The Ability of North Island Robins to Discriminate between Humans Is Related to Their Behavioural Type

Abstract

Animals are able to learn to identify persistent threats to themselves and their offspring. For example, birds are able to quickly learn to discriminate between humans that have previously threatened their nests from humans with whom they have had no prior experience. However, no study has yet examined whether a bird's ability to discriminate between humans is related to the bird's underlying behavioural type. In this study, we examined whether there were differences among North Island (NI) robins (Petroica longipes), based on their underlying behavioural type, in their abilities to discriminate between familiar and novel human observers. Using a simple feeding experiment, we timed how long it took birds to attack a food item placed next to an observer on each of 7 days. On the eighth day, a different observer timed the birds. We found that birds could be split into two behaviour types based on their attack behaviour: fast attackers (latencies <20 sec) and slow attackers (latencies >20 secs). Interestingly, the fast birds did not increase their attack latency in response to the novel observer whereas the slow attackers did. This result, for the first time, demonstrates that a bird's ability to discriminate between humans can vary among birds based on their behavioural type.

Animal Cognition in an Urbanised World

“…Personality (consistent interindividual differences in behaviour) plays an important role in determining responses to risk (Bell et al, 2009;, and is therefore likely to influence the stimuli that individuals encounter and learn about (Sih and Del Giudice, 2012). The interaction between cognition and personality is complex (Dougherty and Guillette, 2018), but initial empirical studies suggest that personality may play an important role in influencing cognitive performance in urban environments (Barnett et al, 2013;Miranda et al, 2013;Wat et al, 2020). When investigating cognitive performance in urban-dwelling animals, studies should take into account the effects of season, social environment and individual differences in generating withinpopulation variation in information processing, by quantifying the repeatability of behaviour over time and across contexts (Cauchoix et al, 2018).…”

The Application Of Animal Personality In Conservation Biology: Investigating A New Tool In North Island Robin (Petroica longipes)

“…Toutouwai have several characteristics that make them interesting in studying the conservation applications of personality. Their most charismatic yet disadvantageous qualities are their naiveté toward mammals, including humans (Barnett et al, 2013;Jones, 1999;Whitwell et al, 2012). This curious nature means they will voluntarily engage in behavioural and cognitive tasks in the wild (Clark & Shaw, 2018;Shaw et al, , 2019.…”

“…They can also be banded with multiple coloured bands, ensuring individual identity within and between different populations without recapturing animals (Armstrong et al, 2000;Empson & Fastier, 2013). Moreover, there has been previous work under the personality umbrella in toutouwai (Barnett et al, 2013;He et al, 2017) and attempts at the conservation behaviour intervention of anti-predator training in the closely related kakaruwai (Maloney & McLean, 1995;McLean et al, 1999). There have also been several studies on kakaruwai that show populations exposed to introduced mammals can learn to respond with anti-predator behaviours over time , but that this learned behaviour disappears over a short period of time when no longer exposed (Jamieson & Ludwig, 2012;Muralidhar et al, 2019).…”

“…As stated above, personality has been investigated in toutouwai, but only in one experiment published across two articles; Barnett et al (2013) and He et al (2017). Both papers examined latency to attack a mealworm at the feet of a human observer.…”

“…More aversive stimuli in an open space may lead to individuals no longer engaging in a protocol, which may be good for conservation outcome, but will hinder personality or other forms of long term assessment. Furthermore, there may be unintended assessed the repeatability of one behaviour in one task (Barnett et al, 2013;He et al, 2017), whereas, in this study, I assessed multiple behaviours across different tasks validating these behaviours through repeatability testing and factor analysis following the best practices in the field (Chapter 2; Carter et al, 2013;Dingemanse & Wright, 2020;Réale et al, 2007). In the process of quantifying personality, I provide evidence for Réale et al's (2007) assertion that the test being administered is what dictates the personality measured, as behaviours aligned to factors by test context, rather than aligning solely based on being the same behavioural measure.…”