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With the tremendous increase in human population the demand of milk and meat is also increasing. This necessitates the centralization of animal husbandry sector both in developed and developing countries. More production has to be taken from fewer animals which seem to be possible only with the usage of advanced technologies. Earlier this seems to be impractical due to non-availability of such technologies to the farmers. Nowadays, computational power is very cheap and easily available. Artificial intelligence is one such field of computer science devoted to creating computing machines and systems that perform operations analogous to human learning and decision-making. Artificial intelligence includes the machine learning, deep learning and predictive analytics. With the implementation of various software and algorithms, the production has been increased from the farm animals along with better management and welfare. This paper illustrates the application domains and maneuvering of artificial intelligence in the animal husbandry sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monitoring marine mammals is of broad interest to governments and individuals around the globe. Very high-resolution (VHR) satellites hold the promise of reaching remote and challenging locations to fill gaps in our knowledge of marine mammal distribution. The time has come to create an operational platform that leverages the increased resolution of satellite imagery, proof-of-concept research, advances in cloud computing, and machine learning to monitor the world's oceans. The Geospatial Artificial Intelligence for Animals (GAIA) initiative was formed to address this challenge with collaborative innovation from government agencies, academia, and the private sector. In this paper, we share lessons learned, challenges faced, and our vision for how VHR satellite imagery can enhance our understanding of cetacean distribution in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the interwar period, biologists employed a diverse set of holistic approaches that were connected to different research methodologies. Against this background, this article explores attempts in the 1920s and 1930s to negotiate quantitative and qualitative methods in the field of neurophysiology. It focuses on the work of two scientists on different sides of the Atlantic: the Dutch animal psychologist and physiologist Frederik J.J. Buytendijk and the American neuropsychologist Karl S. Lashley, specifically analyzing their critical correspondence, 1929–1932, on the problems surrounding the term intelligence. It discusses the inexplicable anomalies in neurophysiology as well as the reliability of quantitative and qualitative methods. While in his laboratory work Lashley adhered to a strictly analytic approach, Buytendijk tried to combine quantitative methods with phenomenological and hermeneutical approaches. The starting point of their discussion is Lashley's monograph on Brain Mechanisms and Intelligence (1929) and the rat experiments discussed therein. Buytendijk questioned the viability of the maze-learning method and the use of statistics to test intelligence in animals; he reproduced Lashley's experiments and then confronted Lashley with his critical findings. In addition to elucidating this exchange, this paper will, more generally, shed light on the nature of the disagreements and shared assumptions prevalent among interwar neurophysiologists. In turn, it contributes to historiographical debates on localization and functionalism and the discrepancy between analytic (quantitative) and interpretative (qualitative) approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Due to climate change and human interference, many species are now without habitats and on the brink of extinction. Zoos and other conservation spaces allow for non-human animal preservation and public education about endangered species and ecosystems. Monitoring the health and well-being of animals in care, while providing species-specific environments, is critical for zoo and conservation staff. In order to best provide such care, keepers and researchers need to gather as much information as possible about individual animals and species as a whole. This paper focuses on existing technology to monitor animals, providing a review on the history of technology, including recent technological advancements and current limitations. Subsequently, we provide a brief introduction to our proposed novel computer software: an artificial intelligence software capable of unobtrusively and non-invasively tracking individuals' location, estimating position, and analyzing behaviour. This innovative technology is currently being trained with orangutans at the Toronto Zoo and will allow for mass data collection, permitting keepers and researchers to closely monitor individual animal welfare, learn about the variables impacting behaviour and provide additional enrichment or interventions accordingly. With many advancements, technologies are now capable of recording non-human animals' location, heart rate, and movement, often using a device that is physically attached to the monitored animals. However, to our knowledge, there is currently no technology that is able to do this unobtrusively and non-invasively. Here, we review the history of technology for use with animals, recent technological advancements, current limitations, and a brief introduction to our proposed novel software. Canadian tech mogul EAIGLE Inc. has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) software solution capable of determining where people and assets are within public places or attractions for operational intelligence, security, and health and safety applications. The solution also monitors individual temperatures to reduce the potential spread of COVID-19. This technology has been adapted for use at the Toronto Zoo, initiated with a focus on Sumatran orangutans (Pongo abelii) given the close physical similarity between orangutans and humans as great ape species. This technology will be capable of mass data collection, individual identification, pose estimation, behaviour monitoring and tracking orangutans' locations, in real time on a 24/7 basis, benefitting both zookeepers and researchers looking to review this information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an abstract of the study `A comparative analysis of the effects of behavioral enrichment and the utilization of tools within and between captive groups of western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) and Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus pygmaeus),' by B.W. Wright. Behavioral enrichment for captive gorillas and orangutans; Ability of apes and monkeys to use tools.

Since the question 'Do chimpanzees have a theory of mind?' was raised in 1978, scientists have attempted to answer it, and philosophers have attempted to clarify what the question means and whether it has been, or could be, answered. Mindreading (a term used mostly by philosophers) or theory of mind (a term preferred by scientists) refers to the ability to attribute mental states to other individuals. Some versions of the question focus on whether chimpanzees engage in belief reasoning or can think about false belief, and chimpanzees have been given nonverbal versions of the false belief moved-object task (also known as the Sally-Anne task). Other versions of the question focus on whether chimpanzees understand what others can see, and chimpanzees can pass those tests. From this data, some claim that chimpanzees know something about perceptions, but nothing about belief. Others claim that chimpanzees do not understand belief or perceptions, because the data fails to overcome the 'logical problem,' and permits an alternative, non-mentalistic interpretation. I will argue that neither view is warranted. Belief reasoning in chimpanzees has focused on examining false belief in a moved object scenario, but has largely ignored other functions of belief. The first part of the paper is an argument for how to best understand belief reasoning and offers suggestion for future investigation. The second part of the paper addresses and diffuses the 'logical problem.' I conclude that chimpanzees may reason about belief, but that there is already compelling evidence that they reason about perceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the question of how the brain of an animal achieves cognitive integration--that is to say how it manages to bring its fullest resources to bear on an ongoing situation. To fully exploit its cognitive resources, whether inherited or acquired through experience, it must be possible for unanticipated coalitions of brain processes to form. This facilitates the novel recombination of the elements of an existing behavioural repertoire, and thereby enables innovation. But in a system comprising massively many anatomically distributed assemblies of neurons, it is far from clear how such openended coalition formation is possible. The present paper draws on contemporary findings in brain connectivity and neurodynamics, as well as the literature of artificial intelligence, to outline a possible answer in terms of the brain's most richly connected and topologically central structures, its so-called connective core. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even during its heyday, American behaviourist psychology was repeatedly criticized for the lack of diversity in its experimental subjects, with its almost exclusive focus on rats and pigeons. This paper revisits this debate by examining the rise and fall of a once promising alternative laboratory animal and model of intelligence, the raccoon. During the first two decades of the twentieth century, psychological investigations of the raccoon existed on the borderlands between laboratory experimentation, natural history and pet-keeping. Moreover, its chief advocate, Lawrence W. Cole, inhabited the institutional and geographic borderlands of the discipline. This liminality ultimately worked against the raccoon’s selection as a standardized model during the behaviourist era. The question of raccoon intelligence was also a prominent topic in the contemporaneous debates over the place of sentiment in popular nature writing. Although Cole and others argued that the raccoon provided unique opportunities to study mental attributes such as curiosity and attention, others accused the animal’s advocates of sentimentalism, anthropomorphism and nature faking. The paper examines the making and unmaking of this hybrid scientific culture as the lives of experimenters and animals became entangled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Comparative research on the origins of human language often focuses on a limited number of language-related cognitive functions or anatomical structures that are compared across species. The underlying assumption of this approach is that a single or a limited number of factors may crucially explain how language appeared in the human lineage. Another potentially fruitful approach is to consider human language as the result of a (unique) assemblage of multiple cognitive and anatomical components, some of which are present in other species. This paper is a first step in that direction. It focuses on the baboon, a non-human primate that has been studied extensively for years, including several brain, anatomical, cognitive and cultural dimensions that are involved in human language. This paper presents recent data collected on baboons regarding (1) a selection of domain-general cognitive functions that are core functions for language, (2) vocal production, (3) gestural production and cerebral lateralization, and (4) cumulative culture. In all these domains, it shows that the baboons share with humans many cognitive or brain mechanisms which are central for language. Because of the multidimensionality of the knowledge accumulated on the baboon, that species is an excellent nonhuman primate model for the study of the evolutionary origins of language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Raman spectroscopy is a powerful method for estimating the molecular structure of a target that can be adapted for biomedical analysis given its non-destructive nature. Inflammatory skin diseases impair the skin's barrier function and interfere with the patient's quality of life. There are limited methods for non-invasive and objective assessment of skin inflammation. We examined whether Raman spectroscopy can be used to predict skin inflammation with high sensitivity and specificity when combined with artificial intelligence (AI) analysis. Inflammation was chemically induced in mouse ears, and Raman spectra induced by a 785 nm laser were recorded. A principal component (PC) analysis of the Raman spectra was performed to extract PCs with the highest percentage of variance and to estimate the statistical score. The accuracy in predicting inflammation based on the Raman spectra with or without AI analysis was assessed using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. We observed some typical changes in the Raman spectra upon skin inflammation, which may have resulted from vasodilation and interstitial oedema. The estimated statistical scores based on spectral changes correlated with the histopathological changes in the skin. The ROC curve based on PC2, which appeared to include some spectral features, revealed a maximum accuracy rate of 80.0% with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.864. The AI analysis improved the accuracy rate to 93.1% with an AUC of 0.972. The current findings demonstrate that the combination of Raman spectroscopy with near-infrared excitation and AI analysis can provide highly accurate information on the pathology of skin inflammation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, published in the journal Advanced Robotics, focuses on the topic of adaptive motion in animals and machines. It highlights the intelligence of animals and their ability to navigate and thrive in changing environments, supported by a combination of reflexive and cognitive processes. The article discusses how studying these interactions has led to the development of adaptive robotic behaviors, providing insights into animal behavior and natural intelligence. The special issue includes five papers that showcase cutting-edge research in this field, covering topics such as flying robots with flapping wings, quadrupedal locomotion, humanoid robots, musculoskeletal structures, and robotic sensory processing. The authors express their gratitude to the contributors and reviewers for their valuable contributions to the publication. [Extracted from the article]

There is a recent popular reconstruction of Wittgenstein's thinking about animal minds, according to which animals and humans share a set of expressive abilities, prior to, and independent of, the onset of linguistic-cum-conceptual abilities; a reconstruction that in turn entails a duality of expression and linguistic-cum-conceptual abilities, in adult humans. This paper contends that the reconstruction is implausible and at odds with Wittgenstein's thinking, regarding both the developing minds of children and the minds of non-linguistic animals. Instead, it argues that Wittgenstein's thinking is shaped by an anthropological outlook, according to which linguistic abilities signal the existence of a distinctive human form of life, within which animals do not belong, but into which children are progressively introduced. As a result, there is neither a shared set of expressive abilities in animals, children and adult humans; nor a duality of expression and linguistic-cum-conceptual abilities in humans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge of animal sentience is fundamental to many disciplines and imperative to the animal welfare movement. In this review, we examined what is being explored and discussed, regarding animal sentience, within the scientific literature. Rather than attempting to extract meaning from the many complex and abstract definitions of animal sentience, we searched over two decades of scientific literature using a peer-reviewed list of 174 keywords. The list consisted of human emotions, terminology associated with animal sentience, and traits often thought to be indicative of subjective states. We discovered that very little was actually being explored, and instead there was already much agreement about what animals can feel. Why then is there so much scepticism surrounding the science of animal sentience? Sentience refers to the subjective states of animals, and so is often thought to be impossible to measure objectively. However, when we consider that much of the research found to accept and utilise animal sentience is performed for the development of human drugs and treatment, it appears that measuring sentience is, after all, not quite as impossible as was previously thought. In this paper, we explored what has been published on animal sentience in the scientific literature and where the gaps in research lie. We drew conclusions on the implications for animal welfare science and argued for the importance of addressing these gaps in our knowledge. We found that there is a need for more research on positive emotional states in animals, and that there is still much to learn about taxa such as invertebrates. Such information will not only be useful in supporting and initiating legislative amendments but will help to increase understanding, and potentially positive actions and attitudes towards animals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Sphex story is an anecdote about a female digger wasp that at first sight seems to act quite intelligently, but subsequently is shown to be a mere automaton that can be made to repeat herself endlessly. Dennett and Hofstadter made this story well known and widely influential within the cognitive sciences, where it is regularly used as evidence that insect behavior is highly rigid. The present paper discusses the origin and subsequent empirical investigation of the repetition reported in the Sphex story. The repetition was first observed by Henri Fabre in 1879, and the last empirical study I found was published in 1985. In contrast to the story's clear message, the actual results have always been equivocal: the endless repetition is not standard. In addition, this repetition itself has become a minor aside in the literature on digger wasps when put in the perspective of many other examples of adaptiveness and flexibility. Nevertheless, the story and its message have to this day persevered within the cognitive sciences. For some reason, the counterevidence has been neglected time and again. The paper closes by presenting two different but compatible hypotheses that could explain why humans keep repeating this particular anecdote. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Many traditional attempts to show that nonhuman animals are deserving of moral consideration have taken the form of an argument by analogy. However, arguments of this kind have had notable weaknesses and, in particular, have not been able to convince two kinds of skeptics. One of the most important weaknesses of these arguments is that they fail to provide theoretical justifications for why particular physiological similarities should be considered relevant. This paper examines recent empirical research on pain and, in particular, explores the implications of the dissociation between the sensory and the affective pain pathways. It is argued that these results show that the belief that nonhuman animals experience pain in a morally relevant way is reasonable, though not certain. It is further argued that the proposal to explore the relationship between consciousness and various forms of learning challenges the aforementioned skeptics to provide more physiological details for their claims that nonhuman mammals are probably not conscious. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Relational cognition—the ability to infer relationships that generalize to novel combinations of objects—is fundamental to human and animal intelligence. Despite this importance, it remains unclear how relational cognition is implemented in the brain due in part to a lack of hypotheses and predictions at the levels of collective neural activity and behavior. Here we discovered, analyzed, and experimentally tested neural networks (NNs) that perform transitive inference (TI), a classic relational task (if A > B and B > C, then A > C). We found NNs that (i) generalized perfectly, despite lacking overt transitive structure prior to training, (ii) generalized when the task required working memory (WM), a capacity thought to be essential to inference in the brain, (iii) emergently expressed behaviors long observed in living subjects, in addition to a novel order-dependent behavior, and (iv) expressed different task solutions yielding alternative behavioral and neural predictions. Further, in a large-scale experiment, we found that human subjects performing WM-based TI showed behavior inconsistent with a class of NNs that characteristically expressed an intuitive task solution. These findings provide neural insights into a classical relational ability, with wider implications for how the brain realizes relational cognition. Author summary: The ability to infer underlying relationships in the world—or "relational cognition"—is fundamental to both human and animal intelligence. Despite this importance, it remains generally unknown how relational abilities are realized in the brain. Addressing this lack of knowledge requires generating testable hypotheses regarding the activity of neurons when relationships are inferred. In this study, we discovered artificial neural networks that perform transitive inference (TI), a classic relational task that has the form "if A > B and B > C, then A > C." We found