Intra- and interspecific variation in self-control capacities of parrots in a delay of gratification task.

Content Provider	Europe PMC
Author	Brucks, Désirée Petelle, Matthew Baldoni, Cecilia Krasheninnikova, Anastasia Rovegno, Eleonora von Bayern, Auguste M. P.
Abstract	Forgoing immediate satisfaction for higher pay-offs in the future (delayed gratification) could be adaptive in situations that wild animals may encounter. To explain species-differences in self-control, hypotheses based on social complexity, feeding ecology, brain size and metabolic rate have been proposed. To explore these hypotheses in a comparative setting, we tested three macaw species (neotropical parrots)—great green macaws (N = 8), blue-throated macaws (N = 6), blue-headed macaws (N = 6)—and the distantly related African grey parrots (afrotropical parrots; N = 8) in a modified rotating tray task, in which subjects are required to inhibit consuming a constantly available low-quality reward in favour of a high-quality reward that becomes available only after an increasing delay (min. 5 s, max. 60 s). All four species successfully waited for a minimum of 8.3 s ± 11.7 s (group level mean ± SD) with African greys reaching a delay of 29.4 ± 15.2 s, and great green macaws—as best performing macaw species—tolerating delays of 20 s ± 8 s. The best performing African grey individual reached a maximum delay of 50 s, whereas, a great green and a blue-throated macaw tolerated a delay of 30 s max. Females tolerated higher maximum delays than males. Engaging in distraction behaviours enhanced waiting performance across species and all birds were able to anticipate the waiting duration. Our results suggest that both feeding and socio-ecological complexity may be a factor in self-control, but further systematically collected comparative data on self-control of different (parrot) species are required to test the evolutionary hypotheses rigorously.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10071-021-01565-6.
Related Links	https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC8940755&blobtype=pdf
ISSN	14359448
Journal	Animal Cognition [Anim Cogn]
Volume Number	25
DOI	10.1007/s10071-021-01565-6
PubMed Central reference number	PMC8940755
Issue Number	2
PubMed reference number	34671864
e-ISSN	14359456
Language	English
Publisher	Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Publisher Date	2021-10-21
Publisher Place	Berlin/Heidelberg
Access Restriction	Open
Rights License	Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. © The Author(s) 2021
Subject Keyword	Delayed gratification Parrots Self-control Comparative cognition
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Experimental and Cognitive Psychology Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics