Economic Decision-Making in Parrots

Krasheninnikova, Anastasia; Höner, Friederike; O'Neill, Laurie; Penna, Elisabetta; Bayern, Auguste Marie Philippa von

doi:10.1038/s41598-018-30933-5

Cited by 20 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Parrots have been shown to wait for better rewards for up to 15 minutes 36–38 , albeit they apparently struggle to inhibit motor responses in certain other task 39 . Nonetheless, the same species investigated here have been shown capable of economic decision-making, which involved refraining from taking immediately available rewards when waiting was more profitable 40 . Thus, parrots should be equipped with the underlying cognitive abilities to pay attention to reward quality and control their actions, at least in non-social setups.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Parrots do not show inequity aversion

Krasheninnikova

Brucks

Buffenoir³

et al. 2019

Sci Rep

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Inequity aversion, the negative reaction to unequal treatment, is considered a mechanism for stabilizing cooperative interactions between non-kin group members. However, this might only be adaptive for species that switch cooperative partners. Utilizing a comparative approach, inequity aversion has been assessed in many mammalian species and recently also in corvids and one parrot species, kea, revealing mixed results. To broaden our knowledge about the phylogenetic distribution of inequity aversion, we tested four parrot species in the token exchange paradigm. We varied the quality of rewards delivered to dyads of birds, as well as the effort required to obtain a reward. Blue-headed macaws and African grey parrots showed no reaction to being rewarded unequally. The bigger macaws were less willing to exchange tokens in the “unequal” condition compared to the “equal high” condition in which both birds obtained high quality rewards, but a closer examination of the results and the findings from the control conditions reveal that inequity aversion does not account for it. None of the species responded to inequity in terms of effort. Parrots may not exhibit inequity aversion due to interdependence on their life-long partner and the high costs associated with finding a new partner.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Parrots do not show inequity aversion

Krasheninnikova

Brucks

Buffenoir³

et al. 2019

Sci Rep

Self Cite

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“…For any of these hypotheses to be possible, parrots need to be able to make intertemporal choices (i.e. sacrifice short-term satisfaction to obtain a higher reward in the future), which have already been detected for this bird group 39 . Overall, waste may have longer-time effects on wasted plants than expected, but further studies are needed to validate this hypothesis.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The extent, frequency and ecological functions of food wasting by parrots

Sebastián‐González

Hiraldo

Blanco

et al. 2019

Sci Rep

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Anecdotic citations of food wasting have been described for parrots, but we lack a comprehensive knowledge about the extent of this behaviour, and its ecological and evolutionary implications. Here, we combine experimental and observational approaches to evaluate the spatial, temporal, typological and taxonomic extent of food wasting by parrots, to identify the ecological and evolutionary factors driving food wasting, and to assess the incidence of two ecological functions derived from food wasting, such as food facilitation to other animal species and secondary seed dispersal. We found that food wasting is a widespread behaviour found in all the studied parrot species. However, the proportion of food wasted differed among species and throughout the year. Parrots wasted more food during the non-breeding season, when they relied on exotic plants and on unripe fruits or seeds. We also recorded 86 animal species feeding on the food wasted by parrots, 27 of which potentially acted as secondary seed dispersers. Overall, our study emphasizes the universality of food wasting among parrots, and the important implications that this behaviour may have for the species involved (i.e., the parrot, the plant, the other species feeding on wasted food), and for the functioning of the whole ecosystem.

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“…Such approach has significant value as it gives us evidence of the universal character of mechanisms underlying economic behavior. Indeed, according to many neuroeconomists animal models are an "indispensable complement to the model on human economic decision-making"; there are similarities in economic and evolutionary theories of human and animal decision-making, as the optimality principle is that both classes of theories have in common (Kalenscher and Wingerden, 2011;Krasheninnikova, Höner and O'Neill , 2018).…”

Section: Glimcher's Economics Of Neural Activity: Dreaming On a Unifimentioning

confidence: 99%

Neuroeconomics: New Heart for Economics or New Face of Economic Imperialism

Koshovets¹,

Тарас²

2019

JIS

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Neuroeconomics is often seen as the result of neuroscience expansion into economics. However, economics itself has a substantial background of epistemic intervention by spreading rational choice modelling over sociology, political science and part of biology. Neuroeconomics contributes considerably to the economic imperialism progress by developing an important tendency. We would describe it as deeper universalization of economic (rational) behavior by its naturalization and transmuting it in completely biochemical phenomenon. The paper reviews the Paul Glimcher's project of neuroeconomics as a specific version of economic imperialism claiming that the brain can be modeled using the principles of standard economic theory. Considering neuroeconomics as a methodological approach, the authors show that behind the ideas of reducibility of key economics' concepts such as "choice" or "utility" to neuroscience data and of "direct transferring" the concepts from economics into neuroscience lies the intention to reinterpret and rewrite neuroscience and other life sciences in terms of economics. It could be done if one would demonstrate the identity of brain and logical or computer structure and if the mathematical models taken from economics would hold the economic semantics while applying to the brain activity. Turning "choice" and its "economic relatives" into the key concepts for interpreting the neural structures and their activity would open the way for neuroeconomics to become an imperial science on human, life or even nature itself.

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Economic Decision-Making in Parrots

Cited by 20 publications

References 41 publications

Parrots do not show inequity aversion

Parrots do not show inequity aversion

The extent, frequency and ecological functions of food wasting by parrots

Neuroeconomics: New Heart for Economics or New Face of Economic Imperialism

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