that these neural networks show behavioral patterns that match those seen in humans and animals performing TI, and, further, performed TI in different ways, thereby providing different testable hypotheses regarding neural activity. We also conducted a large-scale behavioral study in humans, which suggested systematic differences in biological accuracy across the neural networks. These findings provide new hypotheses and insights regarding how TI, and relational abilities more generally, can be realized in the brain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The behaviour and posture of animals are closely related to their physiological conditions. To some extent, we can judge their physiological activity by their behaviour and posture. Sheep’s behaviour change significantly during illness or parturition, these behaviours are composed of simple postures, such as standing, eating, lying down. This paper takes the YOLOv3 algorithm as the core technology. It extracts features of sheep’s behaviour and posture through constructing the deep network structure, and uses the pyramid feature fusion and multi-scale prediction to detect the behaviour and posture of sheep. The experimental results show that the training model can effectively detect the three behaviours and postures of sheep: standing, eating, and lying down. The mean average precision is 92.47%. This experiment can be used as a basic technology to judge the physiological activities of sheep. It can be applied to the intelligence of animal husbandry, and has a broad application prospect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though animal ethics in sport obviously applies most urgently to cases of animals at mortal risk (e.g., hunting and bullfighting) or vulnerable to various types of abuse (e.g., doping and harmful training practices), less obvious domains bear scrutiny as well. Here I examine whether we can strictly take not just riders but horses to be players in equine sports. There is an apparent tension in the concept of equestrian prowess, a peculiar blend of skills and attitudes, between regarding horses as subjects of persuasion or collaboration and treating them as objects of control. As our understanding of animal cognition and behaviour continues to improve, it becomes increasingly clear that animal intelligence and agential capacities are far greater than we formerly presumed. In this light, using Suits's theory of games, I argue that horses are game players that sometimes consent (or assent) and sometimes refuse to play equine sports. Drawing on recent accounts of horse-rider partnership and on my own equestrian background, I conclude by sketching a utopian vision of what equine sports could be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among equestrians the "natural" training methods of horses are gaining widespread popularity due to their spectacular efficiency. Underlying philosophy of trainers - founders of different "natural horsemanship training" (NHT) schools, along with other not well documented statements includes argumentation of solely welfare- and human-friendly effects of NHT in the horse. The aim of this review was to screen scientific papers related to NHT to answer the question whether „natural“ training methods may actually exert only positive effects upon equine mental state and human-horse relationship. It appears that NHT trainers may reduce stress and emotional tension and improve learning processes as they appropriately apply learning stimuli. Basing on revised literature it can be concluded that training is successful provided that [i] the strength of the aversive stimulus meets sensitivity of an individual horse, [ii] the aversive stimulus is terminated at a right moment to avoid the impression of punishment, and [iii] the animal is given enough time to assess its situation and make an independent decision in the form of adequate behavioural reaction. Neglecting any of these conditions may lead to substantial emotional problems, hyperactivity, or excessive fear in the horse-human relationship, regardless of the training method. However, we admit that the most successful NHT trainers reduce aversive stimulation to the minimum and that horses learn quicker with fear or stress reactions, apparently decreasing along with training process. Anyway, NHT should be acknowledged for absolutely positive role in pointing out the importance of proper stimulation in the schooling and welfare of horses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the twentieth century, animal species from less developed regions of the world, regions whose ecosystems had been devastated by European conquest and intervention, have now invaded the west. The manner in which the media has negotiated the advance of such invasive species uncovers how guilt, fear, and paranoia surface within national identities. This paper focuses upon the manner in which Americans rhetorically constructed the threat of the Africanized honeybee as this insect swept north across Latin America and began to threaten the American Southwest. Two narrative tropes are readily apparent when reading popular and even scientific discussions of this threat from the late 1970s through the next several decades. The first metaphor involves military terminology, such as this quote from Greg Flakus' 1993 history of the invasion: "The first shots fired in the war on the Africanized bees in Mexico came from researchers and apiculture experts who derided the government plan as 'an insect Maginot line' ... One news magazine featured a derisive cartoon showing a bee nuzzling up against a Berlin-style wall" (64). This quote references both World War II and the Cold War in historicizing societal fears. Imbuing bees with military precision and tactics was a common method of demonizing them as a threat during this time period. A less common, although no less powerful trope, was illegal immigration, where the bees were linked not only due to their Hispanic origins but also in their method of border crossing (brought over in the back of trucks) and in perceived threats to the agriculture industry, where these bees would outcompete the "native" workers (bees that, ironically, derived from Europe). These two tropes, and others like them, demonstrate the manner in which American society framed the threat from this organism by employing pre-existing sociological narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has long been maintained that Descartes believed animals are nothing more than complex living machines. Throughout the centuries many have criticized Descartes for holding such a doctrine, for it has been used by others to justify a total disregard for the well-being of animals. However, a trend in Cartesian scholarship suggests that Descartes's reputation for justifying cruelty to animals is undeserved because Descartes apparently lacked confidence in the truth of his own doctrine. This paper reviews the arguments calling for a revision of the standard interpretation, examines Descartes's statements about animal intelligence and consciousness, considers his treatment of animals, and reaffirms the standard interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses papers in the special issue of "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences" devoted to cognition in animals, including a paper which proposes a cognitive architecture that can generate solutions to problems in the physical world in the case of a New Caledonian crow or a rook, and a paper offering an associative-cybernetic theory for associative learning in animals.

