The role of stimulus complexity, age and experience in the expression of exploratory behaviour in the Chimango Caracara, Milvago chimango

BIONDI, LAURA MARINA; GUIDO, JORGELINA MARIA; BO, MARIA SUSANA; MUZZIO, RUBÉN; VASSALLO, ALDO IVAN

ANIMAL COGNITION

SPRINGER HEIDELBERG

Lugar: HEIDELBERG; Año: 2015

1435-9448

Exploration represents an important way by which organisms evaluates environment information.The decision of whether or not an animal should investigate environmental changes may influence the extent to which animals learnt about their surroundings and cope with habitat modifications. We analysed exploration behaviour in a suburban population of a raptor species, the Chimango Caracara,Milvago chimango, by examining how age, previous experience and object complexity influence novel object exploration. Our findings showed that object complexity did not influence the caracaras initial approach and contact with objects, but did influence the degree of engagement during exploratory activities, as measured by total exploration time and number of exploration events.These variables were higher for complex objects than for simple objects. Experience resulted in less exploration of simple objects. It is likely that, for caracaras, simple objects are easier to encode and recall than complex objects, so additional exploration of such objects would not provide further information. Results suggest that exploratory behavior in this raptor was guided more by the benefits of a greater quantity of information obtained by exploring complex objects, than by the risks associated to this activity. We can conclude that caracaras cope with novel features in their surroundings with a novelty-seeking strategy, characteristic for generalist species in discovering early new resources opportunities, and which might be a determining factor for adaptive responses to environment modification.