Able-bodied wild chimpanzees imitate a motor procedure used by a disabled individual to overcome handicap

Fieldwork of CH was generously supported by grants from the Wenner-Gren Foundation (http://wennergren.org) and the Russell Trust. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Chimpanzee culture has generated intense recent interest, fueled by the technical complexity of chimpanzee tool-using traditions; yet it is seriously doubted whether chimpanzees are able to learn motor procedures by imitation under natural conditions. Here we take advantage of an unusual chimpanzee population as a 'natural experiment' to identify evidence for imitative learning of this kind in wild chimpanzees. The Sonso chimpanzee community has suffered from high levels of snare injury and now has several manually disabled members. Adult male Tinka, with near-total paralysis of both hands, compensates inability to scratch his back manually by employing a distinctive technique of holding a growing liana taut while making side-to-side body movements against it. We found that seven able-bodied young chimpanzees also used this 'liana-scratch' technique, although they had no need to. The distribution of the liana-scratch technique was statistically associated with individuals' range overlap with Tinka and the extent of time they spent in parties with him, confirming that the technique is acquired by social learning. The motivation for able-bodied chimpanzees copying his variant is unknown, but the fact that they do is evidence that the imitative learning of motor procedures from others is a natural trait of wild chimpanzees.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

African elephants can use human pointing cues to find hidden food

We thank the School of Psychology and Neuroscience of the University of St Andrews for providing the funding for this research.How animals gain information from attending to the behavior of others has been widely studied, driven partly by the importance of referential pointing in human cognitive development [1, 2, 3 and 4], but species differences in reading human social cues remain unexplained. One explanation is that this capacity evolved during domestication [5 and 6], but it may be that only those animals able to interpret human-like social cues were successfully domesticated. Elephants are a critical taxon for this question: despite their longstanding use by humans, they have never been domesticated [7]. Here we show that a group of 11 captive African elephants, seven of them significantly as individuals, could interpret human pointing to find hidden food. We suggest that success was not due to prior training or extensive learning opportunities. Elephants successfully interpreted pointing when the experimenter’s proximity to the hiding place was varied and when the ostensive pointing gesture was visually subtle, suggesting that they understood the experimenter’s communicative intent. The elephant’s native ability in interpreting social cues may have contributed to its long history of effective use by man.PostprintPeer reviewe

Elephant cognition in primate perspective

On many of the staple measures of comparative psychology, elephants show no obvious differences from other mammals, such as primates: discrimination learning, memory, spontaneous tool use, etc. However, a range of more naturalistic measures have recently suggested that elephant cognition may be rather different. Wild elephants sub-categorize humans into groups, independently making this classification on the basis of scent or colour. In number discrimination, elephants show no effects of absolute magnitude or relative size disparity in making number judgements. In the social realm, elephants show empathy into the problems faced by others, and give hints of special abilities in cooperation, vocal imitation and perhaps teaching. Field data suggest that the elephant’s vaunted reputation for memory may have a factual basis, in two ways. Elephants’ ability to remember large-scale space over long periods suggests good cognitive mapping skills. Elephants’ skill in keeping track of the current locations of many family members implies that working memory may be unusually developed, consistent with the laboratory finding that their quantity judgements do not show the usual magnitude effects.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

The Impact of Foregrounds on Redshift Space Distortion Measurements With the Highly-Redshifted 21 cm Line

The highly redshifted 21 cm line of neutral hydrogen has become recognized as a unique probe of cosmology from relatively low redshifts (z ~ 1) up through the Epoch of Reionization (z ~ 8) and even beyond. To date, most work has focused on recovering the spherically averaged power spectrum of the 21 cm signal, since this approach maximizes the signal-to-noise in the initial measurement. However, like galaxy surveys, the 21 cm signal is affected by redshift space distortions, and is inherently anisotropic between the line-of-sight and transverse directions. A measurement of this anisotropy can yield unique cosmological information, potentially even isolating the matter power spectrum from astrophysical effects. However, in interferometric measurements, foregrounds also have an anisotropic footprint between the line-of-sight and transverse directions: the so-called foreground "wedge". Although foreground subtraction techniques are actively being developed, a "foreground avoidance" approach of simply ignoring contaminated modes has arguably proven most successful to date. In this work, we analyze the effect of this foreground anisotropy in recovering the redshift space distortion signature in 21 cm measurements at both high and intermediate redshifts. We find the foreground wedge corrupts nearly all of the redshift space signal for even the largest proposed EoR experiments (HERA and the SKA), making cosmological information unrecoverable without foreground subtraction. The situation is somewhat improved at lower redshifts, where the redshift-dependent mapping from observed coordinates to cosmological coordinates significantly reduces the size of the wedge. Using only foreground avoidance, we find that a large experiment like CHIME can place non-trivial constraints on cosmological parameters.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, 4 tables; minor changes to match version accepted by MNRA

African elephants interpret a trunk gesture as a clue to direction of interest

This research was carried out with funding from a departmental studentship from the School of Psychology and Neuroscience of the University of St Andrews, and a Russell Trust Postgraduate Award to A.F.S.Orienting to gaze-direction is widespread among animal species, but evidence for spontaneous use of gesture for direction is limited [1]. Remarkably, African elephants (Loxodonta africana) have been found able to follow human pointing, including subtle actions in which the contralateral hand is used, and in which the body silhouette is not broken [2,3]. The natural origin of this ability is puzzling, as the species is not reported to use trunk- or limb-gesture for showing directions [4]. One natural gesture, the ‘periscope-sniff’ presumed to be used to enhance olfactory sampling by an elephant in circumstances of alarm or curiosity [5], might also betray the elephant's direction of focal attention. Here we investigate what information elephants gain from seeing periscope-sniff. When one elephant in a group gave a periscope-sniff, we recorded the location and orientation of the next periscope-sniff given. Elephants that could not see the first gesturer only gestured themselves if immediately adjacent to the first or closer to the presumed stimulus of interest. In contrast, elephants able to see the first signaller's periscope-sniff were often a considerable distance behind it, further from the stimulus. Focusing on these cases, where making the periscope-sniff was apparently caused by seeing the first gesture, we found its orientation significantly matched the first, suggesting that direction information was gained from seeing the periscope-sniff. Elephants’ ability to use a conspecific's periscope-sniff as if it were an ostensive pointing gesture enables them to react to the presence and location of potential dangers. When alarmed, African elephants make a gesture, periscope-sniff, whose primary function is olfaction. Smet and Byrne show that others interpret this gesture as “functional pointing”, using it to locate the direction of another's interest. This may explain how elephants can interpret human pointing without any training, an ability rare among animals.PostprintPeer reviewe

Wild chimpanzees' use of single and combined vocal and gestural signals

We describe the individual and combined use of vocalizations and gestures in wild chimpanzees. The rate of gesturing peaked in infancy and, with the exception of the alpha male, decreased again in older age groups, while vocal signals showed the opposite pattern. Although gesture-vocal combinations were relatively rare they were consistently found in all age groups, especially during affiliative and agonistic interactions. Within behavioural contexts rank (excluding alpha-rank) had no effect on the rate of male chimpanzees’ use of vocal or gestural signals and only a small effect on their use of combination signals. The alpha male was an outlier, however, both as a prolific user of gestures and recipient of high levels of vocal and gesture-vocal signals. Persistence in signal use varied with signal type: chimpanzees persisted in use of gestures and gesture vocal combinations after failure, but where their vocal signals failed they tended to add gestural signals to produce gesture-vocal combinations. Overall, chimpanzees employed signals with a sensitivity to the public/private nature of information, by adjusting their use of signal types according to social context and by taking into account potential out of-sight audiences. We discuss these findings in relation to the various socio-ecological challenges that chimpanzees are exposed to in their natural forest habitats and the current discussion of multimodal communication in great apes.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

A geospatial assessment of the rooftop decarbonisation potential of industrial and commercial zoned buildings: an example of Irish cities and regions

peer-reviewedThis paper describes a framework for estimating the effectiveness of photovoltaic and rainwater harvesting technology deployment on industrial and commercial zoned buildings to facilitate reducing national GHG emissions. Decarbonisation technologies pathways were investigated which may aid in meeting national decarbonisation targets, and their potential role at local administrative area scale evaluated. A finding arising from application of this method was that a small number of larger industrial and commercial buildings, representing only 4% of the sectors buildings, were found to account for 38% of its decarbonisation potential. Future carbon emission scenarios identified that electricity demand may be expected to increase for the industrial and commercial sector up to 2030, and that the technological potential for current photovoltaics systems have the potential to reduce GHG emissions by 4% more than currently planned Irish grid-scale decarbonisation trajectories. The method may be adopted at European scale, using local data on climate and building attributes, and is applicable at national, regional and local scales. The paper concludes with a review of technologies which may aid further decarbonisation studies, which include improved data availability for 3D building generation, and enabling technologies such as machine learning algorithms applied to satellite imagery.PUBLISHEDpeer-reviewe

Female chimpanzees adjust copulation calls according to reproductive status and level of female competition

This project has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development, and demonstration under grant agreement no. 283871.Female chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) are usually depicted as sexually submissive and bound by male coercion, because males are able to monopolize oestrous females, limiting a female's options for mate choice. We present behavioural data from a group of wild chimpanzees during a rare period in which up to 10 females cycled simultaneously, which prevented males from monopolizing oestrous females, thus changing the dynamic of male-female sexual interactions. Overall, we found that nulliparous and parous females employed different copulation calling strategies, reflecting their relative reproductive attractiveness and social standing within the community. Male partner rank, copulation duration, and dominant male audience further influenced calling behaviour, and there was a non-significant trend for females to increase calling as the number of cycling females increased. We conclude that female chimpanzees are capable of adjusting their copulation calling flexibly, by taking into account their own sexual attractiveness in order to incite male competition.PostprintPeer reviewe

Whole-genome sequencing for national surveillance of Shiga toxin–producing Escherichia coli O157

Background. National surveillance of gastrointestinal pathogens, such as Shiga toxin–producing Escherichia coli O157 (STEC O157), is key to rapidly identifying linked cases in the distributed food network to facilitate public health interventions. In this study, we used whole-genome sequencing (WGS) as a tool to inform national surveillance of STEC O157 in terms of identifying linked cases and clusters and guiding epidemiological investigation. Methods. We retrospectively analyzed 334 isolates randomly sampled from 1002 strains of STEC O157 received by the Gastrointestinal Bacteria Reference Unit at Public Health England, Colindale, in 2012. The genetic distance between each isolate, as estimated by WGS, was calculated and phylogenetic methods were used to place strains in an evolutionary context. Results. Estimates of linked clusters representing STEC O157 outbreaks in England and Wales increased by 2-fold when WGS was used instead of traditional typing techniques. The previously unidentified clusters were often widely geographically distributed and small in size. Phylogenetic analysis facilitated identification of temporally distinct cases sharing common exposures and delineating those that shared epidemiological and temporal links. Comparison with multi locus variable number tandem repeat analysis (MLVA) showed that although MLVA is as sensitive as WGS, WGS provides a more timely resolution to outbreak clustering. Conclusions. WGS has come of age as a molecular typing tool to inform national surveillance of STEC O157; it can be used in real time to provide the highest strain-level resolution for outbreak investigation. WGS allows linked cases to be identified with unprecedented specificity and sensitivity that will facilitate targeted and appropriate public health investigations