Complex Avian Behaviour and Cognition: A Mapping Sentence Approach

Abstract

I commence the chapter by noting how bird behaviour and birds’ cognitive abilities are complex and most validly understood as interacting assemblies of multiple aspects of the behaviour that are both internal and external to the bird and which include the environmental location of such behaviours. This chapter then considers how mapping sentences and facet theory may be used to understand complex avian cognitive behaviour when it is thought of in this sophisticated sense. I expand my interest in bird behaviour from the focussed and simplistic research design and analysis I presented in the last chapter that addressed a single behaviour, and I consider the substantive content of this book, complex bird behaviour. I then outline what I mean by complex bird behaviour using the mapping sentence to structure my presentation of avian behaviour and cognition. I offer details of complex avian behaviour that have been used as indicators of avian cognitive abilities in the literature. These are perspective taking, which involves birds in behaving in a manner that acknowledges the viewpoint of another bird; experience projection, a form of behaviour that scientists have investigated that involves the use of memory to determine future skilled behaviour; co-operative problem-solving that requires a bird to solve problems through co-operating with the same or a different species animal; and insight, which is a behaviour or skill that has been the subject of avian research where a bird uses insight to create novel tools or instruments and then employ the tools to solve a specific task or problem that the tool has not previously been used to solve. Throughout this chapter my presentation of complex avian behaviour and cognition will not simply be a list of these activities and how these have been the subject of research, although I will commence by doing this. Instead, I will use the mapping sentence to structure my presentation, and these will be used to demonstrate how my approach can be employed to provide a research framework for investigating complex cognitive activities in birds.