Marie Bourjade

To Beg, or Not to Beg? That Is the Question: Mangabeys Modify Their Production of Requesting Gestures in Response to Human’s Attentional States

Background Although gestural communication is widespread in primates, few studies focused on the cognitive processes underlying gestures produced by monkeys. Methodology/Principal Findings The present study asked whether red-capped mangabeys (Cercocebus torquatus) trained to produce visually based requesting gestures modify their gestural behavior in response to human’s attentional states. The experimenter held a food item and displayed five different attentional states that differed on the basis of body, head and gaze orientation; mangabeys had to request food by extending an arm toward the food item (begging gesture). Mangabeys were sensitive, at least to some extent, to the human’s attentional state. They reacted to some postural cues of a human recipient: they gestured more and faster when both the body and the head of the experimenter were oriented toward them than when they were oriented away. However, they did not seem to use gaze cues to recognize an attentive human: monkeys begged at similar levels regardless of the experimenter’s eyes state. Conclusions/Significance These results indicate that mangabeys lowered their production of begging gestures when these could not be perceived by the human who had to respond to it. This finding provides important evidence that acquired begging gestures of monkeys might be used intentionally.

Shared or unshared consensus for collective movement? Towards methodological concerns

In vertebrate groups of stable composition, particular categories f individuals have traditionally been thought to lead decisionaking occurring around group movements (e.g. males: Feist and c Cullough, 1976; Watanabe and Brotoisworo, 1982; females: oole et al., 1988; Erhart and Overdorff, 1999; higher-ranking indiiduals: Mech, 1970; Feist and Mc Cullough, 1976; Rasa, 1983). o date, the prevalence of dominant individuals in the leading of roup movements has been amongst the most popular hypotheses iscussed: leadership would be the best way for these individuls to gain priority for their own needs, and be first to gain access o coveted resources (King and Cowlishaw, 2009). Accepting this ypothesis would imply that the probability of each group member oving would depend simply on the departure of a single indiidual, namely the one which consistently moves first. However, ery little information is available to date about how these indiiduals, often referred as “leaders” by most of the authors (Feist nd Mc Cullough, 1976; Norton, 1986; Lamprecht, 1992; Watts, 000; Leca et al., 2003), indeed influence decision-making proesses in the context of group departures (see Sueur and Petit, 010, for details). Researchers studying group decisions in animals re now aware that systematic investigations of decision-making rocesses are lacking. There is also a growing awareness of much ore participative processes in nature (Conradt and Roper, 2003, 005, 2009; Leca et al., 2003; Kerth et al., 2006). In this conext, Conradt and Roper (2005) described “shared consensus”, a henomenon observed in social groups when all or some group embers actively take part in decision-making. This means that he whole group takes part in a single, collectively chosen activity,

Adult-Young Ratio, a Major Factor Regulating Social Behaviour of Young: A Horse Study

Background Adults play an important role in regulating the social behaviour of young individuals. However, a few pioneer studies suggest that, more than the mere presence of adults, their proportions in social groups affect the social development of young. Here, we hypothesized that aggression rates and social cohesion were correlated to adult-young ratios. Our biological model was naturally-formed groups of Przewalski horses, Equus f. przewalskii, varying in composition. Methodology/Principal Findings We investigated the social interactions and spatial relationships of 12 one- and two-year-old Przewalski horses belonging to five families with adult-young ratios (AYR) ranging from 0.67 to 1.33. We found striking variations of aggression rates and spatial relationships related to the adult-young ratio: the lower this ratio, the more the young were aggressive, the more young and adults segregated and the tighter the young bonded to other young. Conclusion/Significance This is the first study demonstrating a correlation between adult-young ratios and aggression rates and social cohesion of young individuals in a naturalistic setting. The increase of aggression and the emergence of social segregation in groups with lower proportions of adults could reflect a related decrease of the influence of adults as regulators of the behaviour of young. This social regulation has both theoretical and practical implications for understanding the modalities of the influence of adults during ontogeny and for recommending optimal settings, as for instance, for schooling or animal group management.

On the significance of adult play: what does social play tell us about adult horse welfare?