A traditional view of cognition is that it involves an internal process that represents, tracks or predicts an external process. This is not a general characteristic of all complex neural processing or feedback control, but rather implies specific forms of processing giving rise to specific behavioural capabilities. In this paper, I will review the evidence for such capabilities in insect navigation and learning. Do insects know where they are, or do they only know what to do? Do they learn what stimuli mean, or do they only learn how to behave? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common view in philosophy is that the way human beings reason is not only gradually better, but that our way of reasoning is fundamentally distinctive. Findings in the psychology of reasoning challenge the traditional view according to which human beings reason in accordance with the laws of logic and probability theory, but rather suggest that human reasoning consists in the application of domain specific rules of thumb similar to those that we ascribe to some intelligent non-human animals as well. However, this view on human reasoning is unable to explain human accomplishments like technological innovations or scientific progress. David Papineau offers a theory of human theoretical rationality that is consistent with the psychological view on human reasoning but that can also explain how humans sometimes are able to transcend the limitations of their biologically quick and dirty modes of thought and thereby reach a high level of accuracy. Papineau claims that the abilities that constitute theoretical rationality are unique to the human species and thus, that human reasoning is fundamentally distinctive after all. In this paper I am going to discuss to what extent these abilities in fact are unique to our species and whether this theoretical rationality can be called an anthropological difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern humans spend much of their time deploying a very rarefied form of intelligence, manipulating abstract symbols while their muscled body is mostly inert. Other animals, in a constant and largely unmediated relation with their earthly surroundings, think with the whole of their bodies. This kind of distributed sentience, this intelligence in the limbs, is especially keen in the case of birds of flight. Unlike most creatures of the ground, who must traverse an opaque surface of only two-plus dimensions as we make our way through the world, a soaring bird continually adjusts minute muscles in its wings to navigate an omnidimensional plenum of currents and interference patterns that alter from moment to moment. Flight itself may usefully be considered as a kind of thinking-as a sort of gliding within the mind. Moreover, since birds are commonly the most mobile inhabitants of any woodland, able to fly over and scan numerous events occurring on the ground, their varied utterances provide a crucial source of information for many other animals. This paper, written as a philosophic essay, explores avian cognition from a phenomenological standpoint. It then reflects upon the vocalizations of birds-noting the major role that such avian calls, cries, and songs have played in the development of human culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Animal groups represent magnificent archetypes of self-organized collective behavior. As such, they have attracted enormous interdisciplinary interest in the last years. From a mechanistic point of view, animal aggregations remind physical systems of particles or spins, where the individual constituents interact locally, giving rise to ordering at the global scale. This analogy has fostered important research, where numerical and theoretical approaches from physics have been applied to models of self-organized motion. In this paper, we discuss how the physics methodology may provide precious conceptual and technical instruments in empirical studies of collective animal behavior. We focus on three-dimensional groups, for which empirical data have been extremely scarce until recently, and describe novel experimental protocols that allow reconstructing aggregations of thousands of individuals. We show how an appropriate statistical analysis of these large-scale data allows inferring important information on the interactions between individuals in a group, a key issue in behavioral studies and a basic ingredient of theoretical models. To this aim, we revisit the approach we recently used on starling flocks, and apply it to a much larger data set, never analyzed before. The results confirm our previous findings and indicate that interactions between birds have a topological rather than metric nature, each individual interacting with a fixed number of neighbors irrespective of their distances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When presented with structured sequences to learn, do nonhuman animals abstract and learn relational information-do they induce and learn rules? This paper provides an overview of the current evidence that bears on this question from our recent behavioral and psychobiological research on rat sequential learning. Evidence is presented that rats are sensitive to hierarchical structure in response sequences, that phrasing can bias rats' perception of pattern structure, that rats induce pattern structures from nonadjacent items in "interleaved" patterns, and that rule learning processes are active concurrently with other learning processes. The paper also describes work on the psychobiology of sequential learning that shows that multiple concurrent cognitive processes can be dissociated by MK-801, an NMDA receptor antagonist, and by other drug and lesion manipulations. Taken together, the results indicate that rats use rule learning processes concurrently with associative learning processes in a wide variety of sequential learning problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the recent literature on meta-cognitive processes in non-human animals, arguing that in each case the data admit of a simpler, purely first-order, explanation. The topics discussed include the alleged monitoring of states of certainty and uncertainty, knowledge-seeking behavior in conditions of uncertainty, and the capacity to know whether or not the information needed to solve some problem is stored in memory. The first-order explanations advanced all assume that beliefs and desires come in various different strengths, or degrees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research in animal intelligence suggests to some that humans are different only in degree from animals, possibly eroding the traditional theological doctrine of the imago dei . In this paper, several critical boundary areas between humans and animals are examined for scientific evidence about human distinctiveness. These include communication and language capacity, cultural creativity, spirituality, and ethical capacity. Chimpanzee language studies and research in Neanderthal mentality are examined as the closest known natural approximations to human communication and intelligence. The implications of the findings are explored in relation to human culture, ethics, and spirituality in a context consistent with evolutionary continuity. Aspects of human uniqueness are apparent, can be fruitfully