Behavioral responses of wild animals to anthropogenic change: insights from domestication

Does novelty influence the foraging decisions of a scavenger?

Acquiring knowledge about the environment is crucial for survival. Animals, often driven by their exploratory tendencies, gather valuable information regarding food resources, shelter, mating partners, etc. However, neophobia, or avoiding novel environmental stimuli, can constrain their exploratory behaviour. While neophobia can reduce potential predation risks, decreased exploratory behaviour resulting from it may limit the ability to discover highly rewarding resources. Dogs (Canis familiaris) living in semi-urban and urban environments as free-ranging populations, although subject to various selection forces, typically have negligible predation pressure. These dogs are scavengers in human-dominated environments; thus, selection against object-neophobia can provide benefits when searching for novel food resources. Although captive pack-living dogs are known to be less neophobic than their closest living ancestors, wolves (Canis lupus), little is known about free-ranging dogs' behavioural responses to novel objects, particularly in foraging contexts. Using an object choice experiment, we tested 259 free-ranging dogs from two age classes, adult and juvenile, to investigate their object-neophobia in a scavenging context. We employed a between-subject study design, providing dogs with a familiar and a potentially novel object, both baited with equal, hidden food items. Adult and juvenile dogs significantly inspected the novel object first compared to the familiar one, even when the hidden food item was partially visible. To validate these findings, we compared novel objects with different strengths of olfactory cues (baited vs. false-baited) and found that they were inspected comparably by adults and juveniles. No significant differences were found in the latencies to inspect the objects, suggesting that free-ranging dogs may still be cautious when exploring their environments. These results indicate that free-ranging dogs, evidently from an early ontogenetic phase, do not show object-neophobia, as demonstrated by their preference for novel over familiar food sources. We conclude that little to no constraint of neophobia on exploratory behaviour in semi-urban and urban-dwelling animals can guide foraging decision-making processes, providing adaptive benefits.

A Comparative Study of Dogs and Goats with Limited Human Socialization in the Impossible Task Paradigm

The study aimed to explore how limited human socialization affects the socio-cognitive abilities and interactions with unfamiliar individuals of a selected group of domesticated dogs and goats. These animals were raised and kept under conditions characterized by limited human socialization, and their behavior was assessed using the "impossible task" paradigm. The study found that dogs, with a history of cooperative interactions and human companionship, exhibited more frequent social engagement with human experimenters in the experimental setting than goats, traditionally domesticated for utilitarian purposes. However, differences in interaction duration and latency were not significant, highlighting the complexity of these interactions. The results suggest that domestication history and behavioral ecology play significant roles in shaping animals' willingness to engage with humans. However, this study acknowledges limitations, such as the specific population studied, and calls for further research with larger and more diverse samples to generalize these findings. Understanding the interplay between domestication history, behavioral ecology, and human socialization could provide insights into the complex factors influencing animal-human interactions and cognitive behaviors, with implications for animal welfare and human-animal relationships.

The endangered brain: actively preserving ex-situ animal behaviour and cognition will benefit in-situ conservation

Endangered species have small, unsustainable population sizes that are geographically or genetically restricted. Ex-situ conservation programmes are therefore faced with the challenge of breeding sufficiently sized, genetically diverse populations earmarked for reintroduction that have the behavioural skills to survive and breed in the wild. Yet, maintaining historically beneficial behaviours may be insufficient, as research continues to suggest that certain cognitive-behavioural skills and flexibility are necessary to cope with human-induced rapid environmental change (HIREC). This paper begins by reviewing interdisciplinary studies on the 'captivity effect' in laboratory, farmed, domesticated and feral vertebrates and finds that captivity imposes rapid yet often reversible changes to the brain, cognition and behaviour. However, research on this effect in ex-situ conservation sites is lacking. This paper reveals an apparent mismatch between ex-situ enrichment aims and the cognitive-behavioural skills possessed by animals currently coping with HIREC. After synthesizing literature across neuroscience, behavioural biology, comparative cognition and field conservation, it seems that ex-situ endangered species deemed for reintroduction may have better chances of coping with HIREC if their natural cognition and behavioural repertoires are actively preserved. Evaluating the effects of environmental challenges rather than captivity per se is recommended, in addition to using targeted cognitive enrichment.