As a lecturer, I know my students but I do find it hard to keep track of which students are doing which modules and who graduated one vs two years ago. Complex group living requires animals to know and keep track of various relations between themselves and others. These could be seen in the form […]
A variety of things can influence memory, and we frequently find that existing knowledge can impact the learning of new information. For example, some people (including me) find it hard to learn to drive an automatic car because of their pre-existing knowledge of driving a stick shift (standard) car. For example, early during the transition, […]
We often think about conceptual thought as being uniquely human, however, there is growing evidence to suggest that animals can learn concepts as well. The use of concepts requires understanding the relationship between stimuli. So, if I presented these three faces to you and asked you who was familiar, my guess if that you’d choose […]
As humans we use numbers in almost everything that we do. They are used to quantify, categorise and measure all aspects of everyday life. The same is true of animals: numbers could be useful to them to identify how many animals there are in a competing group, the amount of food available and so on. […]
All aspects of animal behaviour are the result of a choice. By choosing to do one thing an animal is therefore not doing something else. These decisions need to be made in a manner that maximizes the likelihood of survival. Because of this emphasis on survival, decisions are generally studied from an ecological perspective; however, […]
Cultural traditions are common in humans and are thought to be rooted in our evolutionary history; they are deeply ingrained in our society and can, under certain conditions, result in non-adaptive behavior. Given this, might one also expect to observe evidence of cultural traditions in non-human animals? But how do we look for “culture” in animals? […]
Quantity (like size) matters when we are making decisions about all aspects of our life. If something costs the same but we have the choice to have more or less of it, have you ever deliberately chosen less? Even when on a diet? There’s a very good reason for this. It is adaptive to go […]
There are many stories of dolphins saving people from various perilous situations including drowning and even shark attack. Until now, these events have been generally anecdotal and have been difficult to study systematically. However, the conspecific helping behaviour which may underlie these events is very interesting and has been scientifically documented on a few occassions. So-called […]
If you see someone point to something over your head you generally look upwards. This is because humans understand that this type of referential communication is used to draw our attention to an object or place that the informer is attending to (we are extremely susceptible to this – the direction of human attention can even […]
Where is the cheese? Within-compound spatial learning in rats Spatial cognition is crucial for our survival as it allows us to remember where to find food, water and shelter. But, with a vast amount of information surrounding us, which of the many cues do we actually use when trying to reach a goal? And how […]