encompassed in the idea of personhood, and are coherent with Trinitarian theology's anthropological focus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current theory frames animal dispersal as an outcome of potentially complex, multi-factorial interactions and tradeoffs that may vary across individual, sex, rank, age, social group, species, habitat and time. Empirical data relevant to a broad range of the potential costs and benefits incurred by dispersal are, not surprisingly, limited for many mammals and other vertebrates. Here we present the first report on dispersal in a wild population of the Neotropical primate Saimiri sciureus (Primates: Cebidae). Long-term observations (1998-2001) of this squirrel monkey represent part of a broader study of the forest community at Raleighvallen in the Central Suriname Nature Reserve. These new dispersal records for S. sciureus are combined with comparable information from congeners, S. boliviensis in Peru and S. oerstedii in Costa Rica. The resulting three-way compilation includes the ecological, social and mating context for each congener. Further enhancing the inherent phylogenetic control of a within-genus comparison, these data were collected with the explicit intent of joint analyses, and the study sites for these small, arboreal social mammals are three of the least disturbed extant Neotropical forests in the historical record. Saimiri appears to merit description as the genus with the most diverse set of species dispersal patterns yet documented among mammals. (1) S. sciureus of both sexes undertake dispersal on several to many occasions during their lifetime. Females and immatures commonly transfer between troops. The large portion of male S. sciureus spend their adult years as solitary or peripheral males. Few males attain secure residence in a mixed-sex troop, a prerequisite for mating success. (2) On attainment of sexual maturity, male S. boliviensis emigrate with their same-age cohort, first joining all-male bands, and eventually entering mixed-sex troops with this same natal male birth cohort. Natal female S. boliviensis are philopatric and form cohesive matrilines. Within-troop competition determines each matriline's priority of access to fruit resources. (3) In contrast to both S. sciureus and S. boliviensis, S. oerstedii males are philopatric and maintain tight affiliation with same age-cohort males. Natal female S. oerstedii emigrate as juveniles prior to their first mating season, and may undertake secondary dispersals in subsequent years. Squirrel monkeys represent a genus with realistic prospects of discriminating the costs and benefits germane to species-typical dispersal strategies. To this end, we collate 30 different causal parameters commonly invoked as influencing mammalian dispersal patterns. Each of these factors is assessed separately for possible influence on the empirically determined sex and species differences. We predict the possible consequences of direct and inclusive fitness interactions on dispersal outcomes for future testing with genetic data. Components of Saimiri selective regimes particularly salient to female dispersal strategies include food competition, foraging benefits provided by kin and inbreeding avoidance. Dispersal patterns among male Saimiri are constrained by mate competition and the consequent reproductive skew, in addition to enhanced predation risk during dispersal forays. Little evidence, however, suggests that relative to familiar landscapes, exploitation of novel ranging areas substantially increases foraging costs or predation risk for dispersing squirrel monkeys of either sex. We then compare the species-specific dispersal regimes initially identified with the univariate array of proposed costs and benefits to the tradeoffs predicted by a selection of contemporary multivariate dispersal models. The multivariate models did not, however, improve substantially upon the collective insights on cost-benefit regimes achieved with the univariate hypotheses. Conclusions regarding the selective regimes structuring dispersal among squirrel monkeys are best considered provisional until genetic data become available allowing tests of our inferences concerning kin relationships and population structure of the study populations. In the end, this fine-grained analysis is consistent with contemporary understandings on the costs and benefits structuring dispersal strategies. Yet our findings provide an uncommonly clear demonstration that the outcome of the interaction of individual factors (food competition, mate competition, and inbreeding avoidance) depends in very subtle ways on the natural history of the organism. This text and two companion papers, II. Within-species and local variation and III. Cognition, comprise a monograph on the evolution and ecology of squirrel monkey dispersal patterns. Implications of the various results are relevant to resource and mate competition, inbreeding avoidance and kin-recognition, predation risk, coalition and alliance formation, cognitive capacities required for implementation of dispersal tactics, impacts of pre-Columbian anthropogenic disturbance on extant Neotropical biota, and conservation management, among others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can animals think? How does the cognition of humans differ from that of (other) primates and how does the cognition of primates differ from that of other animals? This paper argues that to explore questions of this kind fruitfully we need a unified conceptual framework within which the cognition of humans and animals could be jointly considered and compared in clear and precise terms. The paper draws attention to the conceptual issues involved in current socio-biological debates and shows that these debates can be clarified by the use of the “natural semantic metalanguage” (“NSM”) developed by the author and colleagues for the investigation and description of meaning. The central idea of the “NSM” theory of language and thought, supported by extensive empirical investigations by a number of researchers, is that despite their enormous diversity, all natural languages share a common core: a small vocabulary of 60 or so “conceptual primes” and a “universal grammar” (the combinatory properties of the primes). The universal conceptual primes and their combinatory properties identified in NSM research are analogous to the chemical elements and their basic combinatorial properties which opened new vistas for Chemistry. This paper shows that the NSM, which has already proved its potential in the study of languages and cultures, can also be an effective tool for exploring communication and cognition of primates and that it offers new perspectives on language acquisition, non-verbal communication, and evolutionary psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews evidence that increases the probability that many animals experience at least simple levels of consciousness. First, the search for neural correlates of consciousness has not found any consciousness-producing structure or process that is limited to human brains. Second, appropriate responses to novel challenges for which the animal has not been prepared by genetic programming or previous experience provide suggestive evidence of animal consciousness because such versatility is most effectively organized