Orangutans (Pongo abelii) make flexible decisions relative to reward quality and tool functionality in a multi-dimensional tool-use task.

ABSTRACT: Making economic decisions in a natural foraging situation that involves the use of tools may require an animal to consider more levels of relational complexity than merely deciding between an immediate and a delayed food option. We used the same method previously used with Goffin´s cockatoos to investigate the orangutans' flexibility for making the most profitable decisions when confronted with five different settings that included one or two different apparatuses, two different tools and two food items (one more preferred than the other). We found that orangutans made profitable decisions relative to reward quality, when the task required the subjects to select a tool over an immediately accessible food reward. Furthermore, most subjects were sensitive to work-effort when the immediate an

SUBMITTER: Laumer IB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6374006 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature