Dr. Isabelle Laumer
@isabellelaumer.bsky.social
Cognitive Biologist & Primatologist @MPI_animalbehav | primate & avian cognition | tool-use l innovation | prosociality | humor | curiosity | self-medication
Our New Paper is out in Nature Human Behaviour: 🚨 Culture is critical in driving orangutan diet development past individual potentials! 🦧 www.nature.com/articles/s41.... See 🧵
Culture is critical in driving orangutan diet development past individual potentials - Nature Human Behaviour
Howard-Spink et al. develop an empirically based model of orangutan diet development, which suggests that social learning is vital for orangutans to acquire varied diets.
nature.com
In this study, Howard-Spink et al. develop an empirically based model of orangutan diet development, which suggests that social learning is vital for allowing orangutans to acquire varied diets.
Culture is critical in driving orangutan diet development past individual potentials - Nature Human Behaviour
Howard-Spink et al. develop an empirically based model of orangutan diet development, which suggests that social learning is vital for orangutans to acquire varied diets.
nature.com
Bonobos are more likely to approach an object which may or may not result in a reward when they hear laughter, finds research in Scientific Reports. The study suggests that hearing positive sounds may influence their foraging and searching behaviour: #Zoology #AnimalBehaviour
Bonobos tend to behave optimistically after hearing laughter - Scientific Reports
Emotions mediate a wide range of cognitive functions, including memory, attention, and decision making. Studies of emotion in non-human animals have typically focused on negative emotions—like fear—that have clear behavioral correlates (e.g., freezing or retreating). To address this one-sided treatment of affect, we used a cognitive bias test to ask whether vocalizations associated with positive affect lead apes to expect positive future outcomes. All great apes produce laughter-like vocalizations during play that likely evolved from a shared ancestral form of laughter. We primed bonobos with conspecific laughter and then asked whether they were more likely to treat an ambiguous stimulus as if it were positive. Subjects (n = 4) were first trained to approach rewarded (black) stimuli and skip unrewarded (white) stimuli. We then presented occasional ambiguous (grey) stimuli. Bonobos approached ambiguous stimuli to search for rewards more often after hearing laughter. Our results suggest that hearing laughter induces positive emotions and may thus bias bonobos’ decision making, including foraging or search behavior. While only apes produce human-like laughter, several other non-human animals have contagious play vocalizations. These vocalizations may lead other animals to anticipate positive outcomes, revealing commonalities in the role of positive emotion in behavior and cognition across species.
spklr.io
A wild orangutan was observed applying chewed leaves to a cheek wound. Findings in Scientific Reports are 1st report of suspected wound treatment by a wild animal using a plant with medicinal properties. http://spklr.io/63329CrbX @natureportfolio.nature.com @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social #Zoology