by conscious thinking. For example, certain types of classical conditioning require awareness of the learned contingency in human subjects, suggesting comparable awareness in similarly conditioned animals. Other significant examples of versatile behavior suggestive of conscious thinking are scrub jays that exhibit all the objective attributes of episodic memory, evidence that monkeys sometimes know what they know, creative tool-making by crows, and recent interpretation of goal-directed behavior of rats as requiring simple nonreflexive consciousness. Third, animal communication often reports subjective experiences. Apes have demonstrated increased ability to use gestures or keyboard symbols to make requests and answer questions; and parrots have refined their ability to use the imitation of human words to ask for things they want and answer moderately complex questions. New data have demonstrated increased flexibility in the gestural communication of swarming honey bees that leads to vitally important group decisions as to which cavity a swarm should select as its new home. Although no single piece of evidence provides absolute proof of consciousness, this accumulation of strongly suggestive evidence increases significantly the likelihood that some animals experience at least simple conscious thoughts and feelings. The next challenge for cognitive ethologists is to investigate for particular animals the content of their awareness and what life is actually like, for them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process by which ant scouts move a group of nestmates toward a newly discovered food site is called recruitment. In this paper, I report on the interactions between scouts and nestmates that result in a graded recruitment response to graded food quality in the fire ant, Solenopsis invicta. Twelve experimental groups composed of 100 fire ant workers and 50 fire ant larvae were established (three experimental groups per colony × four stock colonies). Each experimental group was placed in a shallow, artificial nest with a glass cover. After a 48-h period of food deprivation, experimental groups were exposed to one of three concentrations of sugar water. Behavioral interactions between scouts and nestmates in each group were videotaped at 10× magnification for 20 min. Detailed behavioral data on a total of 120 scouts (10 scouts per experimental group) and ~1,000 nestmates (~90 nestmates per experimental group) were transcribed from the videotapes using standard play and frame-by-frame techniques. Throughout the recruitment process, scouts employed six discrete behaviors to inform nestmates of the location and quality of a food site. Scouts laid incoming trails, waggled their heads, increased walking tempo, stroked nestmates with their antennae, advertised with a brief food display, and led groups of nestmates to the food site by laying outgoing trails. In turn, nestmates assessed the food sample with antennae, then responded to or resisted recruitment based on the quality of food advertised, their employment status and their level of hunger. In summary, recruitment was an emergent property based on competent supply and demand decisions made face-to-face inside the nest rather than on the trail or at the food site. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews behavioural, neurological and cognitive correlates of innovation at the individual, population and species level, focusing on birds and primates. Innovation, new or modified learned behaviour not previously found in the population, is the first stage in many instances of cultural transmission and may play an important role in the lives of animals with generalist or opportunistic lifestyles. Within-species, innovation is associated with low neophobia, high neophilia, and with high social learning propensities. Indices of innovatory propensities can be calculated for taxonomic groups by counting the frequency of reports of innovation in published literature. These innovation rate data provide a useful comparative measure for studies of behavioural flexibility and cognition. Innovation rate is positively correlated with the relative size of association areas in the brain, namely the hyperstriatum ventrale and neostriatum in birds, and the neocortex and striatum in primates. Innovation rate is also positively correlated with the reported variety of tool use, as well as interspecific differences in learning. Current evidence thus suggests similar patterns of cognitive evolution in primates and birds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are there aspects of human intelligence that artificial intelligence cannot emulate? Harry Collins uses a distinction between tacit aspects of knowing, which cannot be digitized, and explicit aspects, which can be, to formulate an answer to this question. He postulates three purported areas of the tacit and argues that only "collective tacit knowing" cannot be adequately digitized. I argue, first, that Collins's approach rests upon problematic Cartesian assumptions—particularly his claim that animal knowing is strictly deterministic and, thus, radically different from human knowing. I offer evidence that human linguistic intelligence depends upon embodied forms of animal intelligence. Second, I suggest the development of deep-learning algorithms means that Collins's mimesis assumption (that successfully realized explicit instructions to machines are needed to confirm human-artificial intellectual equivalence) is no longer appropriate; equivalent accomplishment of goals is what counts (as he also concedes). However, persons must realize and integrate many goals and also deal with failures; a general-purpose AI capable of integrating all the needs and goals of human existence resists development. Third, I explain how Michael Polanyi's understanding of tacit knowing, quite different than Collins's concept of the tacit, exemplifies features that are missing in contemporary AI. I make use of evolutionary theory, studies of animal intelligence, biological insights, individual construction of meaning, and notions of human responsibility to argue for the existence of three categories that distinguish human from artificial intelligence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Photovoltaic panels present an economical and environmentally friendly renewable energy solution, with advantages such as emission-free operation, low maintenance, and noiseless performance. However, their nonlinear power-voltage curves necessitate efficient operation at the Maximum Power Point (MPP). Various techniques, including Hill Climb algorithms, are commonly employed in the industry due to their simplicity and ease of implementation. Nonetheless, intelligent approaches like Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) offer enhanced accuracy in tracking efficiency with reduced oscillations. The PSO algorithm, inspired by collective intelligence and animal swarm behavior, stands out as a promising solution due to its efficiency and ease of integration, relying only on standard current and voltage sensors commonly found in these systems, not like most intelligent techniques, which require additional modeling or sensoring, significantly increasing the cost of the installation. The primary contribution of this study lies in the implementation and validation