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Birth in Bonobos (Pan paniscus) : Female Cohesiveness and Emotional Sharing
No full textSociality around birth has been proposed as a unique feature of our species and traces its origin to the very beginning of human evolution. In traditional societies, the social and practical support to the parturient is almost exclusively provided by women, with absolute cultural taboos preventing the participation of men. Humans surely differ from their closest living relatives in the imperative need for assistance during delivery that is linked to some distinctive traits of birth in our species. Yet, considering the social, cognitive and emotional complexity of many primate species, it is plausible that they may show a certain degree of sociality around birth. It is nowadays impossible to draw a reliable picture of the social dynamics around birth in monkeys and apes since the only available reports on the behaviour of group members during deliveries are scattered and anecdotal. Here we describe three daytime births in bonobos (Pan paniscus) . The observation conditions of the captive environment allowed us to film and quantitatively describe the behaviours of the whole group. Our data show that birth in bonobos is a peculiar social event in which females are particularly concerned. Indeed, females stay closer to the parturient than males do and the frequency of affiliative interactions is higher within female-female dyads, whereas the frequency of agonistic interactions is higher within female-male dyads. Moreover, the more dominant and elderly females also provided a sort of ‘assistance’ to the parturient, by performing the same gesture performed by her to grab the infant during its birth, although only the mother grabbed the infant at the delivery. These results show that the bonds linking bonobo females are also reinforced during rare events, such as births. We suggest that the collective support of females in bonobos might be one of the building blocks of more complex and culturally shaped forms of sociality which are expressed during the delivery event in humans
Play as an indicator of animal welfare in a captive colony of Cebus apella
No full textPlay behaviour is a potential indicator of animal welfare. The self-rewarding nature of play and its tendency to spread within the group make this behaviour an excellent mean to estimate the current (and potentially future) wellbeing of a single individual, as well as of its entire social group. Visual communication has a fundamental role in triggering and regulating a playful session by modulating the patterns through inhibitory and reinforcement mechanisms. This research evaluates the individual and collective welfare of a captive colony of 20 Cebus apella through the description of playful patterns and facial expressions. Facial expressions were then subdivided into two categories: playful facial expressions (i.e. those occurring exclusively during play) and all the others (i.e. those occurring also in other contexts). As occurs in numerous mammalian species, immature subjects showed a higher frequency of play behaviour than adults. Among adults, males played more than females. Although playful facial expressions were displayed at similar frequencies in all age/sex classes, the other facial expressions were exhibited more frequently by females and especially when the playmate could visually perceive the signal. Within the studied colony, only three subjects were never observed playing. These animals were socially isolated and characterized by anomalous behaviours. Taken together, all these findings strongly suggest that play behaviour should be considered as a highly reliable and accurate indicator of captive animal welfare
She more than he: gender bias supports the empathic nature of yawn contagion in Homo sapiens
Full text linkPsychological, clinical and neurobiological findings endorse that empathic abilities are more developed in women than in men. Because there is growing evidence that yawn contagion is an empathy-based phenomenon, we expect that the female bias in the empathic abilities reflects on a gender skew in the
responsiveness to others’ yawns. We verified this assumption by applying a linear model on a dataset gathered during a 5 year period of naturalistic observations on humans. Gender, age and social bond were included in the analysis as fixed factors. The social bond and the receiver’s gender remained in the best model. The rates of contagion were significantly lower between acquaintances than between friends and family members, and significantly higher in women than in men. These results not only confirm that yawn contagion is sensitive
to social closeness, but also that the phenomenon is affected by the same gender bias affecting empathy. The sex skew, also found in other non-human species, fits with the female social roles which are likely to require higher empathic abilities (e.g. parental care, group cohesion maintenance, social mediation). The fact that female influence in social dynamics also relies on face-to-face emotional exchange raises concerns on the
negative repercussions of having women’s facial expressions forcibly concealed
Communicating the motivation to play: gestures and facial expressions in bonobos
No full textThe correct production and interpretation of communicative signals is of primary importance for social animals. Free brachio-manual gestures, so far only reported for humans and other apes, are considered as intentional signals. Facial expressions, on the other hand, although used during intentional communication, are influenced by emotional states. Play is one of the most sophisticated forms of social communication and it has also been reported to be the context in which gestures occur more frequently in two Pan species. Through a video-analysis of playful sessions, we investigated the use of a) facial expressions and b) gestures in Pan paniscus. Both of them were more frequent during the most risky form of play, that is play fighting. The redundancy of signals is effective in reducing the probability of escalation into overt aggression. The difference between the use of gestures and facial expressions emerges with the variation of players' number. Gestures tend to decrease as the number of players increases; whereas facial expressions are independent from the number of players involved. Both communicative patterns are performed mainly when the receiver can perceive them, thus suggesting the intentional nature of these displays. The importance of deeply understanding the way apes and other primates communicate through gestures and how this capacity develops becomes central when considering that our ancestors' first linguistic expressions were probably in the gestural more than in the vocal domain
