Great tits (Parus major) succeed in a mirror mediated spatial location task, but trained birds perform more consistently
(2022) BION02 20212Degree Projects in Biology
- Abstract
- Self-recognition is an advanced cognitive ability that is traditionally investigated by the mirror mark test. However, it has been argued that this test might not be a reliable measure of self-recognition ability, as it may be affected by the mirror understanding of the species. The great tit (Parus major) is one of the many avian species that did not succeed in this test. However, it has never been tested whether great tits understand mirror reflections in the first place. To investigate this, I tested whether great tits were able to do a mirror-mediated location task, where a food reward was hidden in one out of four boxes. To succeed in this test, the great tits needed to be able to understand the correspondence between the location of... (More)
- Self-recognition is an advanced cognitive ability that is traditionally investigated by the mirror mark test. However, it has been argued that this test might not be a reliable measure of self-recognition ability, as it may be affected by the mirror understanding of the species. The great tit (Parus major) is one of the many avian species that did not succeed in this test. However, it has never been tested whether great tits understand mirror reflections in the first place. To investigate this, I tested whether great tits were able to do a mirror-mediated location task, where a food reward was hidden in one out of four boxes. To succeed in this test, the great tits needed to be able to understand the correspondence between the location of an object in real space and the information reflected in the mirror. 18 great tits were evaluated for suitability for this test, by a habituation stage gradually introducing parts of the experiment, to see if they can understand or have the motivation to do what is expecting from them in my experiment. 12 of the 18 birds were found suitable and moved on to the actual test, in which I looked at whether great tits were able to perform the mirror-mediated spatial location task, and whether factors such as sex, environment, and degree of neophobia would influence performance in the test. I also investigated whether training with a simpler two-box setup could increase the performance in the test. 10 out of these 12 great tits succeeded in the task. Male birds were more successful than females. There was also a tendency to effect of training on the performance, as trained individuals had similar performance during all testing days, whereas the untrained individuals significantly declined in performance during later repeats of the test. My results suggest that the great tits are able to understand mirror reflections, thus this does not explain the inability of great tits to perform the mirror mark test. (Less)
- Popular Abstract
- Self-recognition in animals is an ability that has interested researchers for some time now. Originally it was investigated by the use of the mirror mark test, a test where an animal needed to react to a spot on its body that was only visible from a mirror reflection. However, it has been argued that this test might not be a reliable measure of self-recognition ability, as it may be affected by the ability of the species in question to understand reflections in the first place. Many species have been tested for this self-recognition ability, such as chimpanzees, elephants and many bird species. One of the bird species tested was the great tit (Parus major), which is one of the many species that did not succeed in this test. However, it has... (More)
- Self-recognition in animals is an ability that has interested researchers for some time now. Originally it was investigated by the use of the mirror mark test, a test where an animal needed to react to a spot on its body that was only visible from a mirror reflection. However, it has been argued that this test might not be a reliable measure of self-recognition ability, as it may be affected by the ability of the species in question to understand reflections in the first place. Many species have been tested for this self-recognition ability, such as chimpanzees, elephants and many bird species. One of the bird species tested was the great tit (Parus major), which is one of the many species that did not succeed in this test. However, it has never been tested whether great tits understand mirror reflections in the first place, a necessity to understand if animals do not pass the mark test due to a lack of self-recognition or because they just do not understand mirror reflections. To investigate if great tits could understand mirror reflections, I tested whether great tits were able to do a mirror location reflection understanding test (mirror-mediated spatial location task), where a food reward was hidden in one out of four boxes. To succeed in this test, the great tits needed to be able to understand the correspondence between the location of an object in real space and the information reflected in the mirror. 18 great tits were evaluated for suitability for this test, by a habituation stage gradually introducing parts of the experiment, to see if they can understand or have the motivation to do what is expecting from them in my experiment. 12 of the 18 birds were found suitable and moved on to the actual test, in which I looked at whether great tits were able to perform the reflection test, and whether factors such as sex, environment, and degree of neophobia (a fear of novel objects) would influence performance in the test. I also investigated whether training with a simpler two-box setup could increase the performance in the test. 10 out of these 12 great tits succeeded in the task. Male birds were more successful than females. There was also a tendency to effect of training on the performance, as trained individuals had similar performance during all testing days, whereas the untrained individuals significantly declined in performance during later repeats of the test. My results suggest that at least a large proportion of great tits are able to understand mirror reflections. This would mean that the inability of great tits to perform the mirror mark test would thus not be due to an inability to use mirrors. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9102913
- author
- Donker, Bart
- supervisor
-
- Anders Brodin LU
- Ernö Vincze LU
- organization
- course
- BION02 20212
- year
- 2022
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- language
- English
- id
- 9102913
- date added to LUP
- 2022-11-07 15:08:09
- date last changed
- 2022-11-07 15:08:09
@misc{9102913,
abstract = {{Self-recognition is an advanced cognitive ability that is traditionally investigated by the mirror mark test. However, it has been argued that this test might not be a reliable measure of self-recognition ability, as it may be affected by the mirror understanding of the species. The great tit (Parus major) is one of the many avian species that did not succeed in this test. However, it has never been tested whether great tits understand mirror reflections in the first place. To investigate this, I tested whether great tits were able to do a mirror-mediated location task, where a food reward was hidden in one out of four boxes. To succeed in this test, the great tits needed to be able to understand the correspondence between the location of an object in real space and the information reflected in the mirror. 18 great tits were evaluated for suitability for this test, by a habituation stage gradually introducing parts of the experiment, to see if they can understand or have the motivation to do what is expecting from them in my experiment. 12 of the 18 birds were found suitable and moved on to the actual test, in which I looked at whether great tits were able to perform the mirror-mediated spatial location task, and whether factors such as sex, environment, and degree of neophobia would influence performance in the test. I also investigated whether training with a simpler two-box setup could increase the performance in the test. 10 out of these 12 great tits succeeded in the task. Male birds were more successful than females. There was also a tendency to effect of training on the performance, as trained individuals had similar performance during all testing days, whereas the untrained individuals significantly declined in performance during later repeats of the test. My results suggest that the great tits are able to understand mirror reflections, thus this does not explain the inability of great tits to perform the mirror mark test.}},
author = {{Donker, Bart}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Great tits (Parus major) succeed in a mirror mediated spatial location task, but trained birds perform more consistently}},
year = {{2022}},
}