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Post by sarus on Aug 10, 2021 14:46:32 GMT -9
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Sloth bears (Melursus ursinus) fail to spontaneously solve a novel problem even if social cues and relevant experience are provided
Federica Amici, Ruben Holland, Trix Cacchione
Abstract The ability to solve novel problems is crucial for the survival and fitness of individuals living in dynamic environments. Studies of problem-solving date back to the beginning of the past century, but our knowledge is nonetheless still limited to very few taxa. In this study, we aimed to test a species of the order Carnivora, sloth bears (Melursus ursinus), on the ability to solve a novel foraging task. Bears were individually presented with honey spread on the wall and a familiar bucket, and, depending on the condition, they had to move the bucket and climb on it to access the honey. In follow-up conditions, they also repeatedly received cues to help them solve the task: before being tested, they either observed a human experimenter solving the problem or received direct relevant experience about how to solve the task. Despite high motivation, and in contrast to our predictions, none of the tested bears used the bucket to access out-of-reach food, even when social information and direct relevant experience were provided. These findings suggest that bears in this task may have failed to cognitively represent the problem and recognize the relevant aspects that would have led to its solution.
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Post by sarus on Aug 10, 2021 14:58:40 GMT -9
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Understanding of object properties by sloth bears, Melursus ursinus ursinus
Federica Amici a, b, *, Trix Cacchione c, d, Nereida Bueno-Guerra e
a Junior Research Group ‘Primate Kin Selection’, Institute of Biology, Faculty of Bioscience, Pharmacy and Psychology, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany b Department of Primatology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany c Padagogische Hochschule, University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland, Windisch, Switzerland € d Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Institute of Psychology, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland e Department of Psychology, Universidad Pontificia de Comillas, Madrid, Spain
Abstract Recent studies have shown that several species within the Carnivore order show impressive cognitive skills. However, bears, especially sloth bears, have received little attention with regard to their cognitive abilities. Here we presented seven sloth bears with three tasks to test their object permanence, shortterm memory and ability to use acoustic cues to infer food location. In the object permanence test, subjects saw an object disappear in one of the three holes of a tree trunk. Bears retrieved the food in the correct hole significantly above chance, suggesting that they have some basic understanding that objects continue to exist even when they are not visible. To study sloth bears' short-term memory, we used different time delays (30 s, 60 s, 2 min) between the object's disappearance and the subject's retrieval. Bears performed at chance levels in all conditions. In the acoustic cues test, the experimenter shook one of two identical opaque containers, only one of which had been baited: when the baited container was shaken, this made a noise and thus revealed the presence of food inside; when the unbaited container was shaken, there was no noise, revealing by exclusion the presence of food in the other container. In both cases, bears selected the baited container significantly above chance. As sloth bears are a mainly insectivorous solitary species, good performance in the object permanence and acoustic cue tests suggests that their cognitive skills may be the result of foraging challenges rather than social ones. Failure in the short-term memory test, instead, may suggest that memory for short-term punctual events has little evolutionary significance for bears, although further studies are needed to draw definitive conclusions. © 2017 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour
►https://www.eva.mpg.de/documents/Elsevier/Amici_Understanding_AnimalBeh_2017_2514978.pdf
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Post by sarus on Aug 10, 2021 15:02:29 GMT -9
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Spatial Transposition Tasks in Indian Sloth Bears (Melursus ursinus) and Bornean Sun Bears (Helarctos malayanus euryspilus)
Article in Journal of Comparative Psychology · June 2017
Daniela Hartmann, Marina Davila-Ross, Siew Te Wong, Josep Call, and Marina Scheumann
Abstract
Spatial transposition tasks assess individuals’ ability to represent nonvisible spatial object displacements. Several nonhuman mammal species have been tested on this task including primates, cats, and dogs, but to date, great apes seem the only taxon that has repeatedly and consistently solved spatial transposition tasks. The authors investigated the ability of captive sloth and sun bears to solve spatial transposition tasks. Both species belong to the same taxonomic group as cats and dogs, but unlike them and similar to apes, they have an omnivorous diet that requires them to keep track of fruit sources in space and time. The bears were first tested on a visible displacement task and those that succeeded were further tested on a spatial transposition task that involved a 180° transposition, followed by 2 tasks with two 360° transpositions. All 7 sloth bears and 7 out of 9 sun bears solved the visible displacement task. The 180° transposition task was solved by 6 out of 7 sloth bears and 1 out of the 5 tested sun bears. Three sloth bears were tested on all 4 experiments and even solved 2-chained 360° transpositions. Control conditions were conducted showing that the bears’ performance did not rely on olfactory or auditory cues. The results provide the first indication that bears might be able to track invisible objects. Further studies will be necessary to confirm these results and to control the influence of associative learning. The present study emphasizes the importance of including different animal species in the investigation of what underlies the evolution of different cognitive skills. Keywords: spatial cognition, bears, object permanence, comparative cognition, spatial memory
