Yawn contagion in humans and bonobos: emotional affinity matters more than species.

In humans and apes, yawn contagion echoes emotional contagion, the basal layer of empathy. Hence, yawn contagion is a unique tool to compare empathy across species. If humans are the most empathic animal species, they should show the highest empathic response also at the level of emotional contagion. We gathered data on yawn contagion in humans (Homo sapiens) and bonobos (Pan paniscus) by applying the same observational paradigm and identical operational definitions .W eselected a naturalistic approach because experimental management practices can produce different psychological and behavioural biases in the two species, and differential attention to artificia lstimuli .Withi nspecies ,yaw ncontagio nwa shighes tbetween strongly bonded subjects. Between species, sensitivity to others\u27 yawns was higher in humans than in bonobos when involving kin and friends but was similar when considering weakly-bonded subjects. Thus, emotional contagion is not always high- est in humans. The cognitive components concur in empowering emotional affinity between individuals. Yet, when they are not in play, humans climb down from the empathic podium to return to the "understory", which our species shares with apes

She more than he: gender bias supports the empathic nature of yawn contagion in Homo sapiens

Psychological, clinical and neurobiological findings endorse that empathic abilities are more developed in women than in men. Because there is growing evidence that yawn contagion is an empathy-based phenomenon, we expect that the female bias in the empathic abilities reflects on a gender skew in the responsiveness to others’ yawns. We verified this assumption by applying a linear model on a dataset gathered during a 5 year period of naturalistic observations on humans. Gender, age and social bond were included in the analysis as fixed factors. The social bond and the receiver’s gender remained in the best model. The rates of contagion were significantly lower between acquaintances than between friends and family members, and significantly higher in women than in men. These results not only confirm that yawn contagion is sensitive to social closeness, but also that the phenomenon is affected by the same gender bias affecting empathy. The sex skew, also found in other non-human species, fits with the female social roles which are likely to require higher empathic abilities (e.g. parental care, group cohesion maintenance, social mediation). The fact that female influence in social dynamics also relies on face-to-face emotional exchange raises concerns on the negative repercussions of having women’s facial expressions forcibly concealed

Mirror on the wall, who is the horsest of our all? Self-recognition in Equus caballus

Mirror Self-Recognition (MSR) is an extremely rare capacity in the animal kingdom that reveals the emergence of complex cognitive capacities (de Waal 2008). So far, MSR has been reported only in humans, chimpanzees (Gallup, 1970), bottlenose dolphins (Reiss and Marino, 2001) and Asian elephants (Plotnik et al, 2006), all species characterized by a highly developed cognition. There is growing evidence that domestic horses posses high cognitive abilities, such as crossmodal individual recognition (Proops et al, 2009), triadic post-conflict reunion to maintain social homeostasis (Cozzi et al, 2010), complex communicative systems (Whatan and McComb, 2014), flexibility in problem-solving (Lovrovich et al, 2015), and long-term memory (Hanggi and Ingersoll, 2009). All these capacities make horses a good candidate to test the ability of MSR in a domestic species. Through a classical MSR experimental paradigm (de Waal 2008) we tested eight horses living in social groups under semi-natural conditions (from the Italian Horse Protection rescue centre). Animals showing MSR typically go through four stages (Plotnik et al, 2006): (i) social response, (ii) physical mirror inspection (e.g., looking behind the mirror), (iii) repetitive mirror-testing behaviour (i.e., the beginning of mirror understanding), and (iv) selfdirected behaviour (i.e., recognition of the mirror image as self). The final stage, known as the “mark-test”, is verified when a subject spontaneously uses the mirror to check for a coloured artificial mark on its own body which it cannot perceive otherwise. The horses underwent through a three-phase “mark-test”: 1) with sham mark (transparent ultrasound water gel) positioned on both side at jaw level, 2) mark (yellow eye shadow mixed with ultrasound water gel) positioned on left side of jaw (with sham mark on the right), 3) mark (yellow eye shadow mixed with ultrasound water gel) positioned on right side of jaw (with sham mark on the left) The mirror was one 0.5-cm-thick pieces of 140x220-cm plexiglass glue on wood. Each test lasted one hour, horses were tested once a day, in consecutive days and at the same time. Our preliminary result on 1 horse shows some changes in self-directed behaviours which can be attributed to presence of the coloured mark. Firstly, the presence of the coloured marked significantly increased the frequency of scratching on both sides of the muzzle (p < 0.0001). The most intriguing result (p < 0.0001) comes from the comparison of the scratching rates directed towards the coloured mark side (N = 41) and the sham mark side (N = 23). Under the control condition (i.e. sham mark on both sides) no statistical difference was found for the scratching rates directed to the muzzle sides (dx N = 8; sx N = 5). Although further analyses are needed to confirm these preliminary results, our finding opens new scenarios about the evolution of Mirror Self-Recognition. The capacity of horses to recognize themselves in a mirror may be the outcome of an evolutionary convergence process driven by the cognitive pressures imposed by a complex social system and maintained despite thousands years of domestication

