Are the least social animals the most innovative?

Newswise —

Innovation means finding new solutions to problems. It's important for animals and humans to survive. A study by the University of Barcelona looked at how innovative some hoofed animals are, like horses, camels, and goats. They found that the animals who were less friendly with others and more scared of new things were better at solving problems, like opening a food container.

The study found that individual ungulates (animals like dromedaries, horses, and goats that walk on their toes or hooves) that were less socially integrated and more afraid of new things were better at solving a challenge of opening a food container. This is similar to recent research on wild and captive primates, which suggests that less socially integrated individuals are better at overcoming their aversion to new things. These findings could help test evolutionary theories for animals like ungulates in the future. The study was conducted by Álvaro López Caicoya, a predoctoral researcher at the University of Barcelona.

The researcher says that most studies about how animals solve problems have focused on birds and primates, but other animals may face different challenges. Including other groups, like ungulates, in future studies is important for understanding how different animals develop innovative abilities.

The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, includes the participation of Montserrat Colell, lecturer at the Faculty of Psychology and researcher at UBneuro, together with other experts from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the University of Leipzig (Germany).

An experiment with a hundred animals in captivity

The researchers did an experiment on 111 animals from 13 different species of ungulates (such as goats, horses, and deer) that were living in zoos in different countries. The animals were given a challenge to open a container that they had never seen before, which had their favorite food inside.

Before conducting the test, the researchers categorized all the animals based on various factors that could affect their problem-solving skills. These factors included the animals' fear of new objects, their diet, and their social integration within their group. The goal was to identify the individual and socio-ecological traits of the animals that were most effective in solving the challenge presented by the researchers.

Dromedaries and goats, the most skilled

The animals' participation in the experiment varied depending on the species. For example, all dromedaries approached the container, but only 33% of the sheep did. Domesticated animals and those that belong to complex groups that go together or separate depending on the environment and the time showed the most interaction, but these characteristics did not necessarily mean they were better at solving the challenge. The researchers noted that the domestication process might have selected traits that facilitate interactions with humans and human-made objects, but not necessarily cognitive skills for problem-solving.

Out of the hundred animals that participated in the experiment, only 36% of them were able to open the container and access the food at least once. Among the species that showed a higher percentage of individuals that escaped were dromedaries and goats, with 86% and 69%, respectively, according to Álvaro López Caicoya, the predoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Psychology and the Institute of Neurosciences (UBneuro) of the UB and first author of the study.

The researchers found that most of the animals that successfully opened the container did so by using their nose, muzzle, or lips. However, nine animals used more than one strategy to open the container, such as lifting the cover gently with their lips or throwing the cup to the floor.

A pioneering study

The study on ungulates' cognition is one of the first of its kind, as there have been very few similar studies conducted on these species. In the past, ungulates have been viewed as mere livestock, and their behaviors and understanding have not been a subject of interest. However, studies like this one are changing this perception, and it is becoming increasingly clear that these animals exhibit complex behaviors that are worth exploring further.

The UB researcher emphasizes the need for more studies that include more species and individuals, both in captivity and wild ones, and more complex challenges, to generalize the findings. He also highlights that the ungulates are an exceptional model for comparative research, and this study is only a first approach to the cognition of these species.