Bee-eaters ( Merops orientalis ) respond to what a predator can see

Watve, Milind; Thakar, J.; Kale, Abhijit; Puntambekar, Shweta S.; Shaikh, I.S.; Vaze, Kaustubh; Jog, Maithili; Paranjape, S. Y.

doi:10.1007/s10071-002-0155-6

Cited by 44 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 13 publications

(18 reference statements)

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“…The presence and size of the beak of a female may be a useful visual feature to evaluate mates in terms of the efficacy of feeding and parasite control. The finding that the manipulation of the eyes did not have as strong an effect as the beak appears to be counterintuitive because previous studies showed that avian eye models triggered robust reactions [Blest, 1957;Scaife, 1976;Emery, 2000;Watve et al, 2002]. The main difference between these studies and the study by Patton et al [2010] is whether stimulus eyes belong to dangerous predators or harmless conspecifics.…”

Section: Significance Of the Facementioning

confidence: 79%

Avian Visual Behavior and the Organization of the Telencephalon

2010

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Birds have excellent visual abilities that are comparable or superior to those of primates, but how the bird brain solves complex visual problems is poorly understood. More specifically, we lack knowledge about how such superb abilities are used in nature and how the brain, especially the telencephalon, is organized to process visual information. Here we review the results of several studies that examine the organization of the avian telencephalon and the relevance of visual abilities to avian social and reproductive behavior. Video playback and photographic stimuli show that birds can detect and evaluate subtle differences in local facial features of potential mates in a fashion similar to that of primates. These techniques have also revealed that birds do not attend well to global configural changes in the face, suggesting a fundamental difference between birds and primates in face perception. The telencephalon plays a major role in the visual and visuo-cognitive abilities of birds and primates, and anatomical data suggest that these animals may share similar organizational characteristics in the visual telencephalon. As is true in the primate cerebral cortex, different visual features are processed separately in the avian telencephalon where separate channels are organized in the anterior-posterior axis roughly parallel to the major laminae. Furthermore, the efferent projections from the primary visual telencephalon form an extensive column-like continuum involving the dorsolateral pallium and the lateral basal ganglia. Such a column-like organization may exist not only for vision, but for other sensory modalities and even for a continuum that links sensory and limbic areas of the avian brain. Behavioral and neural studies must be integrated in order to understand how birds have developed their amazing visual systems through 150 million years of evolution.

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Section: Significance Of the Facementioning

confidence: 79%

Avian Visual Behavior and the Organization of the Telencephalon

2010

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“…At first sight, we might suppose that the responses to the orientation of the predator, to whether the eyes are covered and to the direction of the predator's eye-gaze suggest that starlings are able to recognize when a predator is looking at them and infer the likelihood that they will consequently be chased. Indeed, the idea that 'from a gaze cue the animal understands where and what a human can see' is the sort of interpretation that has been offered in some studies of animal responses to human gaze cues (including Smitha et al 1999;Watve et al 2002;Kaminski et al 2004;Bräuer et al 2005). While we do not deny the interesting possibility that starlings might have a cognitive appreciation of the knowledge state of their predator through recognizing the predator's visual perspective, this type of explanation may not be necessary.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Subtle cues of predation risk: starlings respond to a predator's direction of eye-gaze

et al. 2008

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For prey animals to negotiate successfully the fundamental trade-off between predation and starvation, a realistic assessment of predation risk is vital. Prey responses to conspicuous indicators of risk (such as looming predators or fleeing conspecifics) are well documented, but there should also be strong selection for the detection of more subtle cues. A predator's head orientation and eye-gaze direction are good candidates for subtle but useful indicators of risk, since many predators orient their head and eyes towards their prey as they attack. We describe the first explicit demonstration of a bird responding to a live predator's eye-gaze direction. We present wild-caught European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) with human 'predators' whose frontal appearance and gaze direction are manipulated independently, and show that starlings are sensitive to the predator's orientation, the presence of eyes and the direction of eye-gaze. Starlings respond in a functionally significant manner: when the predator's gaze was averted, starlings resumed feeding earlier, at a higher rate and consumed more food overall. By correctly assessing lower risk and returning to feeding activity earlier (as in this study), the animal gains a competitive advantage over conspecifics that do not respond to the subtle predator cue in this way.

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“…Hampton 1994;Watwe et al 2002) that birds may be sensitive to the visual behaviour of humans. In response to human look-cues, ravens changed their orientation immediately and in the predicted direction.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ravens,Corvus corax, follow gaze direction of humans around obstacles

Bugnyar

Stöwe

Heinrich

2004

Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B

197

142

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The ability to follow gaze (i.e. head and eye direction) has recently been shown for social mammals, particularly primates. In most studies, individuals could use gaze direction as a behavioural cue without understanding that the view of others may be different from their own. Here, we show that hand-raised ravens not only visually co-orient with the look-ups of a human experimenter but also reposition themselves to follow the experimenter's gaze around a visual barrier. Birds were capable of visual co-orientation already as fledglings but consistently tracked gaze direction behind obstacles not before six months of age. These results raise the possibility that sub-adult and adult ravens can project a line of sight for the other person into the distance. To what extent ravens may attribute mental significance to the visual behaviour of others is discussed.

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Bee-eaters ( Merops orientalis ) respond to what a predator can see

Cited by 44 publications

References 13 publications

Avian Visual Behavior and the Organization of the Telencephalon

Avian Visual Behavior and the Organization of the Telencephalon

Subtle cues of predation risk: starlings respond to a predator's direction of eye-gaze

Ravens,Corvus corax, follow gaze direction of humans around obstacles

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