25. Désirée Brucks: Inequity aversion in dogs, ecologically realistic experiments, parrots help others obtain food rewards

Désirée Brucks is a postdoc at the University of Giessen and studies social cognition in animals, having worked with dogs, wolves, parrots, and a few more species. She is currently studying farm animals. In this conversation, we talk mainly about her work on inequty aversion in dogs and helping behaviour in parrots. Along the way, I get to ask all sorts of questions about animal cognition.

BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. New conversations every other Friday. You can find the podcast on all podcasting platforms (e.g., Spotify, Apple/Google Podcasts, etc.).

Timestamps
0:00:05: How has COVID affected work with animals?
0:02:52: What is Désirée currently studying with farm animals?
0:16:02: Parrots in Heidelberg
0:25:44: Curious cows
0:34:29: Inequity aversion in dogs
0:55:03: Ecologically realistic experimental settings
1:06:47: What's it like to get lots of media attention for a study?
1:11:37: Parrots help others obtain food rewards
1:26:37: Fission-fusion dynamics
1:36:55: What can we learn from studying animals about human cooperation?

Podcast links

Désirée's links

Ben's links

References
Brosnan, S. F., & De Waal, F. B. (2003). Monkeys reject unequal pay. Nature.
Brucks, D., & von Bayern, A. M. (2020). Parrots voluntarily help each other to obtain food rewards. Current Biology.
Brucks, D., Essler, J. L., Marshall-Pescini, S., & Range, F. (2016). Inequity aversion negatively affects tolerance and contact-seeking behaviours towards partner and experimenter. PLoS One.
Brucks, D., Range, F., & Marshall-Pescini, S. (2017). Dogs’ reaction to inequity is affected by inhibitory control. Scientific Reports.
Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). Most people are not WEIRD. Nature.
McGetrick, J., Brucks, D., Marshall-Pescini, S., & Range, F. (2020). No evidence for a relationship between breed cooperativeness and inequity aversion in dogs. PloS One.
Nagel, T. (1974). What is it like to be a bat?. The philosophical review.
The video of the African Greys exchanging tokens to help the other: https://twitter.com/newscientist/status/1215658204866191361
The green parrots that live in Heidelberg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose-ringed_parakeet

  • [This is an automated transcript with many errors]

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: [00:00:00] By the way, how has like, um, COVID affected your work now? Like is, you know, with human participants, we can't test them, but with animals, is it the same or 

    Desiree Brucks: no, not, not really, no. It depends on where the animals are. So for example, now I work a lot with farm animals. So you need to go into the stables and there potentially there are many people around.

    So it gets a bit more complicated again, because you need to Yeah. Kind of make sure that you're not that closely together or that you're wearing your masks and whatever, which can then affect the animals again and their behavior because you kind of look right. Weird, right? Um, so yeah, it's, it hasn't affected me that much or probably not as much as it has affected you, but still, um, yeah, it's not that flexible and easy anymore to just plan something.

    But so far it's, it's okay. So 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: are there animals that only [00:01:00] know the experimenters with masks? You know, like can like help, help children now kind of grow up seeing other people with masks all the time? Like everyone outside of their family. Is there like some animals that basically now would be, it would be weird for them if you were to talk to them without a mask or, 

    Desiree Brucks: that's a good question.

    I don't know because it would need to be like, maybe like, I dunno, not even, I was thinking of puppies that were just born now. Yeah, something like that and went into a family. But then again, at home you don't wear your mask. Right. So which animals are there, which only are in the public and seeing people with masks maybe in zoos.

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, well I was thinking like the, if you said like you work in a stable and you always have to wear masks like a calf or something that was born like 

    Desiree Brucks: a 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: year 

    Desiree Brucks: ago. Yeah, probably. Yeah, could be. Yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. I dunno 

    Desiree Brucks: really. But there will definitely be some interesting research for the future to see like how, if they can still see us or read our emotions while we wear a mask, [00:02:00] because for sure dogs react differently if you wear a mask or not.

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I mean, I always assume that dogs can't see that well, but it's more smell and hearing. Uh, I mean, I guess it sounds different when you talk, but 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. But, uh, so in a close range they can see. Pretty well. Yeah. Yeah. It's okay. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So 

    Desiree Brucks: definitely, but also, for example, if you go in and a dog wants to greet you and wants to lick like your mouth area, they cannot access this, right?

    So they try to go for the ears or something. So it definitely is, is a bit weird. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I really like that. Avoid the cloth area, basically. Yeah. Lick you off. 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Forehead your ears. 

    Desiree Brucks: Exactly. Whatever they can reach. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But actually maybe, yeah. I'll, I'll ask already about what you're doing right now then, whilst we're kind of on the topic roughly.

    Mm-hmm. Um, I mean, so you're, the, the, the research that we're mainly going to be talking about, um, today is, you know, your stuff with dogs and parrots. 

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I guess you [00:03:00] have dogs on a farm, but not really farm animals in that sense. Right. So how, I mean, are you still doing like cooperation and inequality and that kind of stuff, or inequity?

    In farm animals or what are you kind of doing right now? Yeah, 

    Desiree Brucks: partly. So I'm, I'm very interested in this whole topic of social cognition. So how animals are interacting with each other, which yeah. Aspects of the social environment. Do they understand? So really basic things like can they recognize each other?

    Can they keep track of one another if they don't see each other for some time? So things like this are really interesting. I think, especially now with farm animals. I always wanted to, to work with farm animals and to kind of improve their lives. So if there's idealistic way of thinking that, uh, yeah, we should treat them in a better way.

    And so, um, with them, there's actually really little research into cognition in general because there are so much focus on how to increase their production and to make them healthier or reproduce faster, whatever. But so little about how they yeah. Interact with their environment [00:04:00] because they're always in these spar environments.

    They have no, no straw available or no space to walk anywhere. And so now having this background working with Dogs on Cooperation and also with parrots on cooperation, uh, yeah, I mean you have this background with this, uh, with this research in general. I want to apply this also to farm animals to find of better understand, like, yeah, what do they know about each other and how can we use this information to improve their housing conditions.

    So yes, I'm, yeah, I'm still conducting the research with farm animals, but I need to start at another level, so at a very more basic level first, and then we can proceed, hopefully. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I, so first base of social cognition and then mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so what farm animals are you studying? 'cause there's, I mean, quite a lot right?

    That 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Could fall into this. 

    Desiree Brucks: It's true. Yeah. It kind of depends on the question. So with this, um, for, for now, at the moment I'm running a study with pigs because they're interesting in this regard is they're also very [00:05:00]gregarious. They live together with this family groups. They have a really, um, yeah, strong social structure, the way that they have a dominant hierarchy and, um, yeah, it's usually, yeah, a close group.

    They do not let others in. So they have kind of a good first step to understand how they're cooperating with each other or how they help each other in certain ways, 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: and how can picks, like what picks do to help another pig. Like what, what is some kind of normal behavior that's, you know, not something that maybe you would study that you could control experimentally, but just kind of in the natural environment.

    Like how do pigs help each other? 

    Desiree Brucks: So there are many different situations. For example, if you think that a piglet is somehow in distress because it, it fell into a river or whatever, or is kind of stuck somewhere that another pig comes and tries to help it get out of the situation, or that one pig found some really interesting food somewhere and is calling [00:06:00] the others to also come and share this food.

    Yeah. Things like 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: how specific are like the calls of a pig? Do they just say like, come here, do, like, do they make a, just a loud noise and then get attention, then other pigs come? Or do they like specifically call pigs or, or do they even specifically call them because saying like, Hey, there's good food, good food here.

    How specific can they be? 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah, that's a good question. I think there's actually not that much done in this regard, so for sure they have different calls, like for attention or signaling that they're in distress so that this high, this, uh, high pitched scream that yeah, squeal some pain or whatever. So they have different ones, but I think there's not so much research into whether they have individual calls so that they can recognize each other.

    But I'm, I'm not sure. That's 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: crazy that we wouldn't, I just assumed like people had already done the research to figure out can pigs address each other specifically, or can they address specific [00:07:00]situations or whatever. I just, I just assumed someone had already done that. 

    Desiree Brucks: Not that I'm aware of, but this is not really my, my research area into this whole Okay.

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. 

