The use of guinea pigs in scientific experimentation dates back at least to the 17th century, when the Italian biologists Marcello Malpighi and Carlo Fracassati conducted vivisections of guinea pigs in their examinations of anatomic structures. In 1780, Antoine Lavoisier used a guinea pig in his experiments with the calorimeter, a device used to measure heat production. The heat from the guinea pig's respiration melted snow surrounding the calorimeter, showing that respiratory gas exchange is a combustion, similar to a candle burning. Guinea pigs played a major role in the establishment of germ theory in the late 19th century, through the experiments of Louis Pasteur, Émile Roux, and Robert Koch.
In scientific research
Guinea pig
Guinea pig | In scientific research
Yes, in scientific experimentation Yes, they are used in scientific experimentations They are used for scientific experimentation Yes, it dates back at least to the 17th century, when the Italian biologists Marcello Malpighi and Carlo Fracassati conducted vivisections of guinea pigs in their examinations of anatomic structures.
where do guinea pigs come from in the wild
user
They originated in the Andes of South America
assistant
how do they look like?
user
Guinea pigs are large for rodents; the common pet breeds weigh between when full grown and measure between in length
assistant
which club is associated with it?
user
Cavy clubs dedicated to the showing and breeding of guinea pigs have been established worldwide.
assistant
what reference do they have in literature?
user
"The Fairy Caravan", a novel by Beatrix Potter, and Michael Bond's Olga da Polga series for children, both feature guinea pigs as the protagonist. Another appearance is in "The Magician's Nephew" by C. S. Lewis: in the first of his "The Chronicles of Narnia" series, a guinea pig is the first creature to travel to the Wood between the Worlds.
assistant
is there any specific program for their breeding?
user
Yes, Peruvian research universities, especially La Molina National Agrarian University, began experimental programs
assistant
you have mentioned three authors above; has the first one done any scientific illustrations?
user
Yes, a collection of her fungus paintings at the Perth Museum and Art Gallery in Perth
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and any conservation work?
user
She supported he National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty.
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who founded this trust?
user
Octavia Hill, Sir Robert Hunter and Hardwicke Rawnsley
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can you mention some of its art collections?
user
"Self-portrait wearing a white feathered bonnet"
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which house or garden comes under this trust?
user
Sorry. I cannot find the answer based on the context.
assistant
what are some of the collections of the above mentioned museum?
user
Sorry. I cannot find the answer based on the context.
assistant
you have mentioned three founders above; who is the first one?
user
He was an English social reformer, whose main concern was the welfare of the inhabitants of cities, especially London, in the second half of the nineteenth century
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did he do anything for the poor class?
user
Yes, Hill began her work, the model dwelling movement had been in existence for twenty years, royal and select committees had sat to examine the problems of urban well-being, and the first of many tranches of legislation aimed at improving working class housing had been passed.
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how do the aforementioned animal behave?
user
Guinea pigs can learn complex paths to food, and can accurately remember a learned path for months. Their strongest problem-solving strategy is motion.
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are they used for any research work?
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for research in the 1960s, but that total decreased to about 375,000 by the mid-1990s. As of 2007, they constitute about 2% of the current total of laboratory animals. In the past, they were widely used to standardize vaccines and antiviral agents; they were also often employed in studies on the production of antibodies in response to extreme allergic reactions, or anaphylaxis. Less common uses included research in pharmacology and irradiation. Since the middle 20th century, they have been replaced in laboratory contexts primarily by mice and rats. This is in part because research into the genetics of guinea pigs has lagged behind that of other rodents, although geneticists W.
Guinea pig | In scientific research
Since that time, they have been largely replaced by other rodents, such as mice and rats. However, they are still used in research, primarily as models to study such human medical conditions as juvenile diabetes, tuberculosis, scurvy (like humans, they require dietary intake of vitamin C), and pregnancy complications.
Guinea pig | Introduction
Guinea pigs can learn complex paths to food, and can accurately remember a learned path for months. Their strongest problem-solving strategy is motion. While guinea pigs can jump small obstacles, most of them are poor climbers, and are not particularly agile. They startle extremely easily, and either freeze in place for long periods or run for cover with rapid, darting motions when they sense danger. Larger groups of startled guinea pigs "stampede", running in haphazard directions as a means of confusing predators. When happily excited, guinea pigs may repeatedly perform little hops in the air (known as "popcorning"), a movement analogous to the ferret's war dance.
Guinea pig | Behavior
The use of guinea pigs in scientific experimentation dates back at least to the 17th century, when the Italian biologists Marcello Malpighi and Carlo Fracassati conducted vivisections of guinea pigs in their examinations of anatomic structures. In 1780, Antoine Lavoisier used a guinea pig in his experiments with the calorimeter, a device used to measure heat production. The heat from the guinea pig's respiration melted snow surrounding the calorimeter, showing that respiratory gas exchange is a combustion, similar to a candle burning. Guinea pigs played a major role in the establishment of germ theory in the late 19th century, through the experiments of Louis Pasteur, Émile Roux, and Robert Koch.
Guinea pig | In scientific research
E. Castle and Sewall Wright made a number of contributions to this area of study, especially regarding coat color. In 2004, the U.S.'s National Human Genome Research Institute announced plans to sequence the genome of the domestic guinea pig.
Guinea pig | In scientific research
In a problem solving experiment, the average success rate for dogs are 5% while the wolves obtained an 80% success rate. On the other hand, in a test on guinea pigs, it was shown that the spatial ability of domestic guiniea pigs are higher compared to its ancestor. Level of intelligence of wild ancestors compared to its predecessor differs from species to species as brain volume and behaviour changes.
Wild ancestors | Intelligence
Subsequent research using wider sampling restored the consensus among mammalian biologists regarding the current classification of rodents as monophyletic.
Guinea pig | Characteristics
Guinea pigs were popular laboratory animals until the late 20th century; about 2.5 million guinea pigs were used annually in the United States for research in the 1960s, but that total decreased to about 375,000 by the mid-1990s. In 2007, they constituted about 2% of all laboratory animals. Guinea pigs played a major role in the establishment of germ theory in the late 19th century, through the experiments of Louis Pasteur, Émile Roux, and Robert Koch. They have been launched into orbital space flight several times—first by the USSR on the Sputnik 9 biosatellite of March 9, 1961, with a successful recovery.