Are horses capable of mirror self-recognition? A pilot study

Mirror Self-Recognition (MSR) unveils complex cognitive, social and emotional skills and it has been found only in humans and few other species, such as great apes, dolphins, elephants and magpies. In this pilot study, we tested if horses show the capacity of MSR. Four subjects living socially under naturalistic conditions were selected for the experiment. We adopted the classical mark test, which consists in placing a coloured mark on an out-of-view body part, visible only through mirror inspection. If the animal considers the image as its own, it will use its reflection to detect the mark and will try to explore it. We enhanced the classical paradigm by introducing a double-check control. Only in the presence of the reflecting surface, animals performed tactile and olfactory exploration of the mirror and looked behind it. These behaviors suggest that subjects were trying to associate multiple sensory cues (visual, tactile and olfactory) to the image in the mirror. The lack of correspondence between the collected stimuli in front of the mirror and the response to the colored mark lead us to affirm that horses are able to perceive that the reflected image is incongruent when compared with the memorized information of a real horse. However, without replication of data, the self-directed behavior towards the colored marks showed by our horses cannot be sufficient per se to affirm that horses are capable of self-recognition

In Bonobos Yawn Contagion Is Higher among Kin and Friends

In humans, the distribution of yawn contagion is shaped by social closeness with strongly bonded pairs showing higher levels of contagion than weakly bonded pairs. This ethological finding led the authors to hypothesize that the phenomenon of yawn contagion may be the result of certain empathic abilities, although in their most basal form. Here, for the first time, we show the capacity of bonobos (Pan paniscus) to respond to yawns of conspecifics. Bonobos spontaneously yawned more frequently during resting/relaxing compared to social tension periods. The results show that yawn contagion was context independent suggesting that the probability of yawning after observing others\u27 yawns is not affected by the propensity to engage in spontaneous yawns. As it occurs in humans, in bonobos the yawing response mostly occurred within the first minute after the perception of the stimulus. Finally, via a Linear Mixed Model we tested the effect of different variables (e.g., sex, rank, relationship quality) on yawn contagion, which increased when subjects were strongly bonded and when the triggering subject was a female. The importance of social bonding in shaping yawn contagion in bonobos, as it occurs in humans, is consistent with the hypothesis that empathy may play a role in the modulation of this phenomenon in both species. The higher frequency of yawn contagion in presence of a female as a triggering subject supports the hypothesis that adult females not only represent the relational and decisional nucleus of the bonobo society, but also that they play a key role in affecting the emotional states of others

Play fair, game over: le regole "biologicamente" tacite del regno animale

Due to its multi-functionality and versatility, play is one of the most difficult behaviours to define. If defining play is a difficult matter, playing (and, especially, playing fairly) may be even more difficult. In play two opposing components coexist: cooperation and competition. This competitive/cooperative interaction serves to test a partner’s willingness to invest in a relationship and, simultaneously, to demonstrate one’s own willingness to accept vulnerability. A fair player must balance these two forces acting concurrently. To be fully expressed, play (the most plastic and versatile behaviour!) requires plastic and versatile societies, where the inter-individual relationships have a high degree of freedom and are not bridled into codified schemes or crystallized roles. Indeed, the competitive counterpart of play is more developed in those species showing social systems based on despotic relationships; while the cooperative propensity in play is linked to more relaxed and egalitarian relations. The correct management of a playful interaction requires also complex social abilities, so this is why playing has been considered a powerful means to gain social competence. In this chapter, we will provide an overview on the function of play in the regulation of social relationships and we will show that the results obtained on non-human primates can be lso theoretically expanded to different human systems. Finally, we will focus on the complex communicative system which scaffolds each playful interaction

Difference in contagious yawning between susceptible men and women: why not?

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