Play remains a mystery and adult play even more so. More typical of young stages in healthy individuals, it occurs rarely at adult stages but then more often in captive/domestic animals, which can imply spatial, social and/or feeding deprivations or restrictions that are challenging to welfare, than in animals living in natural conditions. Here, we tested the hypothesis that adult play may reflect altered welfare states and chronic stress in horses, in which, as in several species, play rarely occurs at adult stages in natural conditions. We observed the behaviour (in particular, social play) of riding school horses during occasional outings in a paddock and measured several stress indicators when these horses were in their individual home boxes. Our results revealed that (1) the number of horses and rates of adult play appeared very high compared to field report data and (2) most stress indicators measured differed between ‘players’ and ‘non-players’, revealing that most ‘playful’ animals were suffering from more chronic stress than ‘non-playful’ horses. Frequency of play behaviour correlated with a score of chronic stress. This first discovery of a relationship between adult play and altered welfare opens new lines of research that certainly deserves comparative studies in a variety of species.

Is Leadership a Reliable Concept in Animals? An Empirical Study in the Horse

Leadership is commonly invoked when accounting for the coordination of group movements in animals, yet it remains loosely defined. In parallel, there is increased evidence of the sharing of group decisions by animals on the move. How leadership integrates within this recent framework on collective decision-making is unclear. Here, we question the occurrence of leadership in horses, a species in which this concept is of prevalent use. The relevance of the three main definitions of leadership – departing first, walking in front travel position, and eliciting the joining of mates – was tested on the collective movements of two semi-free ranging groups of Przewalski horses (Equus ferus przewalskii). We did not find any leader capable of driving most group movements or recruiting mates more quickly than others. Several group members often displayed pre-departure behaviours at the same time, and the simultaneous departure of several individuals was common. We conclude that the decision-making process was shared by several group members a group movement (i.e., partially shared consensus) and that the leadership concept did not help to depict individual departure and leading behaviour across movements in both study groups. Rather, the different proxies of leadership produced conflicting information about individual contributions to group coordination. This study discusses the implications of these findings for the field of coordination and decision-making research.

Training experience in gestures affects the display of social gaze in baboons' communication with a human

Gaze behaviour, notably the alternation of gaze between distal objects and social partners that accompanies primates’ gestural communication is considered a standard indicator of intentionality. However, the developmental precursors of gaze behaviour in primates’ communication are not well understood. Here, we capitalized on the training in gestures dispensed to olive baboons (Papio anubis) as a way of manipulating individual communicative experience with humans. We aimed to delineate the effects of such a training experience on gaze behaviour displayed by the monkeys in relation with gestural requests. Using a food-requesting paradigm, we compared subjects trained in requesting gestures (i.e. trained subjects) to naïve subjects (i.e. control subjects) for their occurrences of (1) gaze behaviour, (2) requesting gestures and (3) temporal combination of gaze alternation with gestures. We found that training did not affect the frequencies of looking at the human’s face, looking at food or alternating gaze. Hence, social gaze behaviour occurs independently from the amount of communicative experience with humans. However, trained baboons—gesturing more than control subjects—exhibited most gaze alternation combined with gestures, whereas control baboons did not. By reinforcing the display of gaze alternation along with gestures, we suggest that training may have served to enhance the communicative function of hand gestures. Finally, this study brings the first quantitative report of monkeys producing requesting gestures without explicit training by humans (controls). These results may open a window on the developmental mechanisms (i.e. incidental learning vs. training) underpinning gestural intentional communication in primates.

Investigating determinants of yawning in the domestic (Equus caballus) and Przewalski (Equus ferus przewalskii) horses.

Yawning is rare in herbivores which therefore may be an interesting group to disentangle the potential function(s) of yawning behaviour. Horses provide the opportunity to compare not only animals living in different conditions but also wild versus domestic species. Here, we tested three hypotheses by observing both domestic and Przewalski horses living in semi-natural conditions: (i) that domestic horses may show an elevated rate of yawning as a result of the domestication process (or as a result of life conditions), (ii) that individuals experiencing a higher level of social stress would yawn more than individuals with lower social stress and (iii) that males would yawn more often than females. The study involved 19 Przewalski horses (PHs) and 16 domestic horses (DHs) of different breeds living in large outdoor enclosures. The results showed that there was no difference between the PH and DH in yawning frequency (YF). PHs exhibited much higher levels of social interactions than DHs. There was a positive correlation between yawning frequency and aggressive behaviours in PHs, especially males, supporting the idea that yawning may be associated with more excitatory/stressful social situations. A correlation was found between yawning frequency and affiliative behaviours in DHs, which supports the potential relationship between yawning and social context. Finally, the entire males, but not castrated males, showed much higher levels of yawning than females in both species. The intensity (rather than the valence) of the interaction may be important in triggering yawning, which could therefore be a displacement activity that helps reduce tension.

Social interaction is associated with changes in infants’ motor activity

Background In developmental research, infants are commonly assumed to be early stakeholders in interactions with their caregivers. The tools that infants can use to interact with others vary from visual contact to smiling or vocalizing, and also include motor activity. However, surprisingly few studies have explored how the nature and context of social interactions affect infants’ engagement in motor activity. Methods We investigated the kinematic properties of foot and face movements produced by 11 infants aged between 5 and 9 months during six contrasting dyadic episodes (i.e. passive presence of a stranger or the infants mother, weak or intense interaction with the stranger/mother as she sings a nursery play song). Results The infants’ face and foot motor activity was significantly reduced during the interactive episodes, compared with the episodes without any interaction, in both the mother and stranger conditions. Furthermore, the level of their motor activity was significantly lower in the stranger condition than in the mother one for some parameters. Conclusion These results are in line with those reported by previous studies and confirm the relevance of using motor activity to delineate the early forms of interactive episodes in infants.

Acquisition of joint attention by olive baboons gesturing toward humans

Joint attention is a core ability of human social cognition which broadly refers to the coordination of attention with both the presence and activity of social partners. In both human and non-human primates, joint attention can be assessed from behaviour; gestures and gaze alternation between the partner and a distal object are standard behavioural manifestations of joint attention. Here we examined the acquisition of joint attention in olive baboons as a function of their individual experience of a human partner’s attentional states during training regimes. Eleven olive baboons (Papio anubis) were observed during their training to perform food-requesting gestures, which occurred either by (1) a human facing them (face condition), or (2) by a human positioned in profile who never turned to them (profile condition). We found neither gestures nor gaze alternation were present at the start of the training but rather developed over the training period. Only baboons in the face condition showed an increase in the number of gaze alternations, and their gaze pattern progressively shifted to a coordinated sequence in which gazes and gestures were coordinated in time. In contrast, baboons trained by a human in profile showed significantly less coordination of gazes with gestures but still learned to request food with their gestures. These results suggest that the partner’s social attention plays an important role in the acquisition of visual joint attention and, to a lesser extent, in gesture learning in baboons. Interspecific interactions appear to offer rich opportunities to manipulate and thus identify the social contexts in which socio-communicative skills develop.

Baboon (Papio anubis) chimeric face processing by human (Homo sapiens) judges: Influence of stimuli complexity on the perception of oro-facial asymmetries.

Two methodologies have traditionally been used to measure hemispheric specialization for perception and expression of emotions in human and nonhuman primates. The first refers to objective measures, that is, measures of area and length of facial features, and the second concerns subjective “measures,” that is, assessment of chimeric faces by human judges. We proposed a refined approach to the subjective assessment of hemispheric specializations, which aims at delimiting methodological issues in the study of orofacial asymmetries. The study focused on a baboon threat orofacial expression, which has led to discordant results according to the methodology used (Wallez & Vauclair, 2011, 2013). We presented human participants with two sets of chimeric stimuli varying the regions of the face likely to be processed. The whole face set was composed of classical chimeric faces, and the upper face set was made of chimeric faces for which the lower part was blurred. The purpose of this new procedure was to shed light on the perception process of baboon faces by human participants during a free-viewing chimeric task. Results showed a concomitant influence of the chimera structure depending on the order of the presentation of the set, revealing a training effect in our human judges. These factors combined together allowed the appearance of an overall left–left chimeric choice by human judges (i.e., which indicates a right hemisphere involvement in baboon threat expression). These findings bring novel insights into the study of orofacial asymmetries in nonhuman primates by human judgments.