in our experiment did not show other-regarding preferences. However, some acts of helping did occur spontaneously. We discuss what could be the causes for those sporadic instances, and why in general prosocial tendencies were found to be almost lacking among the ravens in this set-up. Frontiers Media S.A. 2015-06-30 /pmc/articles/PMC4484978/ /pubmed/26175703 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00885 Text en Copyright © 2015 Massen, Lambert, Schiestl and Bugnyar. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Psychology Massen, Jorg J. M. Lambert, Megan Schiestl, Martina Bugnyar, Thomas Subadult ravens generally don't transfer valuable tokens to conspecifics when there is nothing to gain for themselves |
title | Subadult ravens generally don't transfer valuable tokens to conspecifics when there is nothing to gain for themselves |
title_full | Subadult ravens generally don't transfer valuable tokens to conspecifics when there is nothing to gain for themselves |
title_fullStr | Subadult ravens generally don't transfer valuable tokens to conspecifics when there is nothing to gain for themselves |
title_full_unstemmed | Subadult ravens generally don't transfer valuable tokens to conspecifics when there is nothing to gain for themselves |
title_short | Subadult ravens generally don't transfer valuable tokens to conspecifics when there is nothing to gain for themselves |
title_sort | subadult ravens generally don't transfer valuable tokens to conspecifics when there is nothing to gain for themselves |
topic | Psychology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4484978/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26175703 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00885 |
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