在復(fù)雜的動物社會中,，個體能夠識別群體成員,，了解其社會地位，推斷各自之間的關(guān)系,。可能的相互作用的數(shù)量隨著群體規(guī)模的增加而迅速增加,，所以較大群體的成員不能單純依靠直接相互作用來判斷個體之間的關(guān)系,。這說明,，對群居物種的成員來說，通過評估其他成員之間的相互作用來間接判斷個體關(guān)系可能是很重要的?，F(xiàn)在,，這種“及物”推斷能力首次在非人類動物中發(fā)現(xiàn)了。在一個精巧設(shè)計的實驗中,，研究人員讓實驗動物一對一地碰面,，用單個去殼花生作誘餌。他們發(fā)現(xiàn),，高度社會化的實驗鳥pinyon jays能夠就它們自己相對于那些它們發(fā)現(xiàn)與已知個體發(fā)生相互作用的陌生者的統(tǒng)治地位做出復(fù)雜的推斷,。
Pinyon jays use transitive inference to predict social dominance
GUILLERMO PAZ-Y-MIÑO C1, ALAN B. BOND1, ALAN C. KAMIL1,2 & RUSSELL P. BALDA3
1 Center for Avian Cognition, School of Biological Sciences and
2 Department of Psychology, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska 68588, USA
3 Department of Biological Sciences, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona 86011, USA
Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to A.B.B. ([email protected]) or A.C.K. ([email protected]).
Living in large, stable social groups is often considered to favour the evolution of enhanced cognitive abilities, such as recognizing group members, tracking their social status and inferring relationships among them. An individual's place in the social order can be learned through direct interactions with others, but conflicts can be time-consuming and even injurious. Because the number of possible pairwise interactions increases rapidly with group size, members of large social groups will benefit if they can make judgments about relationships on the basis of indirect evidence. Transitive reasoning should therefore be particularly important for social individuals, allowing assessment of relationships from observations of interactions among others. Although a variety of studies have suggested that transitive inference may be used in social settings, the phenomenon has not been demonstrated under controlled conditions in animals. Here we show that highly social pinyon jays (Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus) draw sophisticated inferences about their own dominance status relative to that of strangers that they have observed interacting with known individuals. These results directly demonstrate that animals use transitive inference in social settings and imply that such cognitive capabilities are widespread among social species.