    Desiree Brucks: Or ation 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: aspect. Yeah, I mean, just like, one thing I always think about when I think of this kind of research on animals and whether they can cooperate and that kind of stuff is that they, well, at least like from, you know, I guess from a human perspective, it seems like they, they can do a lot less specific things often in terms of like, you know, I mean, we'll talk more about your parrot study later, but you know, they, they, they can't do that much with their beaks, right?

    They can hand a token over or something, but they can't like, manipulate things precisely or that kind of thing because it just lack the manual dexterity. Just, or, but it's less than a, anyway, maybe not, but um, or like with calling, I guess parrots can do quite a lot, but like other animals, it seems are more limited in terms of the range of vocalizations they can even make.

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: So I always wonder like, to what extent. [00:08:00] Well, it just seems like any social interaction is based on a lot more uncertainty than there might be in humans where you can be much more precise in your meaning, um, or in your actions. 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah, I think we, we humans often think of, or we humans often have problems to think of how it would be in Yeah.

    We would be bird or something because we try to Yeah, kind of impose our way of living or our way of interacting onto other animals as well. So for sure, also with all of these cognitive studies, it's kind of how would we solve this paradigm? Because we build it in a way, so we think of, okay, this animal needs to pull now or needs to grab this, but for the animal it might be completely different in how they perceive it.

    And that's kind of the, the difficulties in this kind of field because we are just humans. We cannot know how it feels like to be a dog or whatever. So that's the, the big issue and the problem to kind of think outside of the box. [00:09:00] 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: So how does, how do you try to do that? Is it just studying the animals as much as you can and using tasks like that or creating tasks that require behavior that they would do anyway?

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Um, yeah. Or is, yeah. Is that all you can do or. 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah, so for sure you should always start by observing an animal species for some time to know how they are interacting, how, yeah, how they're managing their time over the day. So when maybe you want to test always during, um, lunchtime, and then they're always sleeping, so you kind of need to take this into account.

    But also if you, you design paradigms or apparatuses, you kind of need to take their natural behavior into account. Like, for example, pigs, they always like to root to do things with their nose to dig into the, the soil or whatever. So obviously you shouldn't use a task where they need to do something with their foot because they would normally never do it.

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, 

    Desiree Brucks: [00:10:00] they need to take this into account, but still then it might be that they're perceiving the task completely different than you intended them to do. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. Is the, there's actually one question I had when I saw the, uh, a video of the parrot study. 

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: You know, because there, they, they, well, they, I guess technically they don't have to, but in that case, they transferred the tokens by, um, you know, one picking it up with a beak and.

    Um, like this beak to beak, transmission of the token, if that's the way you wanna word it. 

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: And it didn't seem super smooth, just like me, mechanically the way they did it. Like, is that something that is, do they usually transfer things via their beaks to each other or, 

    Desiree Brucks: mm-hmm. Yeah. So they, especially parents use their beacon really, um, sophisticated way so they can crack open these really tough nuts.

    They can hold it with their, their foot as well to kind of Yeah. Move it around and put it in the right correct position. So obviously they, [00:11:00] they wouldn't pick up these metal things in the nature, or maybe they would a bit to play, but maybe not to give it directly to each other, but for sure they, uh, yeah, give food to one another.

    So they show this a feeding, that they put the beak to the other beak and then they regurgitate the food. And so they're, they, they're using the beak in the, in the food context, but also in the play context. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. Uh, very general question. Do all. Bird species feed their youngs via this regurgitation.

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Or, 'cause I just realized, like, I just assumed they did because that's what you see like about, you know, European birds or something. 

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Uh, is that always the case or? 

    Desiree Brucks: I, as far as I know, yes. So in the first days it's definitely, and then they bring the more, the intact piece of insect or whatever, and the, the youngsters can feed on their own.

    But in the beginning, yes. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. Okay. Yes. I'm still, uh, kind of slightly surprised, [00:12:00] um, that it seems we know so little about cattle or farm animals and that kind of stuff, like how they behave. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well I guess it's like with most research, like you, you think, you know, even like the stuff I'm doing, I often think like this is a obvious question that someone must have done before.

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: And you search for like three days on the internet and you just can't find anything about it. Um, 

    Desiree Brucks: yeah. Or you find really, really old studies, you the seventies, but not really well controlled form and they wonder like, why did nobody ever repeat this? Or try to replicate it. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. That's, that's actually exactly what I've been finding.

    Yeah. A lot of like old studies that kind of did something but not very well. 

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I mean, it's always, I always find it like there's almost like a kind of collector's joy when you find like a paper from the fifties with 12 citations or something that kind of does what you want to do. 

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Although you feel like a bit special for having found this [00:13:00] paper, but then you often also realize why no one size it.

    Yeah. Mm-hmm. It's a bit of a mixed bag. 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah, but coming back to the farm animals, I think it's not that no research has been done on farm animal behavior, so there's definitely quite a lot, but often it's more going into the welfare direction so that you kind of look at how, for example, cattle are kept maybe one problem, or especially with dairy, um, cows, it's that you take out the, the young after several hours after they're born.

    You take out the cals because you want to get the milk from the mothers. So obviously the CALS cannot drink from the CALS anymore. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. Yeah. 

    Desiree Brucks: So this research is then more, more focused on how we can Yeah. Make this separation less stressful, for example, or how to, yeah, get the, the cals more healthy in the short amount of time.

    But obviously for, for increasing this welfare in this regard, you need to understand maybe how they formed their bond, the mother of spring bond, how quickly is it formed? [00:14:00] Is it reliant on, on your vocalization between the calf and the cow, or which other aspects are involved there? So it's just kind of, yeah, taking a different direction a bit.

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. Um, so you said, you know, you're interested in, you know, these like, uh, improving their lives in these kind of farm situations. What kind of living situation do you test them in? Because I imagine that a lot of the, the way they're held in, you know, meat or dairy production. I wonder whether you'd be allowed to keep them like that.

    Like, you know, in a way, like you're testing them in one environment, but the action environment that many of them live in is very different anyway. 

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Um, so I'm just curious, like what I'm assuming, like you probably have fairly strict, well first, do you, do you test animals that. Like that live actually on a farm or like naturally.

    And you'd kind of test them that already exist in that environment? Or do you have like a lab where you have a farm that you built up to [00:15:00] test? Um, 

    Desiree Brucks: so we actually use both versions. Yes. We have one research farm in which there is just a small amount of animals and not really big production farm, but for example, there in the pig stable of the university have like 60 pigs and they're kept under the standard farm conditions that you, you can find there.

    Now if you wanted to test, for example, pigs now on a farm with this yeah. Really nice ecological conditions. So the most, yeah, taken care of with the best welfare possible. You need to collaborate with a farmer around and do your research there. So it always depends on the conditions or what you want to test.

    And, um, yeah, with this research farm, you can adapt the, the housing to a certain degree. So you can tell them, for example, do not mix the picks now, but may wait maybe two weeks, or you give them some straw now and we, we observe what they're doing, but it's, yeah, well it's limited in terms of space, for example, or in terms of housing condition.

    They do not have outdoor access. So it's kind of always [00:16:00] dependent on your research question. But at least with, with farm animals, you always, I mean, you have them all around you. You just need to have people whom you can, you know, with whom you can collaborate or who allow you to test their animals. It's a bit different if you want to test like parrots, for example, which are just not all around you, and which you cannot access that easily.

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Actually in Beck where I'm right now, we have these like small green ones that fly around everywhere and make huge amounts of noise. Um, I'm glad I don't live next to like a flock 

    Desiree Brucks: in the city. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. You play around. Do you know which ones? I mean, there's these, they they actually live all over. Oh, I don't, wait, let me just, actually I, we have the internet.

    Oh. Just so No, I mean it's the kind that exists. I also saw them in London when I lived there. Um, they're kind of all over Europe, uh, where the German is ish, but the English, yeah. Isn't 

    Desiree Brucks: it like Alex 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Rose ringed. Parakeet. Yeah. [00:17:00] The rose ring parakeet. Small green ones with a red beak. 

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. They're in Heidelberg.

    I didn't know. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, they're, they are. I haven't seen them everywhere. But there's, um, I mean, Heidelberg isn't huge. Um, and. Basically you walk like 20 minutes in any direction, Heidelberg, you're basically in the countryside. And I think like kind of on these slightly more outskirts of the cities. Mm-hmm. Um, yeah, I've seen quite a lot.

    Um, but yeah, I mean you are interesting. Of course, in general, I didn't want to, I didn't want to disagree with your statement that there aren't parents that there are, are parrots. Yeah. Yeah. It's just weird. I was really, it's so funny because apparently these, they exist in like Senegal. And like 

    Desiree Brucks: mm-hmm.

    Yeah. But they're super flexible. Live everywhere. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, exactly. I mean, the first time I saw one in London, I was really concerned. I thought like, especially, it was like a November or October or [00:18:00] December or something, it was around zero degrees. And I thought, oh no, like someone's parrot escaped. 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Um, and it is, you know, gonna freeze to death now.

    But then I found out like, no, they, they just, they live in Europe now. 

    Desiree Brucks: That's great. And I once talk to, to, um, a journalist from the Netherlands and she was writing a, a story about, I think also these same parakeets. And I thought like, oh, well I haven't seen them anywhere in Germany yet, but it's interesting.

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Oh, okay. Uh, wait, let's see if I can find anything about where they are in, 

    Desiree Brucks: maybe there, even in Keon, 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: maybe, maybe you have an entire. Flock or whatever it's called, 

    Desiree Brucks: but I haven't seen them yet. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Uh, so the interesting thing actually, when you go to the German Wikipedia article for Haan mm-hmm. One of the photos is of one in Heidelberg.

    Oh, 

    Desiree Brucks: okay. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Um, so it maybe there's, there are, maybe there are. Wait, let's see. So in 1969 there were some in Cologne, so some along the r so Ddo [00:19:00] bar vs. I didn't know that was big enough to mention. Uh, Mannheim Heidelberg, someone in Frankfort ba seems to be like roughly between Ddo Heidelberg, that kind of, 

    Desiree Brucks: okay.

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Uh, interesting. So yeah. But no, it's, it's, um. It's funny, like when we talk about like social interactions and animals, those have to be the loudest birds I've ever heard. Like they, they'll just be like 50 of them and they're just whatever, talking to each other the entire time. 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. But at least they make nice calls.

    So when I worked with the parents there in Spain, you, we had some McCaw and when they scream it's like, it's not pleasant or anything. It's just loud and really annoying. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. Yeah. Well, to be fair, I think here it's just so many of them. That it does become a, like, there, there was this one person in particular I used to walk by and there was this big tree where there were at least 50 or a hundred of them or something.

    And there were also [00:20:00] houses right opposite the tree. And I was so glad I didn't live there because it's just this constant noise. 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: But it's all day. 

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Um, yeah. But 

    Desiree Brucks: yeah, and all the, the, the nice little German native birds, they're just like, Michael. Yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Just shut up. 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. Yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I don't know. There's where I live right now, there's this bird in our garden or something that.

    It's really interesting how that one, like the phrases, it's unfortunately, I have no idea what it is, but the phrases, it sings sound very much like music. Mm-hmm. Like they're very, they have the kind of duration and the kind of melodic flow of mm-hmm. Stuff that humans also compose. 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I wish I knew what, what it was.

    Um, it's, and it also often sounds almost like it has like the same rhythm as people talking almost. It's, 

    Desiree Brucks: mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. I wish I knew what it was. No idea. 

    Desiree Brucks: But there's actually a lot of research going into this, into how, um, bird songs, uh, are similar to human speech 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: really? 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. And I think, for example, [00:21:00] badies.

    So these pet small, pet, pet parrot ones that you keep at home, the bies, 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: how do you spell 

    Desiree Brucks: those? 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I 

    Desiree Brucks: just wanna look up which, they're in German. It's va. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. Yeah, I know what that one is. 

    Desiree Brucks: They, they, they do have some components of, of how they arrange their, their songs, which might be similar to human speech.

    So it's quite interesting. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. Is that maybe why also humans keep them because it's vaguely, 

    Desiree Brucks: maybe? Yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Well it's, it's like when I hear this one bird, it's much more interesting to listen to than like a bird that has like a, a random, like, like to me. Mm-hmm. Some sort of random chirp or something. It's, 

    Desiree Brucks: yeah.

    I mean, it would make sense, right? Always. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: It's much more interesting to listen to. Yeah. 

    Desiree Brucks: Because we are so prone to our own, or to listening to other human speech and how the melody should go in a way that we prefer to be around animals that, yeah, produce similar vocalizations. But I think especially with pert, it's also one way why [00:22:00] humans like to keep them is that they imitate human speech.

    To mean you have all those parents that can actually say words, human words. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Can they actually do that really well? I, I've always heard that, but I've never actually, like, it's, you know, like one of those facts you learn when you're about three years old. Um, and a lot of those facts later when you realize are not true.

    But that is true. 

    Desiree Brucks: That's true. Yeah. Definitely. They're really, really good at it. But unfortunately, especially those that you keep alone at home, so without other birds around. So for example, like African grays, you often keep them alone or you used to keep them alone at home. And so if they have no social partner to interact with or to talk to, they start imitating the human voice.

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Oh, it's okay. It's in particular. If they, if that's all they have as other boys, 

    Desiree Brucks: yeah, they, they're more prone to it. I mean also birds living together in Paris or whatever, they also start doing that. Or some are more prone and starting to imitating this. But I think especially birds that are kept alone or.

    It's like one way [00:23:00] to communicate with a human's 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: all they have. Yeah. 

    Desiree Brucks: So it's actually pretty sad. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Do, are you, are you still allowed to keep birds on their own? I, I heard once that, like, what is it, Guinea pigs or something? In some countries you're not allowed to. 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Have only one. Is that the case with like these larger parrots or, it's 

    Desiree Brucks: a good question.

    I don't know it, it should be like that. But then again with the birds, you have the problem. They, they get so old and they're not, especially, so some are really difficult to introduce to new birds. So example, if you keep like an freaking gray, which is 60 years old also, maybe the his or her mate already died and so it's difficult to introduce them to a new bird.

    So I think it's, it's a bit more tricky than, for example, with Guinea pigs that you say like, they always have to be in Paris, 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: but do you, but they just get used to each other in their youth or whatever, or. 

    Desiree Brucks: Or when they, they're getting adults and they start to, to meet or to form pairs, or many parents have these lifelong [00:24:00] monogamous pairs.

    So they're really, yeah. A couple for all of their life. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: And if one dies, they, they don't wanna remarry. 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. Don't, yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: That's very romantic. 

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: And then they start imitating people. 

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. There was actually really funny, a news story some month ago from a zoo in England somewhere. They had like three or four African grays and they started to, um, imitate so many swearing words they needed to take them out of the zoo because it was not, yeah, well some people complained about the swearing freaking grace, 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: but that's probably intentional by, I, I can very much imagine people going by saying, Hey, let's, let's teach the parrots and swear words.

    Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And then I guess especially if you're in England, there are a few ones you would use more than others. Mm-hmm. So that's, those are probably the ones that they just. Ah. Yeah. Yeah. 

    Desiree Brucks: It's funny. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Humans always [00:25:00] find a way to, to make the lives of animals difficult. Mm-hmm. Even by teaching the swear words.

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: But then get the birds taken out of, what do they do with them? Just like take them, put them somewhere where they, I but children can't listen to them or 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. Maybe are just split up this group that this weird dynamic kind of cut out. But then again, like all the individuals, they know how to say those words, so 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Exactly.

    Desiree Brucks: But maybe you don't have this one individual in there that triggered this. Yeah. That's words, word words. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Maybe there was just one parrot who was really annoying and the others just told him to. The fuck off or whatever. Yeah, maybe

    I have, uh, actually, you know, I wanna talk about the papers now, but, uh, before I have like one last question about farm animals, which is just purely random and from my own life. So I grew up more or less on the countryside and, you know, we'd have fields with cows and that kind of stuff. So, you know, if you'd walk by a field fairly close, [00:26:00] I mean, they were like, you know, fenced off of course, so the cows don't, you know, run away.

    But there would. Often if you'd stand there for a minute or something, not even a minute. Like if you just stand there for like, you'd have a pretty big field and the cows would be a hundred meters away or something. If you stand there for a minute or so, the cows will come. And um, you know, we also had a dog, so we'd walk the dog around there, the dog would like, you know, stay at a place sniff, and then all the cows would come.

