Behavioral flexibility of a generalist carnivore

Animal Cognition
Sarah E DanielsSarah Benson-Amram

Abstract

Innovative problem solving, repeated innovation, learning, and inhibitory control are cognitive abilities commonly regarded as important components of behaviorally flexible species. Animals exhibiting these cognitive abilities may be more likely to adapt to the unique demands of living in novel and rapidly changing environments, such as urbanized landscapes. Raccoons (Procyon lotor) are an abundant, generalist species frequently found in urban habitats, and are capable of innovative problem solving, which makes them an ideal species to assess their behavioral flexibility. We gave 20 captive raccoons a multi-access puzzle box to investigate which behavioral and cognitive mechanisms enable the generation of innovative and flexible behaviors in this species. Over two-thirds of raccoons tested were not only capable of innovative problem solving, but displayed repeated innovation by solving more than one solution on the multi-access puzzle box and demonstrated that they learned multiple solutions to a novel problem. Although we found no relationship between our measure of inhibitory control and a raccoon's ability to exhibit repeated innovations, we did find a positive relationship between the diversity of behaviors that an individu...Continue Reading

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Citations

Oct 23, 2020·Animal Cognition·F Blake Morton
Nov 25, 2020·Animal Cognition·Lauren A StantonSarah Benson-Amram
Feb 10, 2021·Animal Cognition·Dana M WilliamsDaniel T Blumstein
Apr 4, 2021·Animals : an Open Access Journal From MDPI·Misha K RowellTasmin L Rymer
May 18, 2021·Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences·Susan PerrySusan D Healy
Jun 3, 2021·The Journal of Comparative Neurology·Joanna JacobKelly Lambert
Aug 20, 2021·Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution·Victoria E Lee, Alex Thornton

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