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Cleaner fish are sensitive to what their partners can and cannot see

Much of human experience is informed by our ability to attribute mental states to others, a capacity known as theory of mind. While evidence for theory of mind in animals to date has largely been restricted to primates and other large-brained species, the use of ecologically-valid competitive contex...

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Autores principales: McAuliffe, Katherine, Drayton, Lindsey A., Royka, Amanda, Aellen, Mélisande, Santos, Laurie R., Bshary, Redouan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8484626/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34593934
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s42003-021-02584-2
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author McAuliffe, Katherine
Drayton, Lindsey A.
Royka, Amanda
Aellen, Mélisande
Santos, Laurie R.
Bshary, Redouan
author_facet McAuliffe, Katherine
Drayton, Lindsey A.
Royka, Amanda
Aellen, Mélisande
Santos, Laurie R.
Bshary, Redouan
author_sort McAuliffe, Katherine
collection PubMed
description Much of human experience is informed by our ability to attribute mental states to others, a capacity known as theory of mind. While evidence for theory of mind in animals to date has largely been restricted to primates and other large-brained species, the use of ecologically-valid competitive contexts hints that ecological pressures for strategic deception may give rise to components of theory of mind abilities in distantly-related taxonomic groups. In line with this hypothesis, we show that cleaner wrasse (Labroides dimidiatus) exhibit theory of mind capacities akin to those observed in primates in the context of their cooperative cleaning mutualism. These results suggest that ecological pressures for strategic deception can drive human-like cognitive abilities even in very distantly related species.
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spelling pubmed-84846262021-10-22 Cleaner fish are sensitive to what their partners can and cannot see McAuliffe, Katherine Drayton, Lindsey A. Royka, Amanda Aellen, Mélisande Santos, Laurie R. Bshary, Redouan Commun Biol Article Much of human experience is informed by our ability to attribute mental states to others, a capacity known as theory of mind. While evidence for theory of mind in animals to date has largely been restricted to primates and other large-brained species, the use of ecologically-valid competitive contexts hints that ecological pressures for strategic deception may give rise to components of theory of mind abilities in distantly-related taxonomic groups. In line with this hypothesis, we show that cleaner wrasse (Labroides dimidiatus) exhibit theory of mind capacities akin to those observed in primates in the context of their cooperative cleaning mutualism. These results suggest that ecological pressures for strategic deception can drive human-like cognitive abilities even in very distantly related species. Nature Publishing Group UK 2021-09-30 /pmc/articles/PMC8484626/ /pubmed/34593934 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s42003-021-02584-2 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
McAuliffe, Katherine
Drayton, Lindsey A.
Royka, Amanda
Aellen, Mélisande
Santos, Laurie R.
Bshary, Redouan
Cleaner fish are sensitive to what their partners can and cannot see
title Cleaner fish are sensitive to what their partners can and cannot see
title_full Cleaner fish are sensitive to what their partners can and cannot see
title_fullStr Cleaner fish are sensitive to what their partners can and cannot see
title_full_unstemmed Cleaner fish are sensitive to what their partners can and cannot see
title_short Cleaner fish are sensitive to what their partners can and cannot see
title_sort cleaner fish are sensitive to what their partners can and cannot see
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8484626/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34593934
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s42003-021-02584-2
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