Ring-billed gulls found able to pass the string-pull test

phys.org

20 points·pseudolus··4 comments

To my big fancy human brain, this test seems pretty simple, and if you just fiddle with it for a little while you'll succeed. Are there examples of animals that totally fail the string-pull test?

Also, there is some research out (free full text linked below) there that suggests string-pulling doesn't require any forethought but is just a feedback loop of "ooh, I did this and saw my treat move, I'll do it again"

Taylor, A. H., Knaebe, B., & Gray, R. D. (2012). An end to insight? New Caledonian crows can spontaneously solve problems without planning their actions. Proceedings. Biological sciences, 279(1749), 4977–4981. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2012.1998

How do you differentiate between intelligence and curiosity? Gulls will pick at any object near them including trash; and the researchers leave a bright red string next to its babies, of course its going to do something about it. I'd think doing this next to a nest taints the experiment.

It seems that putting the test near the nest was done deliberately: Cognition is challenging to assess in wild animals because testing paradigms often require individuals living under similar conditions to be tested repeatedly. Administering cognitive tests where wild animals rear their offspring can overcome this challenge because breeders often return reliably to a known location. [1]

[1] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.211343#d...

Thank you, I definitely hadn't read the original. It makes perfect sense, but I am still not sure just dropping a box halfway on the nest could have no impact on the results.

Reading your link, it says that some string tests also use unbaited strings, but it seems they didn't do that here? And I to bust my own argument, it also does say that some gulls didn't even interact with the string...

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