Crows and other birds in the family Corvidae regularly share information to learn the identity and whereabouts of dangerous predators, but can they use social learning to solve a novel task for a food reward? Here, we examined the factors affecting the ability of 27 wild‐caught American crows to solve a common string pulling task in a laboratory setting. We split crows into two groups; one group was given the task after repeatedly observing a conspecific model the solution and the other solved in the absence of conspecific models. We recorded the crows’ estimated age, sex, size, body condition, level of nervousness, and brain volume using DICOM images from a CT scan. Although none of these variables were statistically significant, crows without a conspecific model and large brain volumes consistently mastered the task in the minimum number of days, whereas those with conspecific models and smaller brain volumes required varying and sometimes a substantial number of days to master the task. We found indirect evidence that body condition might also be important for motivating crows to solve the task. Crows with conspecific models were no more likely to initially solve the task than those working the puzzle without social information, but those that mastered the task usually copied the method most frequently demonstrated by their knowledgeable neighbors. These findings suggest that brain volume and possibly body condition may be factors in learning new tasks and that crows can use social learning to refine their ability to obtain a novel food source, although they must initially learn to access it themselves.
Social interaction among animals can occur under many contexts, such as during foraging. Our knowledge of the regions within an avian brain associated with social interaction is limited to the regions activated by a single context or sensory modality. We used 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) to examine American crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos) brain activity in response to conditions associated with communal feeding. Using a paired approach, we exposed crows to either a visual stimulus (the sight of food), an audio stimulus (the sound of conspecifics vocalizing while foraging) or both audio/visual stimuli presented simultaneously and compared to their brain activity in response to a control stimulus (an empty stage). We found two regions, the nucleus taenia of the amygdala (TnA) and a medial portion of the caudal nidopallium, that showed increased activity in response to the multimodal combination of stimuli but not in response to either stimulus when presented unimodally. We also found significantly increased activity in the lateral septum and medially within the nidopallium in response to both the audio-only and the combined audio/visual stimuli. We did not find any differences in activation in response to the visual stimulus by itself. We discuss how these regions may be involved in the processing of multimodal stimuli in the context of social interaction.
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