Rodent | Animal testing
The animal may be cut open and its entrails examined to determine whether the cure was effective. These methods are widely accepted in many parts of the Andes, where Western medicine is either unavailable or distrusted.
Guinea pig | History
Rodents have advanced cognitive abilities. They can quickly learn to avoid poisoned baits, which makes them difficult pests to deal with. Guinea pigs can learn and remember complex pathways to food. Squirrels and kangaroo rats are able to locate caches of food by spatial memory, rather than just by smell. Because laboratory mice (house mice) and rats (brown rats) are widely used as scientific models to further our understanding of biology, a great deal has come to be known about their cognitive capacities. Brown rats exhibit cognitive bias, where information processing is biased by whether they are in a positive or negative affective state.
Rodent | Intelligence
Recent studies using positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has provided evidence proving that chemical changes that occur with emotions are similar between humans and non-human animals. In a study comparing guinea pigs and humans, it was determined that the distress experienced by offspring separation in a guinea pig and a human going through depression activates the same region of the brain. The opiate receptor was also examined, allowing observation of the pleasure stimuli. In the procedure both a human and a rat had their receptors blocked with a certain drug. Once receptors were blocked, both the rat and the human were exposed to pleasurable food, but both were disinclined to eat the food.
Non-reproductive sexual behavior in animals | Case study
Heyes and co-workers reported evidence for imitation in rats that pushed a lever in the same direction as their models, though later on they withdrew their claims due to methodological problems in their original setup. By trying to design a testing paradigm that is less arbitrary than pushing a lever to the left or to the right, Custance and co-workers introduced the "artificial fruit" paradigm, where a small object could be opened in different ways to retrieve food placed inside—not unlike a hard-shelled fruit. Using this paradigm, scientists reported evidence for imitation in monkeys and apes. There remains a problem with such tool (or apparatus) use studies: what animals might learn in such studies need not be the actual behavior patterns (i.e., the actions) that were observed.
Imitation | Animal behavior
They have well-developed senses of hearing, smell, and touch.
Guinea pig | Behavior
This small mammal is unusual in that it produces a small number of precocial offspring with a high survival rate when it might have been expected to produce large litters of altricial young.
Greater guinea pig | Behaviour
A monkey is at location A in a lab. There is a box in location C. The monkey wants the bananas that are hanging from the ceiling in location B, but it needs to move the box and climb onto it in order to reach them.
Stanford Research Institute Problem Solver | A sample STRIPS problem
Most questions about human affairs are not testable because of the constraints on human subject research. So Milo sought willing subjects in literature. In the 1990s, he studied in "Héros & Cobayes" (Heros & Guinea Pigs, 1997), fictional situations as laboratories and fictional personae as guinea pigs. Milo read the story of the Garden of Eden as a laboratory in cognitive science. God puts Adam in front of two trees: the tree of life and the tree of knowledge. Strangely, He forbids Adam from eating from the latter but says nothing about the former. As a result, the guinea pig is obsessed by the prohibited fruit and is indifferent to that which was permitted.
Daniel S. Milo | Experimental Philosophy
This study showed that the mechanism that monkeys use to make comparisons are the same as the ones humans use. To prove the numerical skills of monkeys, Cantlon constructed an experiment where macaques interacted with a touchscreen computer that displayed basic mathematical challenges. Cantlon presented the same challenges to college students, who achieved 94% correct answers, whilst the monkeys were successful 76% of the time. The monkeys and college students had the same reaction time. She completed her doctorate in 2007.
Jessica F. Cantlon | Early life and education
Experiments found that when reasoning about preferred vs. non-preferred food proportions, capuchin monkeys were able to make inferences about proportions inferred by sequentially sampled data. Rhesus monkeys were similarly capable of using probabilistic and sequentially sampled data to make inferences about rewarding outcomes, and neural activity in the parietal cortex appeared to be involved in the decision-making process when they made inferences. In a series of 7 experiments using a variety of relative frequency differences between banana pellets and carrots, orangutans, bonobos, chimpanzees and gorillas also appeared to guide their decisions based on the ratios favoring the banana pellets after this was established as their preferred food item.
Intuitive statistics | Non-human primates
It is also used in folk medicine and in community religious ceremonies. The animals are used for meat and are a culinary staple in the Andes Mountains, where they are known as "cuy". In the 1960s a modern breeding program was started in Peru that resulted in large breeds known as "cuy mejorados" ("improved cuy"). Marketers tried to increase consumption of the animal outside South America. Biological experimentation on domestic guinea pigs has been carried out since the 17th century. The animals were used so frequently as model organisms in the 19th and 20th centuries that the epithet "guinea pig" came into use to describe a human test subject.
Guinea pig | Introduction
They are social, living in the wild in small groups that consist of several females (sows), a male (boar), and the young (which, in a break with the preceding porcine nomenclature, are called "pups" not "piglets"). They move together in groups (herds) eating grass or other vegetation, and do not store food. While they do not burrow themselves or build nests, they frequently seek shelter in the burrows of other animals, as well as in crevices and tunnels formed by vegetation. They tend to be most active during dawn and dusk (crepuscular), when it is harder for predators to spot them.
Guinea pig | Natural habitat
It is clear that animals of quite a range of species are capable of solving problems that appear to require abstract reasoning; Wolfgang Köhler's (1917) work with chimpanzees is a famous early example. He observed that chimpanzees did not use trial and error to solve problems such as retrieving bananas hung out of reach. Instead, they behaved in a manner that was "unwaveringly purposeful," spontaneously placing boxes so that they could climb to reach the fruit. Modern research has identified similar behavior in animals usually thought of as much less intelligent, if appropriate pre-training is given. Causal reasoning has also been observed in rooks and New Caledonian crows.
