Exclusion in the field: wild brown skuas find hidden food in the absence of visual information

• Published in: Animal Cognition
• Main Authors: Danel, Samara, Chiffard-Carricaburu, Jules, Bonadonna, Francesco, Nesterova, Anna
• Other Authors: Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive (CEFE), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université de Montpellier (UM)-École pratique des hautes études (EPHE), Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL)-Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL)-Centre international d'études supérieures en sciences agronomiques (Montpellier SupAgro)-Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA)-Université Paul-Valéry - Montpellier 3 (UPVM)-Institut national d’études supérieures agronomiques de Montpellier (Montpellier SupAgro), Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement (Institut Agro)-Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement (Institut Agro)-Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD France-Sud )
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2021
• Subjects: avian cognition; Charadriiformes; cups task; exclusion performance; inferential reasoning; [SDV.BA]Life Sciences [q-bio]/Animal biology; [SDE.BE]Environmental Sciences/Biodiversity and Ecology; [SDV.NEU.PC]Life Sciences [q-bio]/Neurons and Cognition [q-bio.NC]/Psychology and behavior; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03324991; https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03324991/document; https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03324991/file/Skua%20anim%20cog%20pour%20Hall.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-021-01486-4

International audience Inferential reasoning by exclusion allows responding adaptively to various environmental stimuli when confronted with inconsistent or partial information. In the experimental context, this mechanism allows selecting correctly between an empty option and a potentially rewarded one. Recently, the increasing reports of this capacity in phylogenetically distant species have led to the assumption that reasoning by exclusion is the result of convergent evolution. Within one largely unstudied avian order, i.e. the Charadriiformes, brown skuas (Catharacta antarctica ssp lonnbergi) are highly flexible and opportunistic predators. Behavioural flexibility, along with specific aspects of skuas' feeding ecology, may act as influencing factors in their ability to show exclusion performance. Our study aims to test whether skuas are able to make choice by exclusion in a visual two-way object-choice task. Twenty-six wild birds were presented with two opaque cups, one covering a food reward. Three conditions were used: 'full information' (showing the content of both cups), 'exclusion' (showing the content of the empty cup), and 'control' (not showing any content). Skuas preferentially selected the rewarded cup in the full information and exclusion condition. The use of olfactory cues was excluded by results in the control condition. Our study highlights the cognitive potential of this predatory seabird and opens new investigations for testing further its cognition in the wild.