Social Cognition in Corvids | UNL Center for Avian Cognition

The social complexity hypothesis holds that the cognitive demands of social living have been an important force driving the evolution of intelligence. Although this idea has been applied mainly to primates, we (Balda, Bednekoff & Kamil, 1997) have suggested that it could also be applied to birds and that highly social pinyon jays (Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus) might be a particularly appropriate avian species with which to work. A great deal is known about their natural history (Marzluff & Balda, 1992 ). In particular, pinyon jays live in large, individualized groups which are very stable over time. We have completed three experiments on socially-related cognition, each of which supports the validity of the idea that living in stable, socially complex groups provides a context for the evolution of social intelligence.

Templeton, Kamil and Balda (1999) tested social learning in pinyon jays and Clark’s nutcrackers (Nucifraga columbiana), who are much less social than are pinyon jays. Birds were tested on two different tasks under individual and social learning conditions. Half of each species learned a motor task individually and a discrimination task socially; the other half learned the discrimination task individually and the motor task socially. While the pinyon jays learned the tasks more rapidly under social than individual conditions, the nutcrackers performed equally well under both learning conditions.

Bond, Kamil and Balda (2003) used operant techniques to compare pinyon jays with a relatively nonsocial close relative, western scrub jays (Aphelocoma californica) on two complex cognitive tasks relevant to the ability to track and assess social relationships. Pinyon jays learned to track multiple dyadic relationships more rapidly and more accurately than scrub jays and appeared to display a more robust and accurate mechanism of transitive inference. These results provide a clear demonstration of the association between social complexity and cognition in animals.

Paz-Y-Mino, Bond, Kamil and Balda (2004) tested an important implication of these operant results. The basic rationale of the social complexity hypothesis is that living in large, stable social groups may favor the evolution of enhanced cognitive abilities, such as recognizing group members, tracking their social status, and inferring relationships among them. Because conflicts within a group can be time-consuming and even injurious, members of large social groups could benefit if they can make judgments about relationships based on indirect evidence, using transitive inference, which would allow assessment of relationships from observations of interactions among others. Transitive inference, however. has never been demonstrated under controlled conditions in animals. In this experiment, we found that pinyon jays did, in fact, draw sophisticated inferences about their own dominance status relative to that of strangers based on interactions that they observed, the first direct demonstration that animals use transitive inference in social settings.