Animal cognition | Reasoning and problem solving
They are also good swimmers. Like many rodents, guinea pigs sometimes participate in social grooming, and they regularly self-groom. A milky-white substance is secreted from their eyes and rubbed into the hair during the grooming process. Groups of boars often chew each other's hair, but this is a method of establishing hierarchy within a group, rather than a social gesture. Dominance is also established through biting (especially of the ears), piloerection, aggressive noises, head thrusts, and leaping attacks. Non-sexual simulated mounting for dominance is also common among same-sex groups. Guinea pig eyesight is not as good as that of a human in terms of distance and color, but they have a wider angle of vision (about 340°) and see in partial color (dichromacy).
Guinea pig | Behavior
The experimenters explain the use of bigrams, which are combinations of two (usually different) letters. They tell us that the bigrams used in nonwords are rare, while the bigrams used in real words are more common. Further studies will attempt to teach baboons how to use an artificial alphabet. In a 2016 study, a team of biologists from several universities concluded that macaques possess vocal tracts physically capable of speech, "but lack a speech-ready brain to control it".
Animal language | Primate: studied examples
Miniature pigs have been used for medical research, including toxicology, pharmacology, experimental surgery, pulmonology, cardiology, xenotransplantation, and aging studies. Pigs can be useful in studying human disease, and due to their high intelligence, are easy to manage in a laboratory setting. For example, scientists are working on studying the possibility of utilizing pig hearts for human heart organ transplants, and work has been done to genetically modify the tissues of pigs to be accepted by the human immune system.
Miniature pig | Medical research
Gibson then used a larger apparatus to test chickens, turtles, lambs, kids (baby goats), pigs, dogs, cats, and monkeys; all showing similar results.
Eleanor J. Gibson | Visual cliff
The degree to which such abilities should be ascribed to instinct or learning is a matter of debate. According to an article in "Psychology Today", the monkey and banana problem was inspired by a somewhat similar experiment with rhesus monkeys. In 1984, a pigeon was observed as having the capacity to solve a problem.
Monkey and banana problem | Purpose of the problem
In 1913, Köhler left Frankfurt for the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands, where he had been named the director of the Prussian Academy of Sciences anthropoid research station. He worked there for six years, during which he wrote a book on problem solving titled "The Mentality of Apes" (1917). In this research, Köhler observed how chimpanzees solve problems, such as that of retrieving bananas when positioned out of reach. He found that they stacked wooden crates to use as makeshift ladders, in order to retrieve the food. If the bananas were placed on the ground outside of the cage, they used sticks to lengthen the reach of their arms.
Wolfgang Köhler | Problem solving
One species examined extensively under laboratory conditions is the New Caledonian crow. One individual called “Betty” spontaneously made a wire tool to solve a novel problem. She was being tested to see whether she would select a wire hook rather than a straight wire to pull a little bucket of meat out of a well. Betty tried poking the straight wire at the meat. After a series of failures with this direct approach, she withdrew the wire and began directing it at the bottom of the well, which was secured to its base with duct tape. The wire soon became stuck, whereupon Betty pulled it sideways, bending it and unsticking it.
Animal cognition | Birds
An experiment at the University of Bristol found that one out of ten pigs was possibly able to understand what other pigs can see. That pig observed another pig which had view of a maze in which food was being hidden, and trailed that pig through the maze to the food. The other pigs involved in the experiment did not.
Theory of mind in animals | In pigs
Scientists using marmosets at Cambridge have published their work in peer reviewed journals. This includes discoveries relating to the role of the prefrontal cortex in behaviour, understanding learning and memory, modelling Parkinson's disease, and the role of the amygdala in conditioned reinforcement.
Cambridge University primates | Nature of the research
Guinea pigs have been launched into orbital space flight several times, first by the USSR on the Sputnik 9 biosatellite of March 9, 1961 – with a successful recovery. China also launched and recovered a biosatellite in 1990 which included guinea pigs as passengers. In English, the term "guinea pig" is commonly used as a metaphor for a subject of scientific experimentation, or any experiment or test in modern times. This dates back to the early 20th century; the "Oxford English Dictionary" notes its first usage in this capacity in 1913. In 1933, Consumers Research founders F. J. Schlink and Arthur Kallet wrote a book entitled "100,000,000 Guinea Pigs", extending the metaphor to consumer society.
Guinea pig | In scientific research
The Physical Sciences department also uses animals in its "Armour Physics" research. Like other aspects of research at Porton Down, precise details of animal experiments are generally kept secret. Media reports have suggested they include exposing monkeys to anthrax, draining the blood of pigs and injecting them with "E. coli" bacteria, and exposing animals to a variety of lethal, toxic nerve agents. Different animals are used for very different purposes. According to a 2002 report from the Animal Welfare Advisory Committee of the Ministry of Defence, mice are used mainly to research "the development of vaccines and treatments for microbial and viral infections", while pigs are used to "develop personal protective equipment to protect against blast injury to the thorax".
Porton Down | Use of animals
After a bilateral lesion of the frontal lobes, particular habits that Franz had created in the animals were lost. Unilateral lesions caused a slower motor response. These studies were similar to the ones he did with monkeys (cite). Franz was interested in the role of the frontal lobes in the re-learning of learned behaviors (1906). In one study, he sectioned the frontal lobes of seven macaque and two ringtail monkeys. He used two tasks: one requiring a specific operant response which was to turn a button 90 degrees for the animal to receive the food. (cite) The other task was a chain of behaviors that Franz called the “Hurdle experiments” in which a monkey gets around and through obstacles to make their way to three boxes, the middle of which contains food that the monkey obtains after lifting the lid.
Shepherd Ivory Franz | Contributions
In 1913, Wolfgang Köhler started writing a book on problem solving titled "The Mentality of Apes" (1917). In this research, Köhler observed the manner in which chimpanzees solve problems, such as that of retrieving bananas when positioned out of reach. He found that they stacked wooden crates to use as makeshift ladders in order to retrieve the food. If the bananas were placed on the ground outside of the cage, they used sticks to lengthen the reach of their arms. Köhler concluded that the chimps had not arrived at these methods through trial-and-error (which American psychologist Edward Thorndike had claimed to be the basis of all animal learning, through his law of effect), but rather that they had experienced an insight (sometimes known as the Eureka effect or an "aha" experience), in which, having realized the answer, they then proceeded to carry it out in a way that was, in Köhler's words, "unwaveringly purposeful."