of an advanced control system based on the PSO algorithm for real-time Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) in a commercial photovoltaic system to assess its viability by testing it against the industry-standard controller, Perturbation and Observation (P&O), to highlight its advantages and limitations. Through rigorous experiments and comparisons with other methods, the proposed PSO-based control system's performance and feasibility have been thoroughly evaluated. A sensitivity analysis of the algorithm's search dynamics parameters has been conducted to identify the most effective combination for optimal real-time tracking. Notably, experimental comparisons with the P&O algorithm have revealed the PSO algorithm's remarkable ability to significantly reduce settling time up to threefold under similar conditions, resulting in a substantial decrease in energy losses during transient states from 31.96% with P&O to 9.72% with PSO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a comprehensive methodology and simulation framework will be reviewed, designed in order to study the emergence of adaptive and intelligent behavior in generic soft-bodied creatures. By incorporating artificial evolutionary and developmental processes, the system allows to evolve complete creatures (brain, body, developmental properties, sensory, control system, etc.) for different task environments. Whether the evolved creatures will resemble animals or plants is in general not known a priori, and depends on the specific task environment set up by the experimenter. In this regard, the system may offer a unique opportunity to explore differences and similarities between these two worlds. Different material properties can be simulated and optimized, from a continuum of soft/stiff materials, to the interconnection of heterogeneous structures, both found in animals and plants alike. The adopted genetic encoding and simulation environment are particularly suitable in order to evolve distributed sensory and control systems, which play a particularly important role in plants. After a general description of the system some case studies will be presented, focusing on the emergent properties of the evolved creatures. Particular emphasis will be on some unifying concepts that are thought to play an important role in the emergence of intelligent and adaptive behavior across both the animal and plant kingdoms, such as morphological computation and morphological developmental plasticity. Overall, with this paper, we hope to draw attention on set of tools, methodologies, ideas and results, which may be relevant to researchers interested in plant-inspired robotics and intelligence.

Environmental stressors can negatively affect avian cognitive abilities, potentially reducing fitness, for example by altering response to predators, display to mates, or memory of locations of food. We expand on current knowledge by investigating the effects of dietary mercury, a ubiquitous environmental pollutant and known neurotoxin, on avian cognition. Zebra finches Taeniopygia guttata were dosed for their entire lives with sub-lethal levels of mercury, at the environmentally relevant dose of 1.2 parts per million. In our first study, we compared the dosed birds with controls of the same age using tests of three cognitive abilities: spatial memory, inhibitory control, and color association. In the spatial memory assay, birds were tested on their ability to learn and remember the location of hidden food in their cage. The inhibitory control assay measured their ability to ignore visible but inaccessible food in favor of a learned behavior that provided the same reward. Finally, the color association task tested each bird's ability to associate a specific color with the presence of hidden food. Dietary mercury negatively affected spatial memory ability but not inhibitory control or color association. Our second study focused on three behavioral assays not tied to a specific skill or problem-solving: activity level, neophobia, and social dominance. Zebra finches exposed to dietary mercury throughout their lives were subordinate to, and more active than, control birds. We found no evidence that mercury exposure influenced our metric of neophobia. Together, these results suggest that sub-lethal exposure to environmental mercury selectively harms neurological pathways that control different cognitive abilities, with complex effects on behavior and fitness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Piaget's theory of human cognitive development was applied to three gorillas at the Oklahoma City Zoo by operationalizing sensorimotor intelligence. The gorillas were of different ages, ranging from one to five years old. Previous research has shown that non-human primates complete Piaget's stages in the same order as humans, albeit not until later ages. These studies were conducted to determine how the cognitive development of non-human primates compares to that of humans, which is important in exploring how humans evolved their level of cognition. Two hypotheses were tested: 1) The gorillas will achieve Piaget's six substages of sensorimotor intelligence in the same order as humans; and 2) The gorillas will exhibit a slower rate of cognitive development as defined in Piaget's theory compared to humans. Observational behavioral data were collected via 30-m focal continuous samples for a total of 17 h, and their behaviors were categorized. Chi-square analysis revealed the gorillas generally completed the substages in the order predicted by Piaget's model (one-year-old gorilla: df = 5, x = 20, p = 0.00125; three-year-old gorilla: df = 5, x = 13.706, p = 0.018; five-year-old gorilla: df = 5, x = 11.444, p = 0.043). The gorillas also exhibited slower achievement of the substages, not achieving each substage until later ages compared to humans. Thus, the null hypothesis that there was no significant difference in the number of substages achieved by each gorilla was rejected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the paradigm of machine culture as an extension to machine intelligence is introduced. This new concept is modelled based on animal intelligence and culture. The example of orca intelligence and culture is considered as orcas possess in addition to skills allowing them to reach preys, the ability to transmit their culture from generation to generation. The orca intelligence is studied and then simulated to design an algorithm called Orca Algorithm (OA). OA consists in modelling the orca lifestyle and in particular the orcas social organization, echolocation behaviour and hunting techniques. In order to integrate the cultural dimension, OA was hybridized with the Cultural Algorithm (CA) to get an algorithm called Orca Cultural Algorithm (OCA). OCA was tested on 22 benchmark problems of the literature to evaluate its performance. Extensive experiments were first performed to set the algorithm parameters prior to measure its effectiveness and efficiency. In a second stage, OCA was adapted to discrete problems and applied to the maze game with four level of complexity. Additional experiments were held to compare the designed algorithm with recent state‐of‐the‐art evolutionary algorithms. The overall obtained results are very promising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]