Mirror on the wall, who is the horsest of our all? Self-recognition in Equus caballus
Full text linkMirror Self-Recognition (MSR) is an extremely rare capacity in the animal kingdom that reveals the emergence of complex cognitive capacities
(de Waal 2008). So far, MSR has been reported only in humans, chimpanzees (Gallup, 1970), bottlenose dolphins (Reiss and Marino, 2001) and
Asian elephants (Plotnik et al, 2006), all species characterized by a highly developed cognition. There is growing evidence that domestic horses
posses high cognitive abilities, such as crossmodal individual recognition (Proops et al, 2009), triadic post-conflict reunion to maintain social homeostasis (Cozzi et al, 2010), complex communicative systems (Whatan and McComb, 2014), flexibility in problem-solving (Lovrovich
et al, 2015), and long-term memory (Hanggi and Ingersoll, 2009). All these capacities make horses a good candidate to test the ability of MSR in a domestic species. Through a classical MSR experimental paradigm (de Waal 2008) we tested eight horses living in social groups under semi-natural conditions (from the Italian Horse Protection rescue centre). Animals showing MSR typically go through four stages (Plotnik et
al, 2006): (i) social response, (ii) physical mirror inspection (e.g., looking behind the mirror), (iii) repetitive mirror-testing behaviour (i.e., the
beginning of mirror understanding), and (iv) selfdirected behaviour (i.e., recognition of the mirror image as self). The final stage, known as the
“mark-test”, is verified when a subject spontaneously uses the mirror to check for a coloured artificial mark on its own body which it cannot
perceive otherwise. The horses underwent through a three-phase “mark-test”: 1) with sham mark (transparent ultrasound water gel) positioned on both side at jaw level, 2) mark (yellow eye shadow mixed with ultrasound water gel) positioned on left side of jaw (with sham mark on the right), 3) mark (yellow eye shadow mixed with ultrasound water gel) positioned on right side of jaw (with sham mark on the left) The mirror was one 0.5-cm-thick pieces of 140x220-cm plexiglass glue on wood. Each test lasted one hour, horses were tested once a day, in consecutive days and at the same time. Our preliminary result on 1 horse shows some changes in self-directed behaviours which can be attributed to presence of the coloured mark. Firstly, the presence of the coloured marked significantly increased the frequency of scratching on both sides of the muzzle (p < 0.0001).
The most intriguing result (p < 0.0001) comes from the comparison of the scratching rates directed towards the coloured mark side (N =
41) and the sham mark side (N = 23). Under the control condition (i.e. sham mark on both sides) no statistical difference was found for the scratching rates directed to the muzzle sides (dx N = 8; sx N = 5). Although further analyses are needed to confirm these preliminary results, our finding opens new scenarios about the evolution of Mirror Self-Recognition. The capacity of horses to recognize themselves in a mirror may be the
outcome of an evolutionary convergence process driven by the cognitive pressures imposed by a complex social system and maintained despite
thousands years of domestication
Do Geladas Console Their Victims? Testing the Anxiety Reduction Hypothesis
No full textTriadic affiliation is defined as the first post-conflict affiliative contact directed by third parties to one of the two opponents. It can be spontaneously offered by the bystander to the victim or can be provided on request of the victim (solicited affiliation). Such affinitive contacts have a consolatory function if they are spontaneously directed towards friends or kin and reduce anxiety (measured via scratching) in the victim. Up to now, within the order Primates, consolation has been demonstrated in only humans, chimpanzees, bonobos and Tonkean macaques. Here, we tested specific hypotheses on the potential functions of triadic affiliation in geladas (Theropithecus gelada), a species living in complex multi-level societies. Geladas engaged in spontaneous triadic affiliation towards the victim, but we failed to find any evidence for the presence of solicited triadic affiliation in our study group. Playing, touching and lip-smacking/vocalization were the most frequent affiliative patterns directed by bystanders towards the victims. Third-party affiliation also occurred more frequently in the absence of reconciliation, defined as the first affinitive contact between the former opponents immediately after a fight. Even though spontaneous triadic affiliation was not mainly directed towards kin or friends, it significantly improved the emotional state of the victims by lowering their levels of anxiety, especially when the conflict was not resolved through reconciliation. It remains to be understood if the improvement of the affective state of the victim is linked to the physical closeness and protection provided by the bystander; a situation that lowers the probability for the victim to be re-attacked by the former opponent. The improvement of the emotional state of the victim could also be due to the activation of a victim-bystander emotional attunement, which translates into the activation of the prosocial behaviour named consolation
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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