| mode of foraging competition is related to tutor preference in zenaida aurita. | this study compared the direction of social learning in 2 populations of barbados zenaida doves (zenaida aurita). one population (st. james) is territorial; it competes aggressively with conspecifics but scramble competes with heterospecifics. the other population (deep water harbour) forages in large homospecific flocks. field observations were conducted to quantify intraspecific and interspecific patterns of foraging association and aggression. wild-caught doves from both areas were then teste ... | 1996 | 8851552 |
| flexible expression of a food-processing behaviour: determinants of dunking rates in wild carib grackles of barbados. | dunking, the softening of dry food in water to speed up consumption time, is normally a very rare behaviour in wild carib grackles (quiscalus lugubris) of barbados. its frequency can be experimentally increased when large numbers of dry items are repeatedly placed near a standing source of water in conditions that minimize intraspecific competition and risk of theft. to reconcile the normally low frequency of the behaviour in the wild with the high rates obtained in previous experiments, we test ... | 2007 | 17587511 |
| bajan birds pull strings: two wild antillean species enter the select club of string-pullers. | string-pulling is one of the most popular tests in animal cognition because of its apparent complexity, and of its potential to be applied to very different taxa. in birds, the basic procedure involves a food reward, suspended from a perch by a string, which can be reached by a series of coordinated pulling actions with the beak and holding actions of the pulled lengths of string with the foot. the taxonomic distribution of species that pass the test includes several corvids, parrots and parids, ... | 2016 | 27533282 |
| problem-solving and learning in carib grackles: individuals show a consistent speed-accuracy trade-off. | the generation and maintenance of within-population variation in cognitive abilities remain poorly understood. recent theories propose that this variation might reflect the existence of consistent cognitive strategies distributed along a slow-fast continuum influenced by shyness. the slow-fast continuum might be reflected in the well-known speed-accuracy trade-off, where animals cannot simultaneously maximise the speed and the accuracy with which they perform a task. we test this idea on 49 wild ... | 2015 | 25381576 |