Learning and motor inhibitory control in crows and domestic chickens.

Claudia A F Wascher,Georgine Szipl,Katie Allen

doi:10.1098/rsos.210504

Abstract

Cognitive abilities allow animals to navigate through complex, fluctuating environments. In the present study, we tested the performance of a captive group of eight crows, Corvus corone and 10 domestic chickens, Gallus gallus domesticus, in the cylinder task, as a test of motor inhibitory control and reversal learning as a measure of learning ability and behavioural flexibility. Four crows and nine chickens completed the cylinder task, eight crows and six chickens completed the reversal learning experiment. Crows performed better in the cylinder task compared with chickens. In the reversal learning experiment, species did not significantly differ in the number of trials until the learning criterion was reached. The performance in the reversal learning experiment did not correlate with performance in the cylinder task in chickens. Our results suggest crows to possess better motor inhibitory control compared with chickens. By contrast, learning performance in a reversal learning task did not differ between the species, indicating similar levels of behavioural flexibility. Interestingly, we describe notable individual differences in performance. We stress the importance not only to compare cognitive performance between species but also between individuals of the same species when investigating the evolution of cognitive skills.

Highlights

Cognitive abilities allow animals to navigate through complex, fluctuating environments [1] and critically affect the survival and fitness of individuals [2]
We investigated the performance of crows and domestic chickens in two cognitive tasks, the cylinder task as a test of motor inhibitory control and reversal learning as a measure of learning ability and behavioural flexibility
Individual performance in the cylinder task ranged from 30% to 100% correct trials in crows and 10 to 40% correct trials in domestic chickens

Summary

Introduction

Cognitive abilities allow animals to navigate through complex, fluctuating environments [1] and critically affect the survival and fitness of individuals [2]. Phasianus colchicus, for whom a previously learned association between a visual cue and a food reward was perturbed to simulate environmental uncertainty, performed worse in an inhibitory control task compared with control individuals [5]. A common test of behavioural inhibition is the cylinder task In this detour task, individuals are trained to take a food reward from an opaque cylinder or tube, which is open at both ends. The focal individual’s ability to inhibit the motor impulse to try to reach the reward through the long side of the cylinder, which forms a transparent barrier between the individual and the reward, and detour to take the reward from the open ends is assessed [6]. Based on tests in humans, primates and rodents, this view has recently been contested [3,20,21,22,23]

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