    And the dogs and the cows would look at each other and be vaguely excited, but not exactly know what to do. Um, but what are the cows exactly? What, what are they doing? Why are they coming to you? If you just kind of stand there for a minute, like, are they expecting? I always wondered like, do they expect me to, to do something or they're just curious or.

    Desiree Brucks: So I think one thing is for sure that they're curious about what's happening there. The other thing might be that they have this kind of reinforcement history with humans. So whenever they, they see a human, something interesting is happening or hopefully good, like they're being milked or they're getting food or, [00:27:00] so something good happens, 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: grew up pretty identically.

    I think they probably, 

    Desiree Brucks: yeah, 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: something good happened. Yeah. 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. So maybe they were just coming close to with the hope that something good will happen. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. 

    Desiree Brucks: But yeah, with the dog, it's really interesting because actually they're kind of, you could see them as a predate for the, the cows. So 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: that's an 

    Desiree Brucks: optimistic dog though.

    It's 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: interesting to get a cow like that's, 

    Desiree Brucks: yeah, well, but still, I mean, they can chase them and they, I mean, cows are a flight animals, so for sure they should keep out or be wary of predator. But I often see that as well, that cows are really interested in dogs. So I've often seen it that they're even more interested in the dogs than they are in the humans when I walk past the field that the cows are just interested in my dogs, but not, they're not even looking at me.

    So it's weird that they're, they have this fascination with dogs. I don't know why. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, I mean, we always had this thing where in the, so in this case, there would be like, I don't know, maybe 10 cows or [00:28:00] so in a field, and maybe it's more than a, but let's say it's 10, 15 something, and then they'd usually all come and they'd kind of just stand near the fence.

    And then the dog would stand on the other side of the fence and they could see each other. You know, like they just look at each other for a minute or so, and then at some point they'd realize, okay, nothing's really happening here. So they're slightly slight diffusing again. But 

    Desiree Brucks: yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Um, yeah. Yeah, they were always, I mean, of, in this case, the dog was also closest to the fence, so maybe the dog was just closer than me.

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. Uh, 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: but yeah, they always seemed very interested in like, what, what was going on. Mm-hmm. Um, yeah. Even though nothing was going on, so I dunno. 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. But then again, if you think of the habitat that those cows are living in, they are, they're on this, this meadow. I mean, they have lots of grass to eat from, but apart from that, there's not much happening.

    Right. So whenever somebody comes by or drives by, it's interesting. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. This is literally just a pretty big [00:29:00] field. The cows are standing at their grazing. Mm-hmm. Do cows do other stuff? Like, I don't know, I guess we don't have wild cows anymore in, in Germany, whatever, but 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. Unless they're like, you know, they, they escape then they're very wild.

    But, you know, do cows really do that much more than just graze all day? Yes, 

    Desiree Brucks: sure. What, 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: what do they do? 

    Desiree Brucks: Sure. I mean, they, they rest and ruminate, which also again, yeah, 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: that's 

    a 

    Desiree Brucks: great activity, food related. But they also exchange social interactions so that they rest together and body contact that they groom each other.

    So they lick their, each other's faces or the side. So they also have friends. They prefer some cows more than others. They walk towards other food areas. So. Yeah, they walk towards sleeping places or get into shelter when it's raining. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: But they could do most of that on a field. Right. I guess they don't have like new environments that they can explore 

    Desiree Brucks: in a way.

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. But, but 

    Desiree Brucks: everything else, but still, it's always the same area. [00:30:00] Right? In most, most fields or or meadows are kind of even, so there's not even like a hill to climb or to walk 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: down. Yeah. Yeah. Even, yeah. Yeah. 

    Desiree Brucks: So it's a bit, yeah. Bit boring you could say. Yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: But actually, are there still cows that kind of.

    Rome the wild freely in Europe. I don't know. It seems to me they're all kind of, 

    Desiree Brucks: yeah, so the, the, the, the wild ancestor of our cows today, the, um, our rocks, I think it's an English, our, this one went extinct, but, uh, I think they tried to, yeah, combine really primitive breeds with each other again, so that they build up like a, a fake species like that.

    And, um, I think they're still somewhere, um, kept in, in wildlife parks and um, in bigger areas. I think in Poland somewhere they also have a bigger. Um, group of these animals and they're, they, yeah. They live there freely on their own and are not Yeah. Enclosed human contact. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. And then they, [00:31:00] but I'm assuming like, you know, most wild animals, so I understand, you know, they usually have like their area where they live, right.

    They're not completely nomadic. 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Is it much, do you know if it's much bigger than, like how big is the normal, I dunno what the word would be. Um, than normal home 

    Desiree Brucks: range. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, home range of an a wild cow. Do you know what it is or, that's a 

    Desiree Brucks: good question. I don't know. Okay. No, but I would expect it to be big because if you think like they're really big animals, they need to consume lots of grass in order to keep their metabolism running.

    So they need to Yeah. To inhabit a really big area in order to provide enough food for them. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, cow. Oh, good old cow. I don't, I really like cows, but it's just, you know, they're, they're such like sweet creatures, but mm-hmm. They just stand around all day. 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. But there's so much more to them if you look a little bit longer and see what they do and play as well.

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. I've [00:32:00] never really seen cows. Lick another cow. I mean, like, maybe I just didn't stand, you know? Um, or maybe they don't do that when humans are around, like, you know, like strangers or something. I could imagine maybe. 

    Desiree Brucks: I don't know. But they do that quite often, so it's not, not super rare. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. I mean, yeah, I mean like, as you know, I grew up kind of, it's like I, you know, I grew up seeing these animals, but never like up close in that sense, in the sense that, you know, if I'd walk the dog, I'd go past one or two fields that might have cows, but mm-hmm.

    You know, would go into the field or anything. Yeah. Sometimes they run around a bit. Seen that. 

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Um, cows are probably the least elegant running species. I know. You know, they have this very angular kind of 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. But then again, like why do they run like that? Because we, we selectively br them to be in this shape so that they can Yeah.

    Like produce lots of muscle mass and have this really big, um, the English word, [00:33:00] 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: what's the 

    Desiree Brucks: name? Memory gland. Like the 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: ada. Just 

    Desiree Brucks: ada, yes. Yeah, sorry. So they, there's this really big er, like shaking there under their, their belly. So they cannot run that super elegantly. They're not bred to run. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. Fair enough.

    Desiree Brucks: And if you think of the really intensive farming conditions there, they cannot run at all. They can walk, but that's it. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. Yeah. 

    Desiree Brucks: Don't have sufficient space. So it's a bit mean to say they cannot run properly because I'm 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: sorry 

    Desiree Brucks: we made them like that. Right. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I'm very sorry for insulting cows gate. That's okay.

    That's 

    Desiree Brucks: okay. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. I said I still like them. They're very cute. Yeah. I think actually me growing up like that is, I have such a like wrong. Idea of what farming conditions are like. 'cause I grew up with like sheep and cows on, you know, these often pretty large fields also. Mm-hmm. Um, just like doing their thing.

    But so whenever I think of like beef 

    Desiree Brucks: mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I think of that rather [00:34:00] than how, you know, where it actually comes from. 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. I think that's often a common misconception. And I think also all those, uh, producers with their pictures on the trucks or whatever of these really happy cows outside Yeah, of course.

    They're really trying to feed this misconception and the myth of happy animals outside, which is unfortunately of not the case. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. The only happy cows are the Purple Milk cows. 

    Desiree Brucks: Yes, of course. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I think that's, that, that's the only one. That's true. 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, 

    Desiree Brucks: for sure. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. Uh, shall we talk about your research now?

    Yes. Um, yes, as I mentioned, uh, I'd like to start with your papers on. Inequity aversion in dogs. Mm-hmm. Uh, which you did a few years ago, what? Five years ago or, well, that one, that's when it was published. Can you maybe briefly summarize the plus one paper? The inequity aversion negatively affects tolerance and contact seeking behaviors towards partner and experiment.

    Desiree Brucks: Okay, so this was the first study that I did during my [00:35:00] PhD at, uh, the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Sorry, can I just, yeah, so, uh, just, um, for for listeners who don't know, I put the references in the description, so you can just look there for any of the papers we're mentioning. Yeah, sorry.

    Desiree Brucks: Okay, so this was the first paper of my PhD in Vienna. And um, topic of the PhD was broadly speaking to understand why dogs show an equity version. So why do they react if they get something different than their partner? So both do the same. Work, but one gets a better payoff than the other one. And so we wanted to find out why is this the case?

    Are they really actually understanding that the partner gets something better or is it like really rather really simple frustration mechanism that they, yeah. Get frustrated because they did not get anything. And so, um, I tried to replicate with the study, a previous study from my supervisor back then who was the first to find out that dogs react to unequal treatment.

    [00:36:00] And so we used the same, um, paradigm that she used. So we had two dogs sitting next to each other. They were alternately asked to give their PO and either they got the same reward for giving the PO or they get a different reward. So that one partner got a piece of sausage, the other one got nothing for giving the PO.

    And um, yeah, so in order to find out if they're just, yeah, frustrated because the partner gets something better, we incorporated some control conditions. So for example, they were tested also alone without a partner present. And they likewise did not get a reward. So they could not compare it to, to their partner's reward.

    And so following all of these test conditions, which we ran separately on each day, we, um, assess their tolerance towards the other dog partner. So we released both dogs at the same time, and they got to eat from a big food bowl filled with sausages. And following this, we sat down on the room, uh, on the floor inside of the test room, and we just looked how the dogs were reacting towards me.

    So the, [00:37:00] the mean experimenter, but also towards the, uh, towards the, the other dog and towards their owner. And what we found in the end was that, yeah, dogs reacted to, um, inequity version so do to being paid unequally. So if one dog, uh, received a sausage, the other one received nothing, the dog that received nothing, stopped giving the PO and yeah, did not want to participate anymore.

    Um. If both got the same reward, they were willingly, yeah. Giving the P all the time. And uh, if one dog got a better reward, then the other one, like for example, one got a piece of sausage, the other one got a piece of dry food. The one that got the dry food, which was clearly not as good as the sausage, didn't care, but just continued giving the po.

    So, um, it was definitely that. Yeah, the one that got nothing kind of compared the outcome towards the one that got something better but not as, um, as sensitive as, for example, primates like capuchin monkeys, which clearly stop if they got something [00:38:00] of a lower value compared to their partner. The dogs was just, okay, I get something so I continue or I get nothing and I stop.

    And um, what we found afterwards was, um, that they shared less food with their partner in this Yeah. Food tolerance test. If they received no reward. Compared to when both of them received the rewards, so kind of affected also their food sharing behavior afterwards. And interestingly, we also found that they, um, avoided the experiment if the experimenter treated them equally.

    They were not yeah, as much in close contact to the experiment afterwards compared to when they both the same reward. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: So kind of, um, they have an equity aversion, but only a kind in a, in a binary way almost. Right? Mm-hmm. But not so much if it's a continuous difference. Yes. Um, yeah. So maybe the, you know, that may be like the, the, the kind of first obvious question there is why don't they like with, you know, with, [00:39:00] as you said, with other monkeys or with humans, obviously.

    Um, it's also a, a. Uh, quantitative difference. Like if you just get more of the same than me, then I'll be very annoyed for the same work. Is it a perceptual problem that maybe dogs don't exactly like, you know? Yeah. Why? Why don't they have that? Do they, are they so caught up in, in, in what they did get that they don't think about like what the other's getting or how.

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah, so they definitely knew about these two different qualities. So prior to starting the test, we conducted some food preference tests in order to see whether they can discriminate those two food types. And all of the dogs passed this, so all of the dogs preferred sausage over dry food if we presented both at the same time.

    So we kind of made sure that they had this preference for the sausage. So this could not be the problem, or this could not explain why they didn't care. The other thing is that, oh, we think that one problem might be that they, um, they're just so happy to [00:40:00] take anything that they get from the human that they do not care what they're getting.

    So you often see this with dogs that you give them some food and they do not even sniff your hand before taking the food, but they immediately eat it. Right? 

    Yeah. 

    So it might be some kind of trust in a way that, yeah, I'm getting something and I'm happy with it. And especially in this context, which docs knew there, they came into this lab that we had there, they were all really excited because something cool was happening and there was food around.

    And so it might be that this general Yeah, motivation was so enhanced that they just were happy to get whatever they could. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. Um, is, but like one, uh, about the perceptual question I had is like, so you have in your figure one that's, I'm assuming you, you are sitting there, I don't know. Mm-hmm. It's an experimenter sitting there.

    Yeah. Uh, but you can only see like arm and some legs, like not the face or anything. I mean, yeah. So you, what you're demonstrating there is the giving the poor task. Mm-hmm. But I'm, I'm assuming then you take the food and [00:41:00] then give it over to the other animal, right? Mm-hmm. To the animal that gave the poor.

    Mm-hmm. I'm wondering, does the other dog that's sitting there, in this case, looking very intently at the food mm-hmm. But does that dog, how much does that dog realize what you took out of it? Like what you gave the other dog? That's kind of my part of the question. Yeah. Like, do they even realize that they got less than the other dog or what the other dog even got?

    Desiree Brucks: That's the, the issue. We, we don't know. So we tried to ensure, uh, we tried to make it really obvious. So we, we lifted the piece of food from the bowl who held it up in between the dogs so that they potentially could see and smell it, and only then gave it to the other dog. We also tried to make sure that they, or to facilitate this, uh, this yeah, movement of the food and that we had this, uh, red food bowl, which is also present in the picture, and we had like a barrier somewhere there, like a, a cardboard barrier inside of the bowl that clearly separated the two food types.

    So we always had the, yeah, the dry food in the front and the [00:42:00] sausage in the back and uh, yeah, this was all that we could do. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. I mean, if you held it up between them, that should be enough. I, yeah, it seems like it. So I have a lot of, like, as I, I mentioned before we started recording quite a lot of, few like technical questions, but I hope that also by doing that maybe we can, um, also explore kind of the more general concepts.

    Maybe we'll see. Uh, or they're just boring technical questions, I dunno. Um, but like, for example, in figure one, you, and you know, you have this like wood, this like wooden log kind of barrier, not, it's not like really a barrier, it's just like 10 centimeters high or something. Right. Um, but between the dogs, um, why is that there?

    Desiree Brucks: So we, um, so first of all, I tried to replicate the exact study from my supervisor from there, and she also put the barrier there because she piloted this a bit and tried that, or found out that having this barrier there prevented the dogs from going to the other side. So even though they could easily walk over it, it was [00:43:00] kind of a physical barrier to them because we didn't want the dogs to Yeah, just go to the other side.

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. 

    Desiree Brucks: So they were both on a leash anyway, but still if they wanted to, they could Yeah. Slightly go to the other side. So it was kind of a physical barrier in a way. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. Now a few questions about the dogs that took part. 

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Um, actually first as a comment. So, you know, when you, you do studies about humans, anonymity is one of the things that you have to be very careful about.

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: But in your case, you provide for each dog the breed, the age, the sex, and the name. 

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: And I will make a bet that there aren't many seven point 9-year-old bardino mixes called Socrates in Vienna. So, um, I don't, yeah, I think you are, you're not maintaining anonymity of your participants here, are you?

    Desiree Brucks: No. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Um. 

    Desiree Brucks: No, but I think also just coming from the other way [00:44:00] around, I think it's important, or for me it's important to name those individuals that participated because they're individuals, they're not test subjects or whatever. So I, I intentionally like to give them individual names or use their actual names because they're individuals.

    They're not like test subjects that are just took out of a random sample and, um, I mean, it took them out of a random sample, but they're just not, they're not numbers to me or anything. They, they're individuals with names with a particular history that, 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: yeah. So interesting names in there. I wonder who called the Dog Gatsby.

    I hope it's a computational neuroscientist who's alluding to the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Center at UCL. 

    Desiree Brucks: Obviously. Yeah. Or 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: not, but. Yeah, I mean there's, yeah, some interesting name, Ultimo, uh 

    Desiree Brucks: mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Ppp. It's a very creative name. Anyway, um, but, [00:45:00] uh, I actually had like some more serious questions about, about this, uh, which is, so the first thing is can all, so this is slightly, you know, you said it's a random sample, but in some sense it's also quite limited, it seems to, oh, not limited, but I mean limited in the sense of it's not perfectly random, um, because at first you're limiting it to dogs that live together, right?

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Does that sound that correctly? 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Um, and secondly, and I dunno whether this is a coincidence or whether, how exactly you recruit the dogs, but. Most of the dogs are from a few species. So you have 34 dogs in total. 

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Now, wait, I wrote this down. You have 11 border colonies, five Australian shepherds, three beese mountain dogs, which means roughly two thirds of your entire, um, dogs are from those three, uh, what's the word, breeds.

    Mm-hmm. Um, so I guess my first, my question is, can any dog take part in [00:46:00] this, or why do we have such a limited or skewed sample of breeds in here? 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah, so the, the, we recruited those dogs in the, the Clever Dog Lab in Vienna by contacting owners that were registered in this database. And, um, we have the problem there that it's often dog owners who have very active dogs or who think that the dogs need to do some mental work in order to be Yeah.

    Happy. And often you find those working dog breeds like Border Colies, Australian Shepherds that are really like, 

    like. 

    Yeah, Husky is not too much, but really these ones that are cooperatively working with humans that are really active and yeah, that like to do those brainy games. And also you have owners, or most often you have owners that own these dogs that are also really active and that want to do something with their dog.

    So we, we for example, we rarely have had some owners there who have like chihuahuas or those like toy breeds, which you just go out for a walk five minutes a [00:47:00] day and the rest of the day they're inside of the home and you think like, oh, well they don't need that much exercise or whatever. Which obviously most of the time is not the case, but it's also this kind of perception of the owner about what their dog should do.

    And so, yeah, it's always a bit biased in the way that you have those more active breeds participating more often. But, um. Yeah, this was kind of the, regarding the sample size, we tried to, um, yeah, follow up on this question as well in the, in the, in another paper which came out last year in which we directly tested whether those cooperative breeds that work with humans like herding dogs or, um, yeah, like herding dogs perform differently in this inequity task compared to the more independent breeds like Huskies, for example, which kind of work on their own.

    They do not rely that much on the human, and so we found that they do not differ in terms of inequity version, but both show it equally. But yeah, it's a good point. So it's [00:48:00] always a bit biased in a way that you have particular breeds overrepresented it and others not. And one other thing for, for one other inclusion criteria for the study was that they needed to give the poor on command and not all.

    Dogs could do that reliably. So we had like a precondition in which we asked them to give the pole like at least 10 times in a row. And then you already had some dogs, which were like, okay, I do it three times. And then like, why? I mean, it doesn't make sense. I gave it to you three times already, so why should I continue?

    So they need to be a bit, yeah, they need to be food motivated to a certain extent and also, yeah, be, yeah, happy to, to repeat the same act over and over again. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. I mean, like one, there, there's two things kind of that um, I thought about with the restrictions to the, you know, the kind of restrictions you have in terms of the breeds that, of the dogs that take part.

    The, the first is kind of a funny analogy that, you know, in, in. Psychology. We have this problem that, you [00:49:00] know, all the samples are weird, you know, this west, uh, which an acronym for Western, what is it? Educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic, I think. Mm-hmm. Um, and it seemed to me that the dogs are kind of a bit similar in that way.

    That, you know, you only have the dogs that reliably they are trained almost to give the, well, they have to be trained to give the board. Right. It's not like a natural behavior. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, then, and you know, I think border colleagues are also used quite a lot because they're quite smart, right? 

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm.

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: And yeah, it just seemed to me like you almost have a slightly similar, um, sampling problem there. 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Um, but the other thing is that, and this, I think, I guess it's maybe not a problem for this study per se, but maybe for these kind of studies is that, um, you also said at some point, oh wait, let's gimme a second.

    You know, you said you also exclude, or you don't use dogs that have food aggression. 

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Um, and you know, as you said, like they have to give the pole several times. So I mean, you're sampling for very friendly dogs, right? 

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Um, by [00:50:00] doing that, so if you're studying corporation, isn't that a slight problem?

    Again, here you're doing inequity, which is maybe a bit different, but, um, 

    Desiree Brucks: yeah, no, obviously it could be yes. But, um, especially with these tests that involve close interaction between two dogs, but also with the human, you kind of need to have this safety net in order that you're sure, like the dog won't bite you because you're not giving, it's a piece of food.

    So it's also kind of, um, a safety thing to include only pretty well-trained animals that are happy to interact with humans, because in the end, it should also be like fun for the dogs in a way to participate. And, um, yeah, if a dog is yeah, has some human aggression or slightly stressed in all those situations, they, yeah, they wouldn't be behaving normally and would reduce their welfare and we don't want that.

    So 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: is that why you also chose dogs from the same household? 

    Desiree Brucks: Yes, but also, yeah. One thing for sure that they do not show aggression towards each other. They can be in close [00:51:00] proximity if food is involved, but also because, uh, yeah, they know each other. And if, or with, with an equity version or some cooperation in general, you have that closely affiliated partners that know each other very well, that they are more prone to cooperate with one another compared to with a stranger.

    So you obviously also like to work together with a friend compared to a complete stranger. So this is also kind of yeah, increasing the chances of detecting this behavior in this regard. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, I was about to say it doesn't that then increase the, like if you have dogs living together. Unless like the owners have a clear favorite, you'd assume that they also kind of grew up with equity, right?

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: So I mean, is the statement then more that, not necessarily that dogs naturally have an equity aversion, but more that they can have it? Is that then more that under certain circle or some kinds of dogs have it? Um, 'cause again, I'm just, 

    Desiree Brucks: mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: You see what I mean? Like, wondering, like if you, and of course that makes it very difficult to [00:52:00] study, but if you have.

    Just all kinds of dogs that don't know each other, different breeds, whatever. Whether it's still show it, I mean, 

    Desiree Brucks: I think it's not a, a learned behavior, but it's a like a cognitive ability. So it doesn't really depend on what you, you've yeah. Experienced previously. Obviously if you experience extreme and equality, then you're more sensitive towards it, but I think it's just like a general, or as the, the theoretical principle behind says that it's a way to stabilize corporation so that you have those cheetah that always, yeah, take out everything that they're eliminated in the long term or in the evolutionary sense.

    So I think it's something that is just, yeah, inherited in a way, like a cognitive ability that balances cooperation, but that's not necessarily learned. So in a way that we, we could show that dogs are, are somehow sensitive towards this, whether it's really like similar to our sense of fairness, that's where we cannot answer.

    But yeah, we show they, they're sensitive towards [00:53:00] it. So potentially it's, it's present in all dogs independent of what they experienced before? 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. I mean, yeah. I also don't know, I mean, like also the dogs we had were, I think by coincidence, both male and pretty large. So, you know, it would be, you'd like, when you'd walk the dog again, a fairly, fairly rural area, you know, you'd always come across other dogs when you'd walk them and yeah, two male dogs is always a bit annoying.

    I, in our case it was the dog was usually quite a bit larger, so he just didn't care about the other dogs barking at him. 

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Uh, but then you'd have those, like four dogs that were all kind of the same size. Yeah. Obviously you, if you have the, you can't do the study with those two, the same room because they're gonna.

    Fight for dominance first. 

    Desiree Brucks: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of a problem I think with all animal studies that you, you kind of need to Yeah. Make sure that they're in a comfortable position so that they can show their cognitive abilities. Because if you put [00:54:00] like a, a dog there with a stranger dog and Yeah.

    That first of all would sniff each other, would maybe, I dunno, fight or try to be close or to play or whatever. So they would be distracted from the actual task that you want them to, to focus on. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. Well I could imagine like if there's, if they just had a, like, fight for dominance, one might be very stressed Exactly.

    Or something and barely even pay attention to anything that's going on. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean like, I guess whatever species or whatever you test, you always have these like very specific problems to the populations. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, I mean like in humans you sometimes get, you do a study and this afterwards, like, oh yeah, I tried to see whether I could like.

    Mess with your data. It's okay. Thank you. No, you okay. I see. I tried to see whether I could do the task without thinking about it. It's like, yeah, we kind of wanted you to think about it. 

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, we don't have these problems. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Exactly. You don't know those, but then you just have completely different problems.

