Animal cognition: Wild mountain chickadees follow the abstract rules.

concept formation is a cognitive skill that nonhuman animals have been shown to possess. Most often, this ability has been shown in laboratory tasks; a new study sheds light on what role abstract concept formation may play in the wild.

Effect of feed-time duration on discrimination of vocalizations in a go/no-go operant paradigm.

Refining and modifying experimental procedures play a vital role in improving methodology while also reducing animal distress. In this study, we asked if an increase in feed time duration affects discrimination in an operant go/no-go task. Specifically, we used zebra finches' sexually dimorphic distance calls as acoustic stimuli to test whether there were any significant differences in performance on an operant discrimination task requiring zebra finches to classify calls according to the sex of the producer when a key experimental parameter, feed time duration, was increased from 1 s to 2 s.