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Picture-object recognition in the tortoise Chelonoidis carbonaria
Anna Wilkinson1, Julia Mueller-Paul, Ludwig Huber
1School of Life Sciences, University of Lincoln, Riseholme Park, Lincoln, LN2 2LG, UK. awilkinson@lincoln.ac.uk
Animal Cognition
|September 5, 2012
Summary
Reptiles like the red-footed tortoise may not understand that pictures represent real objects. Tortoises confused photographs with actual items, indicating a lack of representational insight in this species.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive ethology
- Animal cognition
- Reptile behavior
Background:
- Recognizing pictures as representations is a complex cognitive ability.
- This representational insight has been observed in some mammals and birds.
- It has not been previously investigated in reptiles.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate picture-object recognition in the red-footed tortoise (Chelonoidis carbonaria).
- To determine if tortoises possess representational insight regarding photographs.
- To explore how tortoises process visual information from real objects versus their photographic representations.
Main Methods:
- A two-alternative forced choice procedure was used to train tortoises to differentiate food from non-food items.
- Experiment 1 involved replacing real objects with photographs to assess performance.
- Experiment 2 presented tortoises with a choice between a real food object and its photograph.
Main Results:
- Tortoises showed no significant difference in performance between trials with real objects and trials with photographs in Experiment 1.
- In Experiment 2, tortoises frequently confused photographs with the actual food objects.
- This suggests tortoises do not differentiate between a real object and its photographic representation.
Conclusions:
- Red-footed tortoises appear to lack representational insight.
- They process real items and their photographic representations similarly in this context.
- This study provides the first evidence regarding picture-object recognition in tortoises.