Primate cognition | Problem solving
There are many applications of this problem. One is as a toy problem for computer science. Another possible purpose of the problem is to raise the question: Are monkeys intelligent? Both humans and monkeys have the ability to use mental maps to remember things like where to go to find shelter, or how to avoid danger. They can also remember where to go to gather food and water, as well as how to communicate with each other. Monkeys have the ability not only to remember how to hunt and gather but to learn new things, as is the case with the monkey and the bananas: despite the fact that the monkey may never have been in an identical situation, with the same artifacts at hand, a monkey is capable of concluding that it needs to make a ladder, position it below the bananas, and climb up to reach for them.
Monkey and banana problem | Purpose of the problem
Familiar algebraic methods are unavailing for solving such equations.
The monkey and the coconuts | General description
A similar training regimen was applied on pigs, animals who are known to condition rapidly. These pigs were trained to insert wooden coins into a piggy bank. Over time, the pigs stopped depositing the coins and instead began to drop it in the dirt, push it down with their noses, drag it back out, and fling it into the air. This is a series of actions which are part of a behaviour known as rooting. It is an instinctual pattern of behaviour which pigs use to dig for food and to communicate. The pigs chose to engage in rooting rather than performing their trained action (depositing the coin) and therefore, this is yet another clear example of instinctive drift interfering with operant conditioning.
Instinctive drift | In pigs
Pappworth made plans to publish an extended version of his article as a book. "Human Guinea Pigs: Experimentation on Man" named those responsible for the research and fully cited its sources. It detailed experiments on children and inmates of mental and penal institutions, and included 78 examples of research that had been carried out on patients who were at National Health Service hospitals for routine surgery. Some of these patients had been subjected to cardiac catheterisation—the insertion of a catheter into a chamber or vessel of the heart—without informed consent. Pappworth believed the reasons for the experiments to be purely for the career advancement of those involved.
Maurice Henry Pappworth | "Human Guinea Pigs"
Tool use and manufacture can also shed light on the many aspects of the tufted capuchin's cognitive abilities by determining how it solves some problems. Some non-primates manufacture and use objects as tools. Crows are known to make hook-tools for catching insects, but such activities lack the behavioral plasticity of tool use as evidenced in tufted capuchins who found new ways to use tools that other species could not. But this plasticity in tool use, while suggesting greater complexity and cognitive ability, does not suggest that the monkeys understand cause and effect. It instead implies they are "only able to learn from successful efforts but not from failures" nor are they able to refine and improve much.
Tufted capuchin | Problem solving
Experimental evidence has shown that screaming hairy armadillos and guinea pigs qualitatively follow MVT when foraging. The researchers ran several parallel experiments: one for each animal under consistent patch quality, and one for guinea pigs with varying patch quality. While the qualitative foraging trend was shown to follow MVT in each case, the quantitative analysis indicated that each patch was exploited further than expected.
Marginal value theorem | Feeding in hairy armadillos and guinea pigs
Animals differ widely in many learning and cognitive tasks in ways that reflect their evolutionary history and their instinctual behaviors in natural environments. For example, dogs and rats easily learn to avoid an electric shock from the floor by moving to another part of the experimental chamber when they hear a tone preceding the shock; this is an appropriate response to a dangerous situation. However, hedgehogs fail to learn this avoidance behavior. This might seem to show the hedgehog's inability to learn, but the hedgehog's instinctive reaction to a threat is to curl up into a ball, a response that interferes with possible escape behavior in this situation.
Animal cognition | Biological constraints
Elephants have a complex social structure and large brains that enable them to solve many problems. Their size and strength do not make them easy candidates for experiments. Researchers Plotnik, Lair, Suphachoksahakun, and de Waal adapted the apparatus and task to elephant requirements. They trained captive Asian elephants ("Elephas maximus") to use a rope to pull a sliding platform with food on it towards themselves. Once the elephants managed this solo task, the researchers introduced a loose-string apparatus by threading the rope around the platform. At first, two elephants were released simultaneously to walk side by side in two lanes to the two loose ends of the rope.
Cooperative pulling paradigm | Elephants
She told medical journalists Jenny Bryan and John Clare that the primates used in xenotransplantation research are subjected to major surgery; internal haemorrhages; isolation in small cages; repeated blood sampling; wound infections; nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea because of immunosuppressant drugs; kidney or heart failure, and eventually death. She said: "It's not just the suffering they endure in the laboratories and research establishments. Just getting there can be torture. Studies of primates show them to have complex mental abilities which may increase their capacity to suffer. Supplying the laboratories in the UK imposes huge suffering on the animals... They're then contained in small, single cages, and transported for very long distances causing deaths, distress and suffering."
Gill Langley | Position on animal research
Thus, the response gradually approximates the desired behavior until finally the target response (lever pressing) is established. At first the rat is not likely to press the lever; in the end it presses rapidly. Shaping sometimes fails. An oft-cited example is an attempt by Marian and Keller Breland (students of B.F. Skinner) to shape a pig and a raccoon to deposit a coin in a piggy bank, using food as the reinforcer. Instead of learning to deposit the coin, the pig began to root it into the ground, and the raccoon "washed" and rubbed the coins together. That is, the animals treated the coin the same way that they treated food items that they were preparing to eat, referred to as “food-getting” behaviors.
Shaping (psychology) | Successive approximations
Causal reasoning is not unique to humans; animals are often able to use causal information as cues for survival. Rats are able to generalize causal cues to gain food rewards. Animals such as rats can learn the mechanisms required for a reward by reasoning about what could elicit a reward (Sawa, 2009). New Caledonian crows have been studied for their ability to reason about causal events. This intelligent species uses tools in a way that even chimpanzees cannot, making complex tools to bring food within reach. Experimental work with this species suggests that they can understand hidden causes in a way that was previously believed uniquely human.
