Comparative cognition in three understudied ungulate species: European bison, forest buffalos and giraffes.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Comparative cognition has historically focused on a few taxa such as primates, birds or rodents. However, a broader perspective is essential to understand how different selective pressures affect cognition in different taxa, as more recently shown in several studies. Here we present the same battery of cognitive tasks to two understudied ungulate species with different socio-ecological characteristics, European bison (Bison bonasus) and forest buffalos (Syncerus caffer nanus), and we compare their performance to previous findings in giraffes (Giraffa camelopardalis). We presented subjects with an Object permanence task, Memory tasks with 30 and 60 s delays, two inference tasks based on acoustic cues (i.e. Acoustic inference tasks) and a control task to check for the use

SUBMITTER: Caicoya AL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8218502 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature