Observation and exploration widen the menu

Noa Truskanov

doi:10.1126/science.ael7040

Ecology & evolutionAnimal behavior

Observation and exploration widen the menu

Noa Truskanov

Peer-reviewed journalBroad interestEasy to read

In the authors' words

This journal does not let us republish the full abstract. Here are the two sentences Pipette selected, quoted from it. Read the rest at the publisher.

Main result

Orangutans expand their foraging skills by combining observation with trial-and-error learning.

Read the paper

Appeared: Saturday, September 26. Science. Peer-reviewed journal.

DOI: 10.1126/science.ael7040

Ecology & evolution Animal behavior Sep 26, 2026
Increased Demographic Turnover and Isolation Precede Social Fragmentation in Asian Elephants
Following accumulated demographic turnover, networks fractured into smaller and more isolated social communities.
A. Madsen, T. V. Pushpakumara, U. S. Weerathunga and 2 more — bioRxiv
PreprintClaims a big stepEasy to read
Ecology & evolution Animal behavior Sep 26, 2026
Self-guided search in immersive VR reveals active hierarchical planning
Consistent with our hypotheses, we found that self-guided search engaged a hierarchical information-seeking policy characterized at each stage by recurring plan-and-execute cycles paired with subgoal-specific attentional priorities.
Q. Wan, H. Ren, S. E. Duarte and 5 more — bioRxiv
Preprint
Ecology & evolution Animal behavior Sep 26, 2026
A Vision-Language Model as a Teacher for Bird Vocalization Detection
We find that the student generally exceeds both the teacher and supervised models trained on human annotations and performs strongly on held-out datasets for both time-frequency and onset-offset localization.
G. Vengrovski, T. J. Gardner — bioRxiv
PreprintReal-world use
Ecology & evolution Animal behavior Sep 26, 2026
Variability of Head Motion Reveals Development of Spatial Attention
Thus, movements unrelated to the attention goal do not reflect noise but signify attentional control across development.
M. Woestmann, D. Kunke, N. Wetzel — bioRxiv
PreprintEasy to read
Ecology & evolution Animal behavior Sep 26, 2026
Developmental cold exposure increases the ability to maintain body temperature during future cold challenges in a free-living altricial bird
These results are, to our knowledge, the first to show that developmental cold exposure increases the capacity to maintain body temperature during future cold challenges in a songbird.
D. A. Chang van Oordt, C. C. Taff, D. R. Ardia and 2 more — bioRxiv
Preprint

All new papers on Animal behavior

Observation and exploration widen the menu

In the authors' words

More on Animal behavior that day

Increased Demographic Turnover and Isolation Precede Social Fragmentation in Asian Elephants

Self-guided search in immersive VR reveals active hierarchical planning

A Vision-Language Model as a Teacher for Bird Vocalization Detection

Variability of Head Motion Reveals Development of Spatial Attention

Developmental cold exposure increases the ability to maintain body temperature during future cold challenges in a free-living altricial bird