    Yeah. Yeah. [00:55:00] Um, yeah. Uh, one question I had about the dogs, but which is the same for the parrot study. Why does a human give out the rewards? So in this case, it's always the, you have a human experimenter who gives, in all cases, food out to the, to the animals, right? Mm-hmm. Why put a human in there? Wouldn't it make more sense to have it like as an, you know, like an automatic machine or something that gives up food if certain conditions are met?

    I mean, you could of course have it like human press, the buttons, you know? Mm-hmm. Kinda one way mirror or whatever. But yeah, like why doesn Doesn't that just make. Then it's a study of like dog behavior or parrot behavior in the presence of humans who they know expect certain things and, you know. Yeah.

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. So just first starting with the dog. So, um, I think in, in human psychology it was established that inequity version only is, is valid if you have [00:56:00] like a third party that is distributing things unequally. And this third party should be a human who does this somehow, intentionally. So there was a study looking at it whether humans also show an equity version if they're interacting with a computer.

    And there they did not show that strong and equity version because it was this computer doing it randomly and without kind of the intention of treating people unequally. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Uh, what, what's that paper? Do you know? Or, or like what I top, 

    Desiree Brucks: top my mind. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. 

    Desiree Brucks: No, I, I think I'm mentioning it in another paper in which we, we exactly looked at this because we were also rendering with the dogs whether they would also show an equity version, if it's just like a, yeah.

    Still a human giving the food, but from behind the barrier so that they could not see it. And, um, with the dogs, for example, in the study, um, with a barrier, um, they, they did not show, or they, it wasn't that clear that they show an equity version in this other paradigm, but that we would, we couldn't say for sure that it was, [00:57:00] yeah, the presence of the human, or rather this different paradigm that we used that was causing this.

    Yeah. Lack of inequity aversion. So were the dogs asking them to give the PO and have this more natural interaction? We deliberately used the human experiment and they're asking for it and giving out the food intentionally in this unequal way. For the parrots, it was, uh. Yeah, actually a bit different there.

    I think it would've worked with a, like an automated machine giving them the food, but there was just, yeah, more naturally to perform this action like that so that you have the human pushing in the tokens and giving out the food because they were trained from previous studies that there's, yeah, this human on the other side who they can interact with and who gives them food.

    But with the parrots, it was a bit more, or a bit less interactive in a way that we were just, yeah, sitting there silently giving out the food that we received a token and this was it with the dogs. It was, yeah, intentionally more interactive, asking for the paw and giving the food. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. Especially with the dogs.

    I think my [00:58:00] question is less, yeah, it was maybe, let's say more about the parrots per se, because I mean, first of all, I guess dogs, you know, we domesticated them, so humans are a much larger part of their life anyway. 

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Um, and because you're giving the poor, you already have this interaction anyway, so that makes perfect sense.

    But with parrots, I was just wondering, you know, we we're talking earlier about like the ethology of different animals and that kind of natural behavior. Now you're creating a situation where you have this godlike figure that can give out food to the parrots. Mm-hmm. You know, which I'm assuming doesn't exactly happen in the wild.

    Yeah. So does this, I mean, does this actually say anything about, does it say something about their natural behavior? If this is a situation they'd never encounter, or. 

    Desiree Brucks: Um, I think yes, because it's still, so we looked at this Yeah. Propensity to help another, so it was more about whether the, the, this parrot on the other side understands the action based goal of its partner.

    So do they understand that the partner wants to exchange the [00:59:00] token for food? So it wasn't necessarily this direct action with a human that we were looking for, but rather how, how they interact between each other for reaching this one goal, which kind of involved the human. And there we also tried to, yeah.

    Look at the effect of the human on the other side by inco, by, by implementing a control condition, which the human left the room so that they were still able to interact with one, one another, but not with a human. But yeah, I think it is often a problem with all these cognitive studies that you have, the human part there, because obviously we need to manipulate something or to give food or to, yeah, put an apparatus somewhere.

    So, um, I think this is, will only get better or better sorted out in the coming years in which it's, yeah, we have so many more automated options, like drones or like computer touch screens or robots, which could do the same actually and maybe even in a better and standardized way. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. I mean, in a sense, I guess it also depends on what your [01:00:00]question is, right?

    Like you can have, if your question is are they cognitively capable of this thing, then it doesn't matter, right? And in a sense you could just say like, well, we would, yeah, we want to find out whether they can even have these kind of beliefs about another parrots goal or whatever. 

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. And 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: the answer's clearly yes.

    Desiree Brucks: Yes. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: And even if the circumstances are slightly artificial. Yeah. 

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Um, I guess, okay. I guess maybe it says maybe slightly less about inequity, aversion and pars in their kind of everyday lives. But it says something about their cognitive capabilities. 

    Desiree Brucks: Exactly, yes. And this is always the, the starting point, right?

    We need to find out if they do it in an experimental setting, which obviously often is quite artificial. And from then end, we can look in a more natural setting to see if they do it there as well and how it looks like without these artificial tokens or whatever. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. I mean, talking about like a more natural thing.

    Have you heard of, I watched a. Documentary or something about [01:01:00] in Japan they have this chimpanzee lab where they have this like very natural environment and where like at the top of one of these trees or whatever they, they installed like this thing where the chimpanzees can just go and do a task and then they get food for it.

    So like they don't interact with humans at all. 

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Maybe they teach 'em like the task in a difference way, but yeah, I mean when I saw that I thought like, that really seems like they've really tried to like, you know, they said make it as natural as they can. Like the chimpanzees would have to go to tree to get food or something.

    Mm-hmm. In this case, they go to a tree and they, like, in this case, apparently chimpanzees have this amazing visual memory, like so much better than humans. Uh, so they just take on this touchscreen all the time. 

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Um, but it also seems like you need a lot of money and funding to have that kind of.

    Huge space and Yeah. 

    Desiree Brucks: Yes. But I mean, it's awesome that they can just have, yeah, yeah. So much control over their environment and what they want to do when, 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: yeah. [01:02:00] Yeah. I guess with dogs we could probably get fairly close, right? Because dogs live with humans anyway, so that's not a problem. 

    Desiree Brucks: And Exactly. But still like, or this also raises some problems, especially with dark research because they're so sensitive towards us and our behaviors where we look, how we interact or how we move our hand, or how we orientate our body or our shoulders towards particular things.

    Or even how our mood is that we can easily bias the results just by, yeah. Having an experiment inside of the same test room or whatever. So we need to be very careful in this sense to act really passively. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: How do you do that when you have, when you know exactly that every dog prefers. The sausage, uh, is, it was for all dogs, the high value reward or whatever, right?

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: So how, and so you know exactly what's happening, right? You know exactly what the dogs should prefer, how they should act, have expectations. 

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: How do you, I mean, [01:03:00] can you even be neutral there or how, how did you tackle that problem? 

    Desiree Brucks: So you obviously, you try to be as neutral as possible. I, I don't think it will be possible 100% because you always have this unconscious.

    Bias maybe in a way. But what we always try is to wear, for example, um, sunglasses so that they cannot see our eyes or where we are looking at because this could already bias their, their choices. And then to have, yeah, like we have like really specific marks on the floor where we put the food. We have a random sequence, for example, to say like, okay, it's never on the same side or whatever.

    And um, yeah, we have this really standardized way of moving around during the test so that we do not, I dunno, scratch the head or whatever. We try to avoid this. Obviously you cannot always do this, but 

    yeah, 

    you try to standardize your movements and, and always use, for example, the same person who's conducting the test so that it's not like a stranger on the one day and then [01:04:00] the same other person that they knew on the other day.

    They try to be as persistent as possible. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: And the, the, well we could call it a no results that you have, like a, the in the way that you don't have this, uh, what did you call it? Uh, this kind of quantitative, sorry, what did you call the condition again? 

    Desiree Brucks: Quality 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: equity reward, inequ inequity. Right? Mm-hmm.

    That was the one where you didn't have the difference. Yeah, yeah. In a way, the fact that you didn't have any effects there probably shows that you, as an experiment that didn't have too much of an effect because for humans we would expect that dogs would behave differently if you Yeah. Give them that.

    So maybe in a way actually that, that actually maybe Yeah. Points to there not being too much bias in the study. 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah, and what we also try is mean that they do not know us as from before. So it's always just in this setting. Maybe it might be, or it might look very different if, for example, the owner would've done the test.

