Differential responses to con- and allospecific visual cues in juvenile ravens (Corvus corax): the ontogeny of gaze following and social predictions

Abstract

Gaze following refers to the ability to co-orient with others’ gaze directions. Ontogenetic studies on gaze following in animals have predominantly used human experimenters as demonstrators. It is, however, likely that developing animals are initially more attuned to individuals from their own species, which might result in differences in the ontogenetic onset of gaze following with human and conspecific demonstrators. “Checking back” is a signature behaviour in the gaze following repertoires of humans, apes, and some Old world monkeys. It is commonly interpreted as a representation of the referentiality of gaze and is thus diagnostic of social predictions. Recently, “checking back” has been discovered in four avian species, suggesting a shared skill among birds. To investigate effects of con- and allospecific demonstrators on gaze following responses, we studied visual co-orientations of four hand-raised juvenile common ravens (Corvus corax) with human and conspecific gaze cues. Moreover, we for the first time investigated “checking back” in ravens and compared the effects of con- and allospecific demonstrators on this behaviour. Ravens followed human and conspecific gaze with no apparent differences in ontogenetic onset, but after significantly longer latencies with human demonstrators. Subjects moreover already checked back at 30 days old and did so significantly more often with conspecific demonstrators. Our findings suggest differences in processing speed and social predictions of human and conspecific gazes, indicating an underlying neurocognitive mechanism attuned to social information gathering from conspecifics. We propose more studies using conspecific demonstrators to reveal the full gaze following potential of a species.