Using social information can be an efficient strategy for learning in a new environment while reducing the risks associated with trial-and-error learning. Whereas social information from conspecifics has long been assumed to be preferentially attended by animals, heterospecifics can also provide relevant information. Because different species may vary in their informative value, using heterospecific social information indiscriminately can be ineffective and even detrimental. Here, we evaluated how selective use of social information might arise at a proximate level in bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) as a result of experience with demonstrators differing in their visual appearance and in their informative value as reward predictors. Bumblebees were first trained to discriminate rewarding from unrewarding flowers based on which type of “heterospecific” (one of two differently painted model bees) was next to each flower. Subsequently, these bumblebees were exposed to a novel foraging context with two live painted bees. In this novel context, observer bumblebees showed significantly more social information-seeking behavior towards the type of bees that had predicted reward during training. Bumblebees were not attracted by paint-marked small wooden balls (moved via magnets) or paint-marked non-pollinating heterospecifics (woodlice; Porcellio laevis) in the novel context, indicating that bees did not simply respond to conditioned color cues nor to irrelevant social cues, but rather had a “search image” of what previously constituted a valuable, versus invaluable, information provider. The behavior of our bumblebees suggests that their use of social information is governed by learning, is selective, and extends beyond conspecifics.

Humans often communicate using body movements like winks, waves, and nods. However, it is unclear how we identify when someone’s physical actions are communicative. Given people’s propensity to interpret each other’s behavior as aimed to produce changes in the world, we hypothesize that people expect communicative actions to efficiently reveal that they lack an external goal. Using computational models of goal inference, we predict that movements that are unlikely to be produced when acting towards the world and, in particular, repetitive ought to be seen as communicative. We find support for our account across a variety of paradigms, including graded acceptability tasks, forced-choice tasks, indirect prompts, and open-ended explanation tasks, in both market-integrated and non-market-integrated communities. Our work shows that the recognition of communicative action is grounded in an inferential process that stems from fundamental computations shared across different forms of action interpretation.

Much of human experience is informed by our ability to attribute mental states to others, a capacity known as theory of mind. While evidence for theory of mind in animals to date has largely been restricted to primates and other large-brained species, the use of ecologically-valid competitive contexts hints that ecological pressures for strategic deception may give rise to components of theory of mind abilities in distantly-related taxonomic groups. In line with this hypothesis, we show that cleaner wrasse (Labroides dimidiatus) exhibit theory of mind capacities akin to those observed in primates in the context of their cooperative cleaning mutualism. These results suggest that ecological pressures for strategic deception can drive human-like cognitive abilities even in very distantly related species.

Metacognition refers to the ability to monitor one’s own mental states. In the current study, we investigate whether domesticated dogs (Canis familiaris) and nondomesticated dingoes (Canis dingo) demonstrate metacognition by seeking information to remedy their own ignorance. In 2 studies, we used a naturalistic information-seeking paradigm in which subjects observed a human experimenter hiding a food reward behind an apparatus. Subjects could seek information by looking through a central window-like section of the apparatus to see where the reward was hidden. In Study 1, we tested whether dogs and dingoes were willing to seek information when interacting with the apparatus, finding that both species readily sought information when it was available to them. Study 2 provided a direct test of whether dogs and dingoes would seek information to rectify their own ignorance. We found evidence that both dogs and dingoes sought out information and were more likely do so when they did not already know where the treat was hidden. These results provide additional evidence suggesting that domesticated dogs seek information in the face of ignorance, as well as the first evidence of similar behavior in a nondomesticated canid.

Decisions about what research is pursued, funded, published, and reported on by the media are often based on what scientific results are perceived as important and interesting. Here, we study one potential cue that scientists and the public may use for evaluating scientific findings—their counterintuitiveness. Two studies establish that counterintuitive findings are perceived as more important and interesting, both by scientists and the public. However, even though judgments of importance predict citations in both samples, counterintuitiveness does not. We argue that these results have implications for scientific institutions and practice.