Causal reasoning | Causal reasoning in non-human animals
In their experiments, the researchers deprived rats of food and then taught them to press a lever a specific number of times to obtain food. The rats learned to press the lever approximately the number of times specified by the researchers. Additionally, the researchers showed that rats' behavior was dependent on the number of required presses, and not for example on the time of pressing, as they varied the experiment to include faster and slower behavior on the rat's part by controlling how hungry the animal was.
Number sense in animals | Early studies
Using their trunks the animals coordinated their actions and retrieved the food. At this stage they could simply be applying a 'see the rope, pull the rope' strategy. To see whether they understood the requirements of the task the researchers introduced a delay for one elephant, initially of 5 seconds and ultimately of 45 seconds. At first the lead elephant failed to retrieve the food but was soon seen to wait for a partner. Across 60 trials the first elephant waited for the second one before pulling in most cases. In a further control the researchers prevented the second elephant from being able to access its end of the rope.
Cooperative pulling paradigm | Elephants
Instinctive drift is another factor that can influence the interpretation of cognitive research. Instinctive drift is the tendency of an animal to revert to instinctive behaviors that can interfere with learned responses. The concept originated with Keller and Marian Breland when they taught a raccoon to put coins into a box. The raccoon drifted to its instinctive behavior of rubbing the coins with its paws, as it would do when foraging for food. Animal ability to process and respond to stimuli is correlated with brain size. Small-brain animals tend to show simple behaviors that are less dependent on learning than those of large-brained animals.
Animal cognition | Biological constraints
"Experimental Production of Depressive Behavior in Young Rhesus Monkeys: A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Psychology) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison". University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1971, p. 33. Thesis available in physical form on request; see https://search.library.wisc.edu/catalog/999575603502121 Harlow placed baby monkeys in the chamber alone for up to six weeks. Within a few days, they stopped moving about and remained huddled in a corner. The monkeys generally exhibited marked social impairment and peer hostility when removed from the chamber; most did not recover.
Animal testing on non-human primates | University of Wisconsin–Madison
Domestic pigs do not appear to develop a cognitive bias when kept in different stocking densities. Farmed pigs trained to expect food inside a bowl in one location and not in another, and then tested to show their responses to ambiguous spatial locations. Forty growing pigs were housed in groups of 10 at different density for 8 weeks prior to the start of the test. Tests on three occasions for each pig did not reveal any difference in cognitive bias according to the pig's history of stocking density. One study shows that restriction of collared peccaries ("Pecari tajacu") in metabolism pens affects their emotional state and increases faecal glucocorticoid (a stress hormone) metabolite concentrations.
Cognitive bias in animals | In pigs
Within her research, Christine Drea focuses on social learning and group cohesion, in particular, how social interaction modulates behavior, problem solving, and cognitive performance. With her research, she compares both carnivore and primate foraging to understand how animals modify their behavior in their social groups. Drea's main interest in her research on primates and carnivores is determining if similar factors (of a complex social group) affect the "learning and performance across taxonomic groups". Another interest in her research is how animals learn rules of conduct and maintain social cohesion (in their behavioral development) based on scent marking, social effects on behavior, play, and aggression.
Christine Drea | Research
This is a medium-sized guinea pig with an adult length of about and a weight of . The tail, at around 2.4 mm, is almost non-existent. The dorsal fur is dark olive-brown mixed with brown and black, and the underparts are a pale grey or yellowish-grey. Its karyotype has 2n = 64 and a reportedly variable FN of 116 or 128 for "C. a. aperea" and 128 for "C. a. pamparum".
Brazilian guinea pig | Description
During daylight hours, they spend the majority of their time foraging on the ground, running along in quadrupedal patterns.
Guinea baboon | Behavior
Olfactory rather than visual stimuli are used in the identification of other pigs. Hearing is also well developed, and localisation of sounds is made by moving the head. Pigs use auditory stimuli extensively as a means of communication in all social activities. Alarm or aversive stimuli are transmitted to other pigs not only by auditory cues but also by pheromones. Similarly, recognition between the sow and her piglets is by olfactory and vocal cues.
Domestic pig | Senses
In imitation, a learner observes a unique action performed by the demonstrator and learns to reproduce the behavior exactly. (This differs from "copying" in which the learner reproduces that same action but this is performed with a different part of the body e.g. the left paw is used instead of the right paw.) Researchers conducted studies with marmosets to observe how they learned to access food. When groups of marmosets observed a demonstrator removing the lid with his hands or mouth, they also used only their hands or mouth, respectively. Thus, the marmosets completely imitated their demonstrators. Gorillas and chimpanzees also utilize imitation to learn food handling skills.
Social learning in animals | Imitation and emulation
When population densities were estimated, two techniques were used, one was determined using trapping grids, which is usually placed in optimum habitat, which would be only 0.77ha, which are their feeding grounds. This first estimate is 28-44cavies/ha, which is believed to be an overestimate. The other method was minimum-number-known-alive (MNKA), covering the 6.34 ha of vegetation used by the cavies known due to sited feces.
Santa Catarina's guinea pig | Distribution
It is probable that one can induce questions by purposefully removing key elements from a familiar situation. Suppose a chimpanzee received its daily ration of food at a specific time and place, and then one day the food was not there. A chimpanzee trained in the interrogative might inquire "Where is my food?" or, in Sarah's case, "My food is?" Sarah was never put in a situation that might induce such interrogation because for our purposes it was easier to teach Sarah to answer questions". A decade later Premacks wrote: "Though she [Sarah] understood the question, she did not herself ask any questions—unlike the child who asks interminable questions, such as What that? Who making noise? When Daddy come home? Me go Granny's house? Where puppy? Sarah never delayed the departure of her trainer after her lessons by asking where the trainer was going, when she was returning, or anything else".
