Nancy Rebout

University of Strasbourg | UNISTRA · Département d'Ecophysiologie Ecologie et Ethologie

Many animals respond to and use social cues emitted by other species (e.g., head direction). In the context of human-animal communication, these capacities have been attributed to regular and longstanding exposure to humans. We presented wild brown skuas (Catharacta antarctica ssp. lonnbergi) with two versions of an object-choice paradigm. In the c...

This article describes survivorship and explores factors affecting mortality risks in a captive colony of coppery titi monkeys (Plecturocebus cupreus) housed at the California National Primate Research Center (CNPRC), at UC Davis, in Davis, CA. We analyzed data collected on individuals since the colony's creation in the 1960s, with a sample of 600...

Glucocorticoid and androgen hormones play a prominent role in male reproductive effort. Their production usually increases in non-human primates during mating competition, which may include rivalry for access to receptive females, struggles for high dominance rank, or social pressure on low-ranking individuals. It is generally assumed that glucocor...

La personnalité est une construction complexe qui joue un rôle important dans la formation du comportement et des fonctions cognitives d'un individu. Elle est le fruit de l'interaction entre la génétique et l'environnement, et peut évoluer tout au long de la vie. Les facteurs sociaux, en particulier, sont un aspect important de l'effet environnemen...

In South Africa, chacma baboons (Papio hamadryas ursinus) living near peri-urban areas may forage on anthropogenic food. Baboons have been recorded to damage crops, scatter waste from trash bins, and damage homes. A number of methods have been tested over the past 20 years to solve these problems, but none proved successful over the long-term or in...

There is no doubt that different factors determine the evolutionary trajectory of a species' communication abilities. Beyond habitat, social life is likely a selection pressure. The hypothesis positing that living in a complex social system requires complex communication skills has gained ground. However, the measures used classically to tackle thi...

Since ecology influences the expression of cognitive traits, intra-specific variation in ecological demands can drive differences in cognition. This is often the case, for instance, when sexes face different ecological challenges. However, so far, most studies have focused on few cognitive domains (i.e., spatial cognition), which limits our underst...

The capacity to follow human cues provides animals with information about the environment and can hence offer obvious adaptive benefits. Most studies carried out so far, however, have been on captive animals with previous experience with humans. Further comparative investigation is needed to properly assess the factors driving the emergence of this...

Recruitment is a process by which animals can initiate collective movements: the action of an individual prompts conspecifics to follow. Although it has been hypothesized that animals may be able to intentionally recruit others, there is no experimental evidence of this to date. We tested this hypothesis in two pairs of Tonkean macaques in a situat...

A wide range of species relies on heterospecific visual cues to detect the location of resources like food. Although different hypotheses have been suggested to explain the emergence of this capacity in animals, results are often difficult to interpret due to the influence of other factors, such as close contact with humans. In this study, we prese...

The ‘social complexity hypothesis for communicative complexity’ posits that living in a complex social system requires complex communication skills. Since the complexity of a system can be measured by the amount of uncertainty it produces, we tested this hypothesis by studying species of macaque that differ in social tolerance and uncertainty of so...

Logical inference, once strictly associated with spoken language, is now reported in some non-human animals. One aspect of logical inference, reasoning by exclusion, has been traditionally explored through the use of the cups task (cup A and cup B, if not cup A, then exclude cup A and select cup B). However, to fully understand the factors that dro...

Among animals, the visual acuity of several predatory bird species is probably the most outstanding. This, and the ease with which visually based tasks are administered, has led researchers to predominantly use the visual modality when studying avian cognition. Some wild skua populations routinely use acoustic cues emitted by their prey during fora...

Social learning during foraging has been found in a wide range of animals, including numerous bird species. Still, the mecha- nisms underlying this cognitive capacity remain largely unstudied and the use of divergent methods limits our understanding of their taxonomic distribution. Using an ecologically relevant design, the open di usion experiment...

Once believed uniquely human, the capacity to reason is now investigated in a wide range of species. One component of this ability, inference by exclusion, has been traditionally explored through the cups task, where 2 containers are presented but only 1 covers a food reward (if Cup A is empty, then choose Cup B). Often based on low-level cognitive...

Few avian species use tools in the wild. Yet, several birds build nests of great complexity and many aspects of tool use may also apply to nest building. It has long been hypothesised that tool use may select for specialised cognitive adaptions or even general cognitive skills. This might similarly pertain to species that build complex nests. In th...

While there is no consensus about the definition of complexity, it is widely accepted that the ability to produce uncertainty is the most prominent characteristic of complex systems. We introduce new metrics that purport to quantify the complexity of living organisms and social organizations based on their levels of uncertainty. We consider three m...

Decision outcomes in unpredictable environments may not have exact known probabilities. Yet the predictability level of outcomes matters in decisions, and animals, including humans, generally avoid ambiguous options. Managing ambiguity may be more challenging and requires stronger cognitive skills than decision-making under risk, where decisions in...

We tested the social complexity hypothesis which posits that animals living in complex social environments should use complex communication systems. We focused on two components of vocal complexity: diversity (number of categories of calls) and flexibility (degree of gradation between categories of calls). We compared the acoustic structure of voca...

The social complexity hypothesis posits that living in a complex social system requires complex communication skills. Complexity and uncertainty being linked, I have tested this hypothesis by comparing several primate species that differ by the degree of uncertainty of their social interactions. First, I elaborated tools to measure three components...

Animals in urban environments face challenging situations and have to cope with human activities. This study investigated the ecology and behaviour of a population of European hamsters (Cricetus cricetus) living in the city centre of Vienna (Austria). We recorded the surface activities of 35 hamsters in May 2015. Each focal animal was observed for...

Highly valued food items are often used as rewards to reinforce an animal's behavior. For social species, social interaction is rewarding and can drive an individual's behavior as well. In the currently study, we wanted to compare the efficacy of a food reward and a social reward on object discrimination learning in socially monogamous titi monkeys...

Does the social system have an impact on the acoustic production? We compare the tonal vocalizations of Tonkean macaques and rhesus macaques, and found a higher vocal variability and vocal repertoire for the tolerant species (Macaca tonkeana) compared to the intolerant species.

The clumped distribution of food resources promotes food defensibility and can lead to the monopolizing of resources by high-ranking individuals. However, the balance of power is set at different levels according to societies, meaning that resource partitioning should vary between them. This study investigates whether dominance asymmetry and resour...

The theory of sexual selection predicts that females should be discriminatory in the choice of sexual partners. Females can express their choice in two ways. In direct mate choice, they show preferences for certain partners. In indirect mate choice, they select partners by displaying sexually attractive traits, thus eliciting contest competition be...