Selection for Reduced Fear of Humans Changes Intra-Specific Social Behavior in Red Junglefowl—Implications for Chicken Domestication

The domestic fowl has a different social behavior compared to their ancestor, the red junglefowl. To examine whether selection for tameness has affected their intra-specific social behavior, 32 red junglefowl from two selection lines, one selected for increased tameness and one selected for a high fear of humans for ten generations, were kept in a group of two females and two males each and were observed in a semi-natural undisturbed enclosure. Birds selected for a low fear of humans had more social conflict, and the males from this selection crowed more and were more often observed in low social proximity to others. The high-fear birds spent more time close together with the rest of the group and performed more social, non-aggressive pecking. These results are consistent with known differences between ancestral red junglefowl and domesticated laying hens. Our results show that intra-specific social behavior has been affected as a side-effect of selection for increased tameness. This may have interesting implications for the emergence of the domestication syndrome in chickens.

Religiosity and stigmatization related to mental illness among African-Americans and Black immigrants: cross-sectional observational study and moderation analysis

Objectives Stigma about mental illness is a known barrier to engagement in mental health services. This study aimed to estimate the associations between religiosity and mental illness stigma among Black adults. Design We conducted an online cross-sectional study of Black adults in the United States (n=269, ages 18-65) from diverse ethnic backgrounds. Results Most (n=248 [92%]) participants attended religious services; while 21 (8%) never attended. Social distance was assessed as an index of past or current stigmatizing behavior. After adjusting for demographic factors, respondents with higher attendance at religious services or greater engagement in religious activities (e.g., prayer, meditation or Bible study) reported greater proximity to people living with mental health problems (RR=1.72; 95% CI: 1.14, 2.59 and RR=1.82; CI: 1.18, 2.79 respectively). Despite reporting greater past or current social proximity, respondents with higher religiosity indices also reported greater future intended stigmatizing behavior (or lower future intended social proximity) (RRs=0.92-0.98). Ethnicity moderated the association between religiosity and future intended stigmatizing behavior. Black immigrants with higher religiosity reported lower future intended stigmatizing behavior (RR=1.16 CI: 1.02-1.32) whereas African-Americans with higher religiosity reported greater future intended stigmatizing behavior (RR=0.83 CI: 0.76, 0.91). Conclusions Higher indices of religiosity were associated with lower past or current stigmatizing behavior towards individuals living with mental health problems but not lower future intended stigmatizing behavior. Focusing specifically on future intended stigmatizing behavior and the respondents level of religiosity, age, and ethnicity may be critical for designing effective stigma-reducing interventions for Black adults.

Effects of Visitor Presence and Crowd Size on Zoo-Housed Red Kangaroos (Macropus Rufus) During and After a COVID-19 Closure

Macropods, particularly kangaroos and wallabies, are common species included in walk-through habitats that put them in close proximity to zoo visitors. However, there has been little research into how visitor presence and density impact the welfare of these individuals. We monitored the behavior and space use of fifteen red kangaroos (Macropus rufus) for a total of ten weeks during and after a nearly three-month zoo closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings revealed potential visitor effects, evidenced by more time spent in social proximity, greater inactivity, and more restricted space use after the zoo reopened. Although temperature and weather likely played a role in at least some of these behavioral changes, social proximity and space use changed with crowd size in a manner consistent with our zoo status (i.e., open or closed) results. Additionally, time spent feeding was significantly related to crowd size but not zoo status, such that the kangaroos spent more time feeding when there were no visitors in the habitat. These findings suggest that visitor effects explain these behavioral changes better than seasonal confounds. We also noted several individual differences in response to visitor presence and crowd size, highlighting the importance of evaluating behavioral responses to visitors on an individual basis.

Shattering crystal with crystal: Galileo’s rhetoric, lenses, and the epistemology of metaphor

The terms that Galileo’s contemporaries used for lenses ( cristallo/i, lente/i, and vetro/i) have often been treated, and even translated, interchangeably. In this article, we argue that Galileo used references to crystals as lenses to embed epistemological and cosmological arguments in the material object of the telescope. Across Galileo’s correspondence and letters, the term crystal had many uses and meanings. As a substance, crystal was a form of raw material, but crystal was also a substance that was central to scholastic cosmology and an explanatory device on which scholastics relied to explain first the appearance of the new star of 1604 and then Galileo’s new telescopic discoveries. When Galileo began using the word crystals as a synonym for lenses, he endowed the material of his instrument with cosmological arguments. Galileo’s choice of language was deliberate and polemical, serving as a joke at the expense of scholastics and as a linguistic marker of social proximity to Galileo and his intellectual agenda, especially among the members of the Academy of the Lincei. Rhetorically and linguistically, Galileo chose to refer to his lenses as crystals both because of the material from which they were made and because in so doing he signaled the epistemological work that the lenses would perform. Ultimately, the crystal lenses in Galileo’s telescope and writings shattered the crystalline spheres, replacing explanatory metaphors with a polemical emphasis on the material and empirical realities of objects.