Primate cognition | Asking questions and giving negative answers
A 2010 experiment revealed that in order to reach food, "elephants can learn to coordinate with a partner in a task requiring two individuals to simultaneously pull two ends of the same rope to obtain a reward", putting them on an equal footing with chimpanzees in terms of their level of cooperative skills. A study by Dr. Naoko Irie of Tokyo University has shown that elephants demonstrate skills at arithmetic. The experiment "consist[ed] of dropping varying numbers of apples into two buckets in front of the [Ueno Zoo] elephants and then recording how often they could correctly choose the bucket holding the most fruit." When more than one apple was being dropped into the bucket, this meant that the elephants had to "keep running totals in their heads to keep track of the count." The results showed that "Seventy-four percent of the time, the animals correctly picked the fullest bucket.
Elephant cognition | Problem-solving experiments
During the Sewards’ early postdoctoral years they formed a professional relationship with the creator of the Pap test, G. N. Papanicolaou. This relationship would result in a number of studies on the reproductive behaviours of the guinea pig, including a comparison of male and female guinea pig sex drives and the specificity of the sex drive in male guinea pigs. Seward's early feminist works included "The Psychological Effects of the Menstrual Cycle on Women Workers" (1944) and an experimental study called "Culture Conflict and the Feminine Role" (1945). These works would be the prelude to a more comprehensive collection of social sex differences called "Sex and the Social Order" (1946).
Georgene Hoffman Seward | Early academic career
The monkeys have difficulty acting normally even when a sexual opportunity presents itself, this is due to the fact that they have affectional disorders that they do not often overcome.
Socialization of animals | Socialization experiments
[13] The head of the excavation, Michel Rosenberg, and Dr. Richard Redding [14] published a series of articles and suggested that Hallan Çemi residents applied a kind of animal manipulation, which is practiced today in New Guinea, on pigs. [15] This type of pig farming is known as the " New Guinea Model ". [16] According to this model, sows were handled and allowed to mate with wild boars outside. Male offspring were killed and eaten at a certain age, while some of the female offspring were used in this way, some were fed for their offspring. [16]
Hallan Çemi Tepesi | Archaeological finds
Along with the existence of complex deception in small-brained primates in large groups with the opportunity (both abundant food eaters in their natural environments and originally solitary species that adopted social lifestyles under artificial food abundances), this is cited as evidence against the model of social groups selecting for large brains and/or intelligence.
Dunbar's number | Criticism
For example, they observed that time spent alone at the apparatus decreased as the trials progressed. In some instances one orangutan pushed the other towards the free handle, soliciting cooperation. The researchers observed an asymmetry: one ape did all the monitoring and coordinating, the other one seemed to simply pull if the first one was present. Rewards did not have to be shared equally for success to appear, as one orangutan took 92% of all food. This ape anticipated the falling of food and stuck his hand out first, before recruiting help from his partner. Chalmeau, Lardeux, Brandibas, and Gallo concluded the apes appeared to understand the requirements of the cooperative task.
Cooperative pulling paradigm | Orangutans
The results indicated that female capuchins might be sensitive to unequal distribution of rewards. Male capuchins did not show any different behavior between the two conditions. Brosnan subsequently tested five female capuchins in different conditions. As before, the rewards were either equal or inferior to what the other monkey received. Brosnan also tested if it mattered if the other monkey received food as reward for effort or for not doing anything at all. The task the capuchins had to perform was a common exchange task: the experimenter handed the monkey a stone which simply had to be handed back. If done so, the experimenter would give the food reward.
Inequity aversion in animals | First research
A large rodent, the greater guinea pig grows to a total length of and weight of for males and a total length of and weight of for females. The dorsal fur is dark agouti brown and the underparts are reddish brown. It is semiaquatic and has membranes joining the toes. Its karyotype has 2n = 64 and FN = 128.
Greater guinea pig | Description
Similar studies by Jensen and other researchers have since replicated his findings with gerbils and other animals including canines, mice, rats, birds, fish, monkeys and chimpanzees. The only animal that did not display similar behavior was the domesticated cat, which preferred to be served.
Contrafreeloading | Introduction
Anthropologists travel to New Guinea to search for the so-called missing link of human evolution. What they find is not a fossil, but an actual population of ape-like creatures, called "Paranthropus greamiensis" after the discoverer, and dubbed Tropis. A businessman named Vancruysen has the idea to use them as a cheap workforce without rights or pay. The scientists then realize they must come up with a definitive answer to the problem of whether or not the Tropis are human, something they have avoided doing on the grounds that fixing an arbitrary limit between human and non-human is akin to the sorites paradox.
Les Animaux dénaturés | Plot
Habituation procedures are used by researchers for many reasons. For example, in a study on aggression in female chimpanzees from a group known as the ""Kasakela Chimpanzee Community"", researchers habituated the chimpanzees by repeatedly exposing them to the presence of human beings. Their efforts to habituate the chimpanzees before the field researchers studied the animal's behavior was necessary in order for them to eventually be able to note the natural behavior of the chimpanzees, instead of simply noting chimpanzee behavior as a response to the presence of the researchers. In another study, Mitumba chimpanzees in the Gombe National Park were habituated for at least four years before the introduction of systematic data collection.
Habituation | Uses and challenges of the habituation procedure
The name "Guinea Pig" – the rodent species commonly used as a laboratory test subject – was chosen to reflect the experimental nature of the techniques and equipment used for reconstructive work carried out at East Grinstead. The hospital was nicknamed "the Sty". The treatment of burns by surgery was in its infancy, and many casualties were suffering from injuries which, only a few years earlier, would have led to certain death.
Guinea Pig Club | Name
Nicol's research focuses on animal welfare science as the primary research area. She has conducted significant research on the methods used in this field. In her research about the need of hens to flap their wings in a cage environment, experiments in a controlled setting were conducted, differences between the control and experiment group were observed and the rebound rate was recorded during the experiment replication. This showed that hens did not adapt to living in a battery cage She has also conducted investigations on how closely the commonly used welfare assessing measures are tied to animals’ preferences and environmental choices.
Christine Nicol | Research and work
In the opinion of the researcher, while the experiment showed, “… a case of imitative learning it would be misleading to think of Abang’s behavior solely as parrot-fashion learning. … apes possess random exploratory activity and innovations which can lead to new successes.”
