Gabriella E. Smith Gabriella E. Smith Remco Folkertsma Remco Folkertsma Elif Duran Elif Duran Eva G. Shair Ali Eva G. Shair Ali Ivo Jacobs Ivo Jacobs Amanda M. Seed Amanda M. Seed Alice M. I. Auersperg Alice M. I. Auersperg Megan L. Lambert Megan L. Lambert The Royal Society 2025 How animals react to violations of expectations offers a valuable lens into their perception of the world. Kea (Nestor notabilis) and Goffin’s cockatoos (Cacatua goffiniana) are optimal animal models to examine susceptibility to violations of expectations owing to their sophisticated physical exploration and cognition skills. This study involved a bait-and-switch of food items varying in desirability, followed by an information-seeking phase to examine not only violation susceptibility but also surprise behaviours expressed overtly and covertly in both positive and negative violation directions. We found that the kea, and not the cockatoos, exhibited susceptibility to the violation via likelihood to explore the violating stimulus. Furthermore, while this project serves, to our knowledge, as the first cognitive study using infrared thermography in fully unrestrained avian subjects, no conclusive results can be reported as to the effect of violations of expectation on subjects’ periorbital temperature, and thus physiological response. Implications for this research include novel perspectives into studying overt and covert responses following violated expectations, as well as expressions of information seeking in non-human species. PDFDocument eng 2026-05-15T08:46:17.487856Z 2025 Violation Of Expectations Information Seeking Surprise Kea Cockatoo Comparative Cognition Infrared Thermography 2161536 b application/pdf http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/