►https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317929111_Spatial_Transposition_Tasks_in_Indian_Sloth_Bears_Melursus_ursinus_and_Bornean_Sun_Bears_Helarctos_malayanus_euryspilus
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Post by sarus on Aug 10, 2021 15:12:59 GMT -9
¨Picture recognition of food by sloth bears (Melursus ursinus) Abstract Pictures are often used in cognitive research to represent objects and many species have demonstrated the ability to recognize two-dimensional pictures as representations of their three-dimensional counterparts. However, for ursids picture recognition has been reported in only one study of a single 11-year-old female American black bear (Johnson-Ulrich et al. 2016). We tested the picture recognition abilities of an additional species, the sloth bear. After a food preference test by which the bears' food options were ranked and categorized as high-, mid-, and low-preference items, we tested a sub-adult male and an adult female sloth bear by presenting two pictures of food in each testing trial-a high-preference food and a low-preference food. Both bears met the criterion by choosing the pictures of their preferred foods in at least 80% of the trials in three consecutive testing sessions. We then presented never-before-used pictures of high-preference versus low-preference food items and they again met our criterion.
► repository.si.edu/bitstream/handle/10088/99428/Tabellario_Stacey-20191004-MANUSCRIPT_final_round_2_.pdf
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Post by sarus on Sept 9, 2021 0:37:24 GMT -9
Polar Bears Take Down Walruses by Hurling Rocks and Ice New research corroborates Inuit knowledge of the animals cleverly using new tools In 1865, Arctic explorer Charles Francis Hall published an Inuit account of a polar bear attacking a walrus with a rock on Baffin Island in Canada. He even included an engraving of the bludgeoning in his book Arctic researches, and life among the Esquimaux. “The bear mounts the cliff, and throws down upon the animal’s head a large rock, calculating the distance and the curve with astonishing accuracy, and thus crushing the thick bullet-proof skull,” Hall describes in his book. Scientists have long dismissed these centuries-old claims of polar bears smashing the skulls of walruses with rocks and chunks of ice as myth and legend. Now, Canadian researchers have found evidence to corroborate the Indigenous knowledge. Reviewing Inuit accounts over the past 200 years, lead author Ian Stirling, a biologist at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, and his team report in a new study that while rare, these attacks likely do occur. Published in the peer-reviewed journal Arctic, the research concludes that “polar bears may occasionally use tools to hunt walruses in the wild.” “I have always been impressed with the accuracy and reliability of the observations of animals reported by experienced Inuit hunters, so I thought it was likely the accounts might not just be myths but the result of reporting of actual observations, even though the behavior itself is likely quite rare,” he tells Mindy Weisberger of Live Science. The Inuit accounts describe polar bears picking up rocks and chunks of ice to throw at the heads of unsuspecting walruses. The large marine mammals are occasional prey, though their size—male walruses can weigh in excess of 2,500 pounds—thick skulls and dangerous tusks make it difficult for unarmed bears to bring them down, reports Kristine De Abreu of ExplorersWeb. Stirling and his colleagues determined that polar bears clobbering walruses made sense. Their study cites the example of a five-year-old male polar bear named GoGo using objects as tools to get food in a Japanese zoo. The bear used sticks—as well as throwing a large tire—to knock down meals placed on inaccessible perches. According to the study, “GoGo demonstrated an exceptional and previously undocumented degree of conceptual creativity to facilitate access to a food item hanging from the air.” “The most significant part of this is that a bear is able to look at a situation, think of it in a three-dimensional sense, and then figure out what it might have to do to be successful,” Stirling tells Ginella Massa of “As It Happens” on CBC Radio. In another example, researchers in Alaska videotaped polar bears in the wild throwing chunks of ice at seals. One account collected by the United States Geological Survey’s Alaska Science Center Polar Bear Research Project shows a bear sliding a large lump across the frozen surface to an open hole to ambush its prey. Previously, scientists didn’t know polar bears were capable of using tools. Now, they suggest it could happen in the right circumstances, especially if the hunter is faced with a formidable foe like the walrus. “An occasional adult polar bear might be capable of mentally conceptualizing a similar use of a piece of ice or a stone as a tool,” the study states.
► www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/polar-bears-take-down-walruses-hurling-rocks-and-ice-study-says-180978392/
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