Abang (orangutan) | Conclusion
A variety of studies indicates that animals are able to use and communicate quantitative information, and that some can count in a rudimentary way. Some examples of this research follow. In one study, rhesus monkeys viewed visual displays containing, for example, 1, 2, 3, or 4 items of different sorts. They were trained to respond to them in several ways involving numerical ordering, for example touching "1" first, "2" second and so on. When tested with displays containing items they had never seen before, they continued to respond to them in order. The authors conclude that monkeys can represent the numerosities 1 to 9 at least on an ordinal scale.
Animal cognition | Numeracy
In a letter to PETA, neurologist Robert S. Hoffman stated that he regards such experiments to be a "blind alley," and that the baboons are "kept alive for either three or ten days after experiencing a major stroke and in a condition of profound disability. This is obviously as terrifying for animals as it is for humans unless one believes that animals are incapable of terror or other emotional distress" Wayback Machine . According to the published stroke model by Connolly, animals are given a stroke and maintained on anesthesia and analgesia for 12–18 hours. Then, when anesthesia is removed, animals that are not self-caring are euthanized.
Primate experiments at Columbia University | Reaction
Its mechanism has been partly elucidated by observations with functional MRI of the mother’s brain. The herd instinct is found in human children and chimpanzee cubs, but is apparently absent in the young orangutans.
Human nature | Scientific understanding
They are also used as scientific research animals throughout the world.
Golden hamster | Introduction
These studies are usually performed on rats, guinea-pigs, and rabbits.
Superior cervical ganglion | Research
Orangutans ("Pongo pygmaeus") are tool-using apes that are mostly solitary. Chalmeau, Lardeux, Brandibas, and Gallo tested the cooperative capabilities of a pair of orangutans, using a device with handles. Only through simultaneous pulling could the pair retrieve a food reward. Without any training the orangutans succeeded in the first session. Over the course of 30 sessions, the apes succeeded more quickly, having learned to coordinate. Across trials the researchers found an increase in a sequence of actions that suggested understanding of cooperation: first looking at the partner; then if the partner holds or pulls the handle, starting to pull. The researchers also concluded that the orangutans learned a partner had to be present for success.
Cooperative pulling paradigm | Orangutans
20 animals would typically be used to ensure against false negative results. The OECD Guidelines for the Testing of Chemicals guideline No. 406 of 1992.
Guinea pig maximisation test | Introduction
Data supporting the authors' conclusion that cottontop tamarin monkeys displayed pattern-learning behavior similar to human infants reportedly could not be located after a three-year investigation.
Primatology | Criticisms
Thorndike's dogs and cats learned to escape a box by, for instance, pulling a loop attached to a string that opened the box. On subsequent introductions to an open box when string-pulling no longer served a purpose, the animal continued to pull a string before getting out of the box. Thorndike concluded that the animal solved the task mechanically, without understanding the causal link between string-pulling and escaping. A conceptually similar experiment involved pre-training four logging Asian elephants to remove food from a cover-less bucket by inserting their trunk into the bucket. Next, a treat was placed at the bottom of a bucket and, at the same time, the bucket was covered with a lid.
Elephant cognition | Possible absence of causal reasoning
Dogs have often been used in studies of cognition, including research on perception, awareness, memory, and learning, notably research on classical and operant conditioning. In the course of this research, behavioral scientists uncovered a surprising set of social-cognitive abilities in the domestic dog, abilities that are neither possessed by dogs' closest canine relatives nor by other highly intelligent mammals such as great apes. Rather, these skills resemble some of the social-cognitive skills of human children. This may be an example of convergent evolution, which happens when distantly related species independently evolve similar solutions to the same problems. For example, fish, penguins and dolphins have each separately evolved flippers as solution to the problem of moving through the water.
Dog intelligence | Evolutionary perspective
The domestic pigs, both as a live animal and source of post-mortem tissues, are one of the most valuable animal models used in biomedical research today, because of their biological, physiological and anatomical similarities to human beings. For instance, human skin is very similar to pig skin, therefore pig skin has been used in many preclinical studies. Porcine are used in finding treatments, cures for diseases, xenotransplantation, and for general education. They are also used in the development of medical instruments and devices, surgical techniques and instrumentation, and FDA-approved research. These animals contribute to the reduction methods for animal research, as they supply more information from fewer animals used, for a lower cost.
Domestic pig | In human medical applications
Pascal Gagneux, an evolutionary biologist and primate expert at the University of California, San Diego, argues, given chimpanzees' sense of self, tool use, and genetic similarity to human beings, studies using chimps should follow the ethical guidelines used for human subjects unable to give consent. A recent study suggests chimpanzees which are retired from labs exhibit a form of posttraumatic stress disorder. Stuart Zola, director of the Yerkes laboratory, disagrees. He told "National Geographic": "I don't think we should make a distinction between our obligation to treat humanely any species, whether it's a rat or a monkey or a chimpanzee.
Chimpanzee | Use in research
Managers in these areas are responsible for evaluating suitable habitat for moose and deer, as well as setting management priorities and population goals to decrease the transmission of "Parelaphostrongylus tenuis" in moose. Though the main focus of research has been on white-tailed deer and moose, research has found that the guinea pig can be used as an experimental model of "P. tenuis" infection.
Parelaphostrongylus tenuis | Current and past research
Chimpanzees ("Pan troglodytes") are smart, social animals. In the wild they cooperate to hunt, dominate rival groups, and defend their territory. They have participated in many cooperative pulling experiments. The first ever cooperative pulling experiment involved captive chimpanzees. In the 1930s Crawford was a student and researcher at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center. In 1937 he published a study of two young chimpanzees named Bula and Bimba pulling ropes attached to a box. The box was too heavy to be pulled in by just one ape. On top of the box was food. The two participants synchronized their pulling and were able to get the food reward in four to five short pulls.
Cooperative pulling paradigm | Chimpanzees
De Waal and Berger used the cooperative pulling paradigm to investigate animal economics. They compared the behavior when both transparent bowls were loaded with food to when just one was loaded, and with a solo task where the partner was only an observer and unable to help. They found that captive capuchin monkeys were willing to pull even if their bowl was empty and it was uncertain if their partner would share food. In 90% of cases the owner of the food did indeed share the food. Food was shared more often if the partner actually worked for it than just being an observer.
