Hyenas Cooperate, Problem-solve Better Than Primates
i found this article through sciencedirect. I'm really interested in hyenas and their relations to primates. They look so different and have many different behaviors from primates. But recently they've been running a lot of the same cognitive tests on hyenas that they have on primates. They used playback experiments (of calls from infants) to see if mothers and others in troops recognized relationships among group members, in both primates and hyenas they found that both animals recognized third party relationships.In this study, captive hyenas were given a rope pulling task in order to receive a food reward. Two hyenas needed to pull the ropes in unison in order to receive the reward. Researchers found that the hyenas quickly learned to work together in order to receive the reward. Hyenas that had become familiar with the task even seemed to help other hyenas with the task. Also, "After an animal was experienced, the number of times it pulled on a rope without its partner present dropped sharply, indicating the animal understood its partner's role."
Researchers believe that the hyenas may have performed better on this task because they may be more "hard-wired" to work in groups to hunt.
I thought this was really interesting because its a test that i think would be run with chimps and other primates, but I thought it was very interesting to see a experiment like this run with animals such as hyenas.
Christine M. Drea, Allisa N. Carter. Cooperative problem solving in a social carnivore. Animal Behaviour, 2009; 78 (4): 967 DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2009.06.030
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090928131032.htm
_GINA FORTUNATO
It is interesting to learn that hyenas have something in common with primates. How closely are hyenas and primates related? When I think about hyenas, I just get a mental image of the dumb trio from the Lion King.
ReplyDeleteAre hyenas very social animals? Do they live in groups? Could their social structure influence why they work together?
-Tricia Carlson
I didn't realize hyenas worked so well together. How did they help each other pull the rope in unison? Did the article explain what kind of signals the hyenas used to communicate with each other when working together, or how they taught each other how to work in pairs?
ReplyDeletePosted by Sarah Benjamin
This is an interesting article. I just don't understand what make primates closely related to hyenas. Is it because of the cooperative hunting? Is it the overall cooperation between group members? Are their any similar genetic traits that labels them closely related? Cooperation among a species whether it be hunting or parenting is not uncommon in nature. Nice article.
ReplyDeleteCarlos Varela
are hyenas in the dog family? (they bark on the lion king i think...) if so, have they done this type of study on any other animals in the dog (or hyena-like) family?
ReplyDelete-Kristy McDermott
its good to see that the hyenas that got the technique down, were nice enough to help others get the food reward, because most animals will try to be the sole beneficiary.
ReplyDeletePosted by Vanessa Raphaël
That's really interesting! I would like to know if other species closely related to hyenas could also do this task. Also, did they do other tests with the hyenas to compare them to the primates? Also, some primates are much better at some tasks than others; do you know what kind of primates they tested? Good find!
ReplyDelete-Alyson Paige