Changes in movement characteristics in response to private and social information acquisition of socially foraging fish

To overcome the cost of competition resulting from close social proximity while foraging in a group, individuals may balance their use of private (i.e. acquired from personal sampling) and social (i.e. acquired by watching other individuals) information in order to adjust their foraging strategy accordingly. Reliability of private information about environmental characteristics, such as the spatial distribution of prey, is thus likely to affect individual movement and social interactions during foraging. Our aim was to investigate how movement characteristics of foraging individuals changed as they acquired reliable private information about the spatial occurrence of prey in a foraging context. We allowed guppies (Poecilia reticulata) to develop the reliability of their private knowledge about prey spatial occurrence by repeatedly testing shoals in a foraging task under three experimental distributions of prey: 1) aggregated prey forming three patches located in fixed locations, 2) scattered distribution of prey with random locations, or 3) no prey (used as control). We then applied tracking methods to obtain individual time series of spatial coordinates from which we computed a suite of movement variables reflecting search effort, social proximity and locomotion characteristics during foraging, in order to examine changes occurring over repeated trials and to investigate which best explained foraging success. We show that foraging shoals became more efficient at finding and consuming food over the first three days by increasing their time spent active. Over time, individuals foraging on either scattered or aggregated prey travelled greater distances, showed an increasing distance to their closest neighbour and became slightly more stochastic in their acceleration profile, compared to control individuals. We found that behaviour changed as private information increased over time. Social proximity was the major predictor of foraging success in the absence of prior foraging information, while stochasticity in acceleration and search effort became the most important predictors of foraging success as information increased. In conclusion, we show that individual movement patterns changed as they acquire private information. Contrary to our predictions, the spatial distribution of prey did not affect any of the movement variables of interest. Our results emphasise the importance of information, both private and social, in shaping movement behaviour in animals. Keywords: social foraging, movement, private information, prey spatial distribution, fish.

Validation of Wearable Sensor Technology to Measure Social Proximity of Young Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) struggle to develop appropriate social skills, which can lead to later social rejection, isolation, and mental health concerns. Educators play an important role in supporting and monitoring social skill development for children with ASD, but the tools used by educators are often tedious, lack suitable sensitivity, provide limited information to plan interventions, and are time-consuming. Therefore, we conducted a study to evaluate the use of a sensor system to measure social proximity between three children with ASD and their peers in an inclusive preschool setting. We compared video-coded data with sensor data using point-by-point agreement to measure the accuracy of the sensor system. Results suggest that the sensor system can adequately measure social proximity between children with ASD and their peers. The next steps for sensor system validation are discussed along with clinical and educational implications, limitations, and future research directions.

On Lies and Hard Truths

We run an experimental study using sender-receiver games to evaluate how senders' willingness to lie to others compares to their willingness to tell hard truths, i.e., promote an outcome that the sender knows is unfair to the receiver without explicitly lying. Unlike in previous work on lying when it has consequences, we do not find that antisocial behavior is less frequent when it involves lying than when it does not. In fact, we find the opposite result in the setting where there is social contact between senders and receivers, and receivers have enough information to judge whether they have been treated unfairly. In this setting, we find that senders prefer to hide behind a lie and implement the antisocial outcome by being dishonest rather than by telling the truth. These results are consistent with social image costs depending on the social proximity between senders and receivers, especially when receivers can judge the kindness of the senders' actions.

Affective Regulation Through Touch: Homeostatic and Allostatic Mechanisms

We focus on social touch as a paradigmatic case of a unifying perspective on the embodied, cognitive and metacognitive processes involved in social, affective regulation. Social touch appears to have three interrelated but distinct functions in affective regulation. First, it regulates affects by fulfilling embodied expectations about social proximity and attachment, mostly likely by convergent hedonic, dopaminergic and analgesic, opioidergic pathways. Second, caregiving touch such as feeding or warming an infant regulates affect by socially enacting homeostatic control and co-regulation of physiological states, most likely by corresponding ‘calming’ autonomic and endocrine pathways. Third, affective touch such as gentle stroking, kissing or tickling regulates affect by allostatic regulation of the salience and epistemic gain of particular experiences in given contexts and timescales, possibly regulated by oxytocin release and related ‘salience’ neuromodulators and circuits.