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Eavesdropping in dogs, wolves and elephants
Jim Hoi-Lam
Friederike Range
Claus Lamm
Sarah Marshall-Pescini
PhD thesis - University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna - 2022
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Reputation is a key component in social interactions of group-living animals and appears to play a role in the establishment of cooperation. Animals can form reputations of individuals by directly interacting with them or by observing them interact with a third party, known as eavesdropping. This is presumed to be more cognitively demanding than direct reputation formation, but it serves a vital function in allowing animals to predict the behaviour of others without the potential costs of direct experiences. Research on human infants has demonstrated that they have the ability to eavesdrop from a young age, but the previous literature on non-human animals has found mixed or negative results. Therefore, in this thesis, I studied eavesdropping in three species that show considerable sociocognitive capabilities and can cooperate with humans and conspecifics: dogs (Canis lupus familiaris), wolves (Canis lupus) and Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) to contribute to our knowledge on this topic. First, I tested whether dogs could eavesdrop on humans in a helping situation and I controlled for local enhancement to clarify whether dogs are indeed capable of eavesdropping or if their success can be explained by this low-level mechanism (chapter 1). Then, I investigated whether dogs’ potential ability to eavesdrop evolved during the domestication process or whether it was inherited from their ancestor, wolves (chapter 2). To this end, I tested equally hand-raised, pack-living dogs and wolves at the Wolf Science Center, Ernstbrunn, Austria, who observed humans interacting with a conspecific in a food-giving situation. Lastly, I tested human-habituated captive Asian elephants’ ability to form reputations of humans after observing them interact with a conspecific in two different situations: a cooperative string-pulling task and a food-giving situation (chapter 3). Overall, the findings of this thesis found no evidence for eavesdropping in any of the three species, but it contributes to the current literature on eavesdropping in animals in three ways: first and foremost, I broadened our knowledge of comparative cognition by testing eavesdropping in wolves and Asian elephants for the first time. Second, I showed that confounding factors, such as local enhancement, must be addressed to exclude simpler mechanisms explaining animals’ ability to eavesdrop. Finally, my studies highlight the importance of designing experiments that increase the relevance of the situation to test different species’ ability to eavesdrop. Nevertheless, more comparative cognition research is needed to clarify whether animals other than humans are capable of eavesdropping or whether it is a uniquely human skill.
Englisch
2022
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