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African elephants (Loxodonta africana) recognize visual attention from face and body orientation

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smet2014biologylett0428.pdf (475.1Kb)
Date
07/2014
Author
Smet, Anna F.
Byrne, Richard William
Keywords
Perspective taking
Communication
Audience effect
Theory of mind
BF Psychology
QH301 Biology
BDC
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Abstract
How do animals determine when others are able and disposed to receive their communicative signals? In particular, it is futile to make a silent gesture when the intended audience cannot see it. Some non-human primates use the head and body orientation of their audience to infer visual attentiveness when signalling, but whether species relying less on visual information use such cues when producing visual signals is unknown. Here, we test whether African elephants (Loxodonta africana) are sensitive to the visual perspective of a human experimenter. We examined whether the frequency of gestures of head and trunk, produced to request food, was influenced by indications of an experimenter's visual attention. Elephants signalled significantly more towards the experimenter when her face was oriented towards them, except when her body faced away from them. These results suggest that elephants understand the importance of visual attention for effective communication.
Citation
Smet , A F & Byrne , R W 2014 , ' African elephants ( Loxodonta africana ) recognize visual attention from face and body orientation ' , Biology Letters , vol. 10 , no. 7 , 20140428 . https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2014.0428
Publication
Biology Letters
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2014.0428
ISSN
1744-9561
Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2014 Royal Society. This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published in the Biology Letters on 10 July 2014, available online: http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/7/20140428
Description
This work was funded by the School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews.
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/6955

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