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Blowing the lid off! Bottle-directed, extractive foraging strategies in synurbic bonnet macaques Macaca radiata in southern India

Nonhuman individuals and groups, living in anthropogenic landscapes, often adopt adaptive foraging strategies, mediated by their day-to-day interactions with humans and their artefacts. Exploring such novel behavioral manifestations, especially in the Anthropocene, offers us insights into behavioral...

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Autores principales: Pal, Arijit, Mahato, Santanu, Leca, Jean-Baptiste, Sinha, Anindya
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9900441/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36755978
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.973566
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author Pal, Arijit
Mahato, Santanu
Leca, Jean-Baptiste
Sinha, Anindya
author_facet Pal, Arijit
Mahato, Santanu
Leca, Jean-Baptiste
Sinha, Anindya
author_sort Pal, Arijit
collection PubMed
description Nonhuman individuals and groups, living in anthropogenic landscapes, often adopt adaptive foraging strategies, mediated by their day-to-day interactions with humans and their artefacts. Exploring such novel behavioral manifestations, especially in the Anthropocene, offers us insights into behavioral innovations and their transmission in such rapidly changing ecologies. In this study, employing field experiments, we investigated an example of human-induced, extractive foraging behavior – the extraction of liquid contents from plastic bottles – in a synurbic bonnet macaque Macaca radiata population. The main aims of the study were to examine the distribution, diversity, inter-individual variability and intra-individual flexibility of bottle-directed manipulative behaviors, and to explore the social and environmental factors driving this behavioral practice. We video-recorded the manipulation of partially filled plastic bottles and the extraction of liquid across four groups of bonnet macaques in southern India. Two socio-demographic factors – age class and group membership – and one environmental factor – food provisioning – were identified as major determinants of inter-individual variation in the performance of sophisticated manipulative techniques and in bottle-opening success. Our results also suggest that age-related physical maturation, experiential trial-and-error learning, and possibly social learning contributed to the acquisition of foraging competence in this task. These findings illuminate the mechanisms underlying inter-individual behavioral variability and intra-individual behavioral flexibility amongst free-ranging individuals of a cercopithecine primate species, traditionally known for its ecological adaptability and behavioral plasticity. Finally, this study documents how the presence of humans, their artefacts and their activities facilitate the development of certain behavioral traditions in free-ranging nonhuman populations, thus providing valuable insights into how human–alloprimate relations can be restructured within the increasingly resource-competitive environments of the Anthropocene.
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spelling pubmed-99004412023-02-07 Blowing the lid off! Bottle-directed, extractive foraging strategies in synurbic bonnet macaques Macaca radiata in southern India Pal, Arijit Mahato, Santanu Leca, Jean-Baptiste Sinha, Anindya Front Psychol Psychology Nonhuman individuals and groups, living in anthropogenic landscapes, often adopt adaptive foraging strategies, mediated by their day-to-day interactions with humans and their artefacts. Exploring such novel behavioral manifestations, especially in the Anthropocene, offers us insights into behavioral innovations and their transmission in such rapidly changing ecologies. In this study, employing field experiments, we investigated an example of human-induced, extractive foraging behavior – the extraction of liquid contents from plastic bottles – in a synurbic bonnet macaque Macaca radiata population. The main aims of the study were to examine the distribution, diversity, inter-individual variability and intra-individual flexibility of bottle-directed manipulative behaviors, and to explore the social and environmental factors driving this behavioral practice. We video-recorded the manipulation of partially filled plastic bottles and the extraction of liquid across four groups of bonnet macaques in southern India. Two socio-demographic factors – age class and group membership – and one environmental factor – food provisioning – were identified as major determinants of inter-individual variation in the performance of sophisticated manipulative techniques and in bottle-opening success. Our results also suggest that age-related physical maturation, experiential trial-and-error learning, and possibly social learning contributed to the acquisition of foraging competence in this task. These findings illuminate the mechanisms underlying inter-individual behavioral variability and intra-individual behavioral flexibility amongst free-ranging individuals of a cercopithecine primate species, traditionally known for its ecological adaptability and behavioral plasticity. Finally, this study documents how the presence of humans, their artefacts and their activities facilitate the development of certain behavioral traditions in free-ranging nonhuman populations, thus providing valuable insights into how human–alloprimate relations can be restructured within the increasingly resource-competitive environments of the Anthropocene. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-12-09 /pmc/articles/PMC9900441/ /pubmed/36755978 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.973566 Text en Copyright © 2022 Pal, Mahato, Leca and Sinha. https://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) and the copyright owner(s) 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
Pal, Arijit
Mahato, Santanu
Leca, Jean-Baptiste
Sinha, Anindya
Blowing the lid off! Bottle-directed, extractive foraging strategies in synurbic bonnet macaques Macaca radiata in southern India
title Blowing the lid off! Bottle-directed, extractive foraging strategies in synurbic bonnet macaques Macaca radiata in southern India
title_full Blowing the lid off! Bottle-directed, extractive foraging strategies in synurbic bonnet macaques Macaca radiata in southern India
title_fullStr Blowing the lid off! Bottle-directed, extractive foraging strategies in synurbic bonnet macaques Macaca radiata in southern India
title_full_unstemmed Blowing the lid off! Bottle-directed, extractive foraging strategies in synurbic bonnet macaques Macaca radiata in southern India
title_short Blowing the lid off! Bottle-directed, extractive foraging strategies in synurbic bonnet macaques Macaca radiata in southern India
title_sort blowing the lid off! bottle-directed, extractive foraging strategies in synurbic bonnet macaques macaca radiata in southern india
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9900441/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36755978
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.973566
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