Abstract
Social animals frequently rely on information from other individuals. This can be costly in case the other individual is mistaken or even deceptive. Human infants below 4 years of age show proficiency in their reliance on differently reliable informants. They can infer the reliability of an informant from few interactions and use that assessment in later interactions with the same informant in a different context. To explore whether great apes share that ability, in our study we confronted great apes with a reliable or unreliable informant in an object choice task, to see whether that would in a subsequent task affect their gaze following behaviour in response to the same informant. In our study, prior reliability of the informant and habituation during the gaze following task affected both great apes’ automatic gaze following response and their more deliberate response of gaze following behind barriers. As habituation is very context specific, it is unlikely that habituation in the reliability task affected the gaze following task. Rather it seems that apes employ a reliability tracking strategy that results in a general avoidance of additional information from an unreliable informant.
Highlights
Social animals, including our own species, often rely on information from other individuals
While most interactions with informants occur within species, there are animals that are able to interpret cues and signals even from individuals from other species, such as vervet monkeys responding to starling alarm calls [4] or apes following the gaze of a human [5]
Animals habituate to false alarms over time to avoid exploitation and relying on false information [7]
Summary
Social animals, including our own species, often rely on information from other individuals. Non-human animals rely on information from others in even more serious situations: vervet monkeys for example use alarm calls to warn conspecifics from predators, they even give specific calls for different predators that resemble semantic communication [1], and bees for example do a waggle dance to tell others where to find food [2]. Some species rely on unwittingly offered information, obtained by deducing that information from cues in other animals’ behaviour While most interactions with informants occur within species, there are animals that are able to interpret cues and signals even from individuals from other species, such as vervet monkeys responding to starling alarm calls [4] or apes following the gaze of a human [5]. When animals leave a food source relying on an alarm call announcing a predator, this
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
