Does urbanization facilitate individual recognition of humans by house sparrows?

Abstract

Wild animals living in proximity to humans may benefit from recognizing people individually and adjusting their behaviour to the potential risk or gain expected from each person. Although several urban-dwelling species exhibit such skills, it is unclear whether this is due to pre-existing advanced cognitive abilities of taxa predisposed for city life or arises specifically in urban populations either by selection or through ontogenetic changes facilitated by exposure to humans. To test these alternatives, we studied populations of house sparrows (Passer domesticus) along the urbanization gradient. We manipulated the birds' experience (hostile or not) associated with humans with different faces (masks) and measured their behavioural responses to the proximity of each person. Contrary to our expectations, we found that while rural birds showed less fear of the non-hostile than of the hostile or an unfamiliar person, urban birds made no distinction. These results indicate that house sparrows are less able to recognize individual humans or less willing to behaviourally respond to them in more urbanized habitats with high human population density. We propose several mechanisms that may explain this difference, including reduced pay-off of discrimination due to a low chance of repeated interactions with city people, or a higher likelihood that city people will ignore them.

Great tits take greater risk toward humans and sparrowhawks in urban habitats than in forests

“…This lack of differentiation between the familiar hostile and unfamiliar person indicates that great tits either did not recognize the people or perceived them as equally threatening. Although the ability to recognize individual humans is often associated with particularly intelligent species such as corvids (Lee et al, ; Marzluff et al, ), it has also been demonstrated in other birds like passerines and pigeons (Belguermi et al, ; Levey et al, ; Vincze et al, ). Great tits often perform well in learning and problem‐solving tasks (Preiszner et al, ; Sasvári, ); thus, if individual recognition of humans is part of a more general set of cognitive abilities, great tits are likely to have the cognitive capacity for it.…”

“…Instead, we suggest that differentiating between humans might have little ecological relevance for both urban and forest great tits, for two reasons. First, recognizing individual humans may be the most relevant in habitats with low but non‐negligible human population density (such as farmlands) where repeated encounters with the same individual humans are likely (Vincze et al, ). In forest habitats, encounters with humans are very uncommon, whereas in cities, only few of the many people may be encountered repeatedly, at least in public areas like our study sites.…”

“…Second, as great tits are perceived as pleasant birds by the public, hostility toward them is probably rare in both habitat types. Some species where the ability to differentiate between hostile and non‐hostile humans was demonstrated, such as pigeons (Belguermi et al, ) and house sparrows (Vincze et al, ), have long evolutionary history with humans who have often persecuted them as pests; thus, recognizing hostile people may be more beneficial to them.…”

Does Innovation Success Influence Social Interactions? An Experimental Test in House Sparrows

“…; Papp et al , Vincze et al. ). The experiment presented here is built on this previous work and utilizes some of the data used in a previous paper that examined the predictors of individual problem‐solving performance (Bókony et al.…”

“…This study is part of a more general project that explores the causes and consequences of behavioural flexibility in birds (B okony et al 2014;Papp et al 2015. The experiment presented here is built on this previous work and utilizes some of the data used in a previous paper that examined the predictors of individual problem-solving performance (B okony et al 2014(B okony et al , Papp et al 2015. However, the two papers report two entirely different sets of analyses investigating separate research questions, and there is no overlap in the presented results.…”