Neural evidence for referential understanding of object words in dogs.

Using words to refer to objects in the environment is a core feature of the human language faculty. Referential understanding assumes the formation of mental representations of these words. Such understanding of object words has not yet been demonstrated as a general capacity in any non-human species, despite multiple behavior-based case reports.

Out-of-reach rewards elicit human-oriented referential communicative behaviours in family dogs but not in family pigs.

Human-oriented referential communication has been evidenced not only in domestic but also in some wild species, however, the importance of domestication-unrelated species' characteristics in the emergence of this capacity remains largely unexplored. One shared property of all species reported to exhibit referential communication is the efficient use of visual social signals. To assess the potential role of species-specific characteristics in the emergence of human-oriented referential communication, we compared similarly socialised companion animals from two domestic species: dogs, which rely heavily on conspecific visual social signals; and pigs, which do not.

Transcriptomics of Parental Care in the Hypothalamic-Septal Region of Female Zebra Finch Brain.

(1) Background: The objective of this study was to uncover genomic causes of parental care. Since birds do not lactate and, therefore, do not show the gene expressional changes required for lactation, we investigate gene expression associated with parenting in caring and non-caring females in an avian species, the small passerine bird zebra finch (). Here, we compare expression patterns in the hypothalamic-septal region since, previously, we showed that this area is activated in parenting females.

Neuronal activation in zebra finch parents associated with reintroduction of nestlings.

Recent studies of the brain mechanisms of parental behaviors have mainly focused on rodents. Using other vertebrate taxa, such as birds, can contribute to a more comprehensive, evolutionary view. In the present study, we investigated a passerine songbird, the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata), with a biparental caring system.

Diurnal and Reproductive Stage-Dependent Variation of Parental Behaviour in Captive Zebra Finches.

Parental care plays a key role in ontogeny, life-history trade-offs, sexual selection and intra-familial conflict. Studies focusing on understanding causes and consequences of variation in parental effort need to quantify parental behaviour accurately. The applied methods are, however, diverse even for a given species and type of parental effort, and rarely validated for accuracy.