Gaze Following in Ungulates: Domesticated and Non-domesticated Species Follow the Gaze of Both Humans and Conspecifics in an Experimental Context

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Alina Schaffer¹  Alvaro L. Caicoya²  Montserrat Colell²  Ruben Holland⁴  Conrad Ensenyat⁵  Federica Amici¹ 

[1] Behavioral Ecology Research Group, Institute of Biology, University of Leipzig;Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychobiology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Barcelona;Institute of Neurosciences, University of Barcelona;Zoo Leipzig;Barcelona Zoo;Research Group “Primate Behavioral Ecology, ” Department of Human Behavior, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

关键词: domestication;    gaze following;    social cognition;    ungulates;    human relation to animals;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2020.604904

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Gaze following is the ability to use others’ gaze to obtain information about the environment (e.g., food location, predators, and social interactions). As such, it may be highly adaptive in a variety of socio-ecological contexts, and thus be widespread across animal taxa. To date, gaze following has been mostly studied in primates, and partially in birds, but little is known on the gaze following abilities of other taxa and, especially, on the evolutionary pressures that led to their emergence. In this study, we used an experimental approach to test gaze following skills in a still understudied taxon, ungulates. Across four species (i.e., domestic goats and lamas, and non-domestic guanacos and mouflons), we assessed the individual ability to spontaneously follow the gaze of both conspecifics and human experimenters in different conditions. In line with our predictions, species followed the model’s gaze both with human and conspecific models, but more likely with the latter. Except for guanacos, all species showed gaze following significantly more in the experimental conditions (than in the control ones). Despite the relative low number of study subjects, our study provides the first experimental evidence of gaze following skills in non-domesticated ungulates, and contributes to understanding how gaze following skills are distributed in another taxon—an essential endeavor to identify the evolutionary pressures leading to the emergence of gaze following skills across taxa.

【 授权许可】

CC BY