Abstract
Cerebral lateralization, which is often reflected in an individual’s behavioral laterality (e.g., handedness and footedness), may bring animals certain benefits such as enhanced cognitive performance. Although the lateralization–cognition relationship has been widely studied in humans and other animals, current evidence supporting their relationship is ambiguous and warrants additional insights from more studies. Moreover, the lateralization–cognition relationship in non-human animals has been mostly studied in human-reared populations, and investigations of wild populations are particularly scarce. Here, we test the footedness of wild-caught male yellow-bellied tits (Pardaliparus venustulus) and investigate its association with their performance in learning to solve a toothpick-pulling problem and a drawer-opening problem. The tested birds showed an overall trend to gradually spent less time solving the problems, implying that they learned to solve the problems. Left- and right-footed individuals showed no significant differences in the latency to explore the experimental apparatuses and in the proportions that completed and did not complete the tasks. However, the left-footed individuals learned faster than the right-footed individuals in the drawer-opening experiment, indicating a potential cognitive advantage associated with left-footedness. These results contribute to the understanding of the behavioral differences between differently footed individuals and, in particular, the relationship between lateralization and cognitive ability in wild animals.
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The data of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Peng Zhang and the staff of the Dongzhai National Nature Reserve for their assistance with bird capturing.
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The project was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32270520; 31970421).
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JL and JZ conceived the yellow-bellied tit project, JY, JL and GY designed the experiments; JY and GY performed the experiments; JL and YJ analyzed the data and drafted the paper, with all authors contributing to the subsequent revisions. All authors gave final approval for publication and agreed to be held accountable for the work performed therein.
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All experimental procedures complied with the current laws of China and were approved by the Ethics and Animal Welfare Committee, Beijing Forestry University (EAWC-BJFU-2020017). Capturing the birds was permitted by Xinyang Forestry Bureau and the Dongzhai National Nature Reserve.
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Yin, J., Yu, G., Zhang, J. et al. Behavioral laterality is correlated with problem-solving performance in a songbird. Anim Cogn 26, 837–848 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-022-01724-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-022-01724-3