Cooperative pulling paradigm

The cooperative pulling paradigm is the most popular paradigm for testing cooperation in animals. Chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans, capuchins, tamarins, wolves, elephants, ravens, and keas appear to understand the requirements of the task. Evidence from cooperative Pulling experiments provides support for the idea that it may have evolved in a series of steps.

About Cooperative pulling paradigm in brief

Summary Cooperative pulling paradigmThe cooperative pulling paradigm is the most popular paradigm for testing cooperation in animals. The type of apparatus used in cooperative pulling experiments can vary. Chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans, capuchins, tamarins, wolves, elephants, ravens, and keas appear to understand the requirements of the task. The fact that basic characteristics of cooperation are present in some mammals and some birds points to a case of convergent evolution. Within social animals, cooperation is suspected to be a cognitive adaptation. Many species of animals cooperate in the wild. For animals to be considered cooperating, partners must take account of each other’s behavior to pursue their common goal. There are various levels of cooperation. These increase in temporal and spatial complexity from performing similar actions, to synchrony, then coordination, and finally collaboration. Researchers use controlled experiments to analyze the strategies applied by cooperating animals, and to investigate the underlying mechanisms that lead species to develop cooperative behavior. So far, fewer than twenty species have participated in cooperativePulling experiments: chimpanzees, bonobo, monkeys, macaques, dolphins, hyenas, dogs, otters, and ravens. In contrast to mechanical pulling devices, in which the animals see and feel their pulling tasks as having immediate effect, string-pulling tasks have advantages in terms of validity for animals that pull branches with food towards themselves. For example, in a delay condition, the first animal has access to the apparatus before the other.

In a group setting, chimpanzees punish initial competitive behavior such that eventually successful cooperation becomes the norm. As for the theory that cooperation evolved multiple times independently, evidence from cooperative Pulling experiments provides support for the idea that it may have evolved in a series of steps. This is in contrast to the complex electronically-mediated ways in which animals arrive at the same rewards in a mechanical device such as a stick or a rope. The findings regarding cooperation in mechanical devices are not conducive to the findings about cooperation in the cooperativepulling paradigm, as they can be more complex and time-consuming to study. The results of the cooperative pulling experiment are published in the journal Animal Behaviour and Cognition, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the American Museum of Natural History (AMN) in New York, New York and Washington, D.C. The study is based on data from the National Primate Research Center and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in the U.S. It is published as part of the Animal Behaviors Project, which is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (http://www.animalbehavours.org/animalbehaviour/collaboration/ cooperating-behavior-in-animals-and-human-skeletons-research-phenomenon.html). It is also available on the arXiv.com/book/2013/07/26/chimpanzee-collaborating-exercises-with-receiving-reward-rewards.