Cooperative pulling paradigm | Capuchins
Researchers have selected various species as subjects of their inequity aversion experiments. Within the group of species closely related to humans, researchers have chosen both social primates (chimpanzees, bonobos, owl monkeys, marmosets, baboons, gorillas, and tamarins), and ones living solitary or just with their offspring (orangutans, gibbons, and squirrel monkeys). Researchers have also tested non-primates that display any capability of cooperation: corvids (crows, ravens, kea), canines (dogs, wolves), cleaner fish and rats. Brosnan and de Waal have called for experiments with elephants, dolphins, and domestic cats to further the understanding of the evolution of fairness. Within their experiments researchers have controlled for various characteristics of subjects, just like Brosnan and de Waal did by using only female capuchins.
Inequity aversion in animals | Subjects
Couzin's work is aimed at understanding how collective behaviour in animals emerges, using a combination of fieldwork, computer simulations, lab experiments, and mathematical models. His work with army ants showed how they move forming traffic lanes that optimizes their movement and avoids congestion. His work has been featured on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, TIME, and BBC news.
Iain Couzin | Research
Habit reversal and inhibition are commonly used to test primate intelligence. These tasks require the animal to suppress a learned response or instinctive action in order to receive a reward. For example, in the detour problem, a food reward behind an obstacle must be retrieved by following an indirect route. To do this, the subject must inhibit its tendency to move straight towards the goal.
G factor in non-humans | Habit reversal & inhibition
In 1973 and 1974, Cheney and Seyfarth studied the social behavior of baboons in the Mt. Zebra National Park, South Africa. Cheney's research focused on the development of juveniles and subadults of both sexes. In 1977, as post-doctoral fellows working with Peter Marler, they began an 11-year study of behavior, communication, and cognition among vervet monkeys in Amboseli National Park, Kenya. They developed field "playback" experiments to study the information that listeners acquire when they hear a vocalization – particularly vervet monkey alarm calls – and showed how such experiments can be used to test hypotheses about the monkeys' knowledge of each other's social relationships.
Dorothy Cheney (scientist) | Research
Bonobos may be inequity averse, as researchers have interpreted findings differently. Orangutans, squirrel monkeys, owl monkeys, tamarins, parrots, and cleaner fish were not found to be sensitive to inequity in any study. Pet dogs behave differently from pack dogs and wolves. Pet dogs only object to the other receiving a reward while they themselves do not get anything, but when the difference is in quality, they do not seem to mind. The first follow-up studies that failed to replicate the original Brosnan and de Waal findings subsequently were shown to have a crucial difference in experimental setup. They involved animals getting food for no effort.
Inequity aversion in animals | Overview
An article entitled 'Human Guinea Pigs: A Warning' published in 1962 in the journal "Twentieth Century" by Maurice Pappworth highlighted many unethical practices regarding human experimentation at the postgraduate medical school. According to Pappworth, experiments had been carried out without valid consent on vulnerable patients, such as children and the mentally ill.
Royal Postgraduate Medical School | Controversy
Some researchers have used this algorithm to study bottlenose dolphin language.
Animal consciousness | Language
The most common monkey species found in animal research are the grivet, the rhesus macaque, and the crab-eating macaque, which are either wild-caught or purpose-bred. They are used primarily because of their relative ease of handling, their fast reproductive cycle (compared to apes) and their psychological and physical similarity to humans. Worldwide, it is thought that between 100,000 and 200,000 non-human primates are used in research each year, 64.7% of which are Old World monkeys, and 5.5% New World monkeys. This number makes a very small fraction of all animals used in research. Between 1994 and 2004 the United States has used an average of 54,000 non-human primates, while around 10,000 non-human primates were used in the European Union in 2002.
Monkey | In experiments
In 2002, lecturers and students from the University of Plymouth MediaLab Arts course used a £2,000 grant from the Arts Council to study the literary output of real monkeys. They left a computer keyboard in the enclosure of six Celebes crested macaques in Paignton Zoo in Devon, England for a month, with a radio link to broadcast the results on a website. Not only did the monkeys produce nothing but five total pages largely consisting of the letter 'S', the lead male began striking the keyboard with a stone, and other monkeys followed by soiling it. Mike Phillips, director of the university's Institute of Digital Arts and Technology (i-DAT), said that the artist-funded project was primarily performance art, and they had learned "an awful lot" from it.
Infinite monkey theorem | Actual monkeys
However, since only two dolphins were involved in the experiment, the study is difficult to generalize. Starting with the dolphin named Malia, the method of the experiment was to choose a particular behavior exhibited by her each day and reward each display of that behavior throughout the day's session. At the start of each new day Malia would present the prior day's behavior, but only when a new behavior was exhibited was a reward given. All behaviors exhibited were, at least for a time, known behaviors of dolphins. After approximately two weeks Malia apparently exhausted "normal" behaviors and began to repeat performances.
Cetacean intelligence | Creative behavior
The researchers noted that these effects were mitigated by environmental enrichment.
Cognitive bias in animals | In pigs
Studies on primate cognition have provided evidence of what may be interpreted as insight in animals. In 1917, Wolfgang Köhler published his book "The Mentality of Apes", having studied primates on the island of Tenerife for six years. In one of his experiments, apes were presented with an insight problem that required the use of objects in new and original ways, in order to win a prize (usually, some kind of food). He observed that the animals would continuously fail to get the food, and this process occurred for quite some time; however, rather suddenly, they would purposefully use the object in the way needed to get the food, as if the realization had occurred out of nowhere.
Insight | Non-Human Animals
It is suspected that human observers can influence chimpanzee behaviour. For this reason researchers sometimes prefer camera traps and remote microphones rather than human observers.
Pan (genus) | Behaviour
A brief account of the behavioral changes can be seen below: The study does not indicate a catalyst ratio at which all the Koshima monkeys started washing sweet potatoes, or a correlation to other monkey studies where similar behavior started. To the contrary, it indicated that certain age groups in Koshima would not learn the behavior.
Hundredth monkey effect | Original research