Antarctic skuas recognize individual humans

Abstract

Recent findings report that wild animals can recognize individual humans. To explain how the animals distinguish humans, two hypotheses are proposed. The high cognitive abilities hypothesis implies that pre-existing high intelligence enabled animals to acquire such abilities. The pre-exposure to stimuli hypothesis suggests that frequent encounters with humans promote the acquisition of discriminatory abilities in these species. Here, we examine individual human recognition abilities in a wild Antarctic species, the brown skua (Stercorarius antarcticus), which lives away from typical human settlements and was only recently exposed to humans due to activities at Antarctic stations. We found that, as nest visits were repeated, the skua parents responded at further distances and were more likely to attack the nest intruder. Also, we demonstrated that seven out of seven breeding pairs of skuas selectively responded to a human nest intruder with aggression and ignored a neutral human who had not previously approached the nest. The results indicate that Antarctic skuas, a species that typically inhabited in human-free areas, are able to recognize individual humans who disturbed their nests. Our findings generally support the high cognitive abilities hypothesis, but this ability can be acquired during a relatively short period in the life of an individual as a result of interactions between individual birds and humans.

Exclusion in the field: wild brown skuas find hidden food in the absence of visual information

“…late sexual and physical maturity, longevity, high innovation rate, kelptoparasitism, and generalism (Chester 1993;Furness et al 2020;Spear et al 1999). However, to date, we are aware of only one previous experimental cognitive work showing the capacity of skuas to recognize human faces (Lee et al 2016). Research is needed to explore further the cognitive abilities of this promising new model system.…”

Animal Cognition in an Urbanised World

“…While these examples suggest that the ability to classify stimuli and generalise to future encounters may be useful in urban habitats, it is currently unclear whether urban environments especially favour these abilities. Indeed, the ability to classify cues indicating food or danger is likely to be useful in any environment (e.g., Lee et al, 2016). The specific demands on classification and recognition therefore depend on how the urban environment differs from organisms' ancestral environment, in terms of the number and diversity of potential stimuli, how frequently these stimuli are encountered, and how reliably they predict events or outcomes.…”

The Role of Animal Cognition in Human-Wildlife Interactions

“…It may be expected that only species or populations that have historically been in regular contact with humans would have an ability to recognize individual humans. A study of Antarctic skuas ( Stercorarius antarcticus ) suggests that this may not be the case ( Lee et al, 2016 ). Skuas on King George Island, which has been colonized by humans only relatively recently, were repeatedly approached at their nests by one of two “intruders.” On the fourth visit, the intruder was joined by a neutral human, whom the skuas had not seen before, and both wore identical clothes.…”