    So they might have reacted much more strongly because they have these [01:05:00] expectations of the, or they have higher expectations in their owner or experiences with their owner compared to a stranger. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Oh, sorry. I actually meant quality inequity, not reward inequity. What, what I just said. Sorry. Because they, mm-hmm.

    Yeah. Sorry. That's what I meant. Sorry. 

    Desiree Brucks: Okay. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. Last question is, it seemed to be like there were quite a lot of trials for dog. Do they like continue? I don't know. It's, it's, I can't remember exactly how many trials there were, but I went through it and thought like. Do they just get not bored after a while or like, do they continue?

    I mean, is it just food? They'll do it. Did you ask the owners not to feed them before they came or? 

    Desiree Brucks: No, they, they were not food restricted in any way, but so we give them sausage or dry food, which they usually don't get during their normal day. Uh, also the dry food that we use, there was something that they, I think all of the dogs did not get at home, so it wasn't their daily usual dry food.

    And, um, yeah. This also comes back to a question before of this, uh, yeah. Selection [01:06:00] bias in a way that we have all those border colleagues, which they, they were just happy to give their poor 30 times in a row and Yeah. Did not get bored by it because they got nice sausages,

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: good old border colies. 

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: What would you do without them? You would've had to test so many more dogs that then just stop at some point. 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah, they're really nice to, to work with because they have this motivation to. To continue to work to please in a way. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. That's the same as with humans. It's always nice to have motivated participants who actually listen to the, read the instructions carefully.

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Sit the fellow hour doing the task. But yeah. Um, uh, I wanted to move to the parrot stuff. A very general question. Uh, how did it feel to get so much media attention? So it seems that, um, so actually, so every single Stu person I've interviewed so far is I read their paper because I came [01:07:00]across it in my work.

    Mm-hmm. And then, you know. Contact them. But in your case, actually I was, uh, this is the first study where I was, uh, once again wasting time on Reddit. And then on the front page it said this thing. And I thought, this is perfect. Like this is cooperation in animals. I've, I've wanted to have, I guess, to, you know, I can talk about these topics.

    Um, and then I read the study. So yours is actually the only one where I saw a kind of public press release and um, that kinda stuff before I actually read the paper. Um, and then I, I, earlier I looked whether you had, uh, Twitter, which I don't think you have. No. And I just saw all these, like the first page is to select newspaper articles reporting on the study.

    Um, how, 

    yeah, 

    Desiree Brucks: it was 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: crazy and now you're talking to me. Um, but. Although I don't really consider this journalism, but yeah. So how was, I'm assuming that didn't happen for all of your studies? Um, 

    Desiree Brucks: no, not at all. No. It was really [01:08:00] crazy and also interesting to see how it works if you publish a paper and Yeah.

    How the journal handles it and yeah, kind of distributed to the journalists. And it was really stressful week before it was published because I had to talk to so many journalists and have to say, I was always really scared in a way that I said something stupid that they would use then to, to write up their, yeah, the article.

    Many journalists sent their article to me before they published it. It was really nice or checked back and said like, okay, I wrote like, this is fine. And um. Yeah, it was really interesting and nice to see how, yeah, how your work kind of gets public attention in a way. I mean, not all, all headlines or whatever were correct scientifically correct in a way.

    So I often thought like, oh my, that's not correct. That's not how I said it, or, yeah, what we showed actually. But it was definitely interesting. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, I mean there's always this like hierarchy of hype and accuracy, right? You have the [01:09:00] actual paper. Mm-hmm. So first you have what the scientists think, then you have the paper, then you have the press report from the university, and then you have the newspaper articles.

    Yeah. And at each step it gets more extreme and less correct. Mm-hmm. What's in it. 

    Desiree Brucks: That's true. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Um, yeah. But did, but you said before it was published, it sounds like you said like the journal instigated this, what they, like they contacted like some organizations and said like, Hey, we've got something, we finally got something that people might be interested in.

    Desiree Brucks: No, I think it, it, it works a bit differently. I'm not, I didn't get it into it like 100%, but I think it's something like all those science journalists, they're kind of, uh, yeah. Following some, some, some newsletter, whatever, which says like, we have these studies coming out and yeah. Do you want to report about it with, with I think the abstract just in it so that they can decide which study might be interesting for them.

    But obviously all the journals pre-select some studies which [01:10:00] they think might be interesting. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. I mean some stuff's gonna be so technical that Yeah. I mean this is, I mean this is in a way, you know, also the perfect study for a kind of broad, it has a broad appeal, right? You have firstly a fairly straightforward message that people can understand without, you don't need jargon to understand this.

    Mm-hmm. And secondly, you have a cute video of parrots giving each other tokens. 

    Desiree Brucks: Yes. Yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: It 

    Desiree Brucks: was a really, really nice study and nice to communicate with the press. Uh, 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: do you now for, for all the papers that come out since, do you always hope, like, may maybe this one's also gonna get this much attention and then it doesn't?

    Desiree Brucks: No. No, I don't. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. 

    Desiree Brucks: No, that was really exceptional because it just worked out so nicely and the results were so clear. I mean, often this is, or most of the time, this is unfortunately not the case. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, I mean like, it's also just very cool to see the video. I mean like the one, the [01:11:00] video on Twitter by a new scientist that they posted has, I think today it had 13,000 views or something.

    Wow. Which is, you know, and that's just like the thing that they put on Twitter, not what's on their website or on other things. Right. It's a lot of people. Mm-hmm. Those are famous parrots. Um, but yeah. Anyway. Yeah. It's fun. Yeah. We'll see how often that happens that I contact people because of something I found on Reddit.

    I don't think it's gonna happen often, in part because I want to stop wasting my life there. Um, and also because yeah, usually it just goes to the other route. Uh, but again, do you wanna, maybe this, this paper that we've been talking about for five minutes without actually saying what, what, what you did and what you found again, do you wanna maybe, uh, summarize it in a few minutes so we can have that as a starting point?

    Desiree Brucks: Yes, sure. So in this study we tested actually two species of parrots. So it wasn't only the African grays, which were like all over the [01:12:00] press, but actually we tested also the blue headed Macau, which are yeah, smaller sized Macau, which, uh, yeah are endangered in the wild. But we had them there in this research station and they're actually quite nice comparison to look into these helping behaviors or pro-social behavior because they show differences in their social organization and um, also in their social tolerance, which is interesting for these results.

    And so, um, we tested those two species in an instrumental helping paradigm in which we trained them beforehand to exchange small metal tokens for pieces of walnut. The, the parents already knew how to do this from previous studies, so we just refreshed their memory and, um, then yeah, tested them with their partner in an indoor test compartment in which we had a plexiglass barrier with separating the two birds.

    And, uh, yeah, well we, we confronted them with the situation that one bird had these metal tokens, but could not exchange them with the experimenter because the exchange [01:13:00] hole towards the front was blocked. The other bird on the other side had no tokens, but had an open exchange. Also could potentially exchange something for food.

    But yeah, obviously elect the tokens for doing so. And so we just, yeah, observed what they would do in this situation, and surprisingly, we found that they, yeah, this actor bird, which had all the tokens, gave one token after the other towards the receiver bird, who then exchanged it with the experimenter for food.

    Well, obviously this could just be some kind of play behavior or whatever. So we tested them in a social control condition in which there was, yeah, no experiment at present, no food present, but the tokens were in inside of this compartment anyway, so we wanted to see if they also exchanged tokens in this setting in which they cannot exchange it for food.

    What we found was that they did not exchange tokens in the social control, and likewise, they also did not exchange tokens if there was no partner on the other side who could receive those tokens. In between of those, [01:14:00] uh, tests and control conditions, we implemented some motivational controls in which, yeah, one bird had the tokens and could also exchange the tokens for food in order to make sure that they were still motivated to, to do this action.

    And, uh, yeah, as I said, with the African grape parents, we found that they exchanged lots of tokens in the test condition, but not in the control conditions. The blue headed, cause on the contrary, were, yeah, were not helping each other. So they, they transferred rarely any tokens and they did not discriminate between the control conditions.

    So, um, in the social control in which there was the partner also on the other side, but no, no food available, they exchanged no tokens at all. But in the non-social control in which there was no partner on the other side, they still exchanged, or they said, brought their tokens towards the other compartment, which led us believe that they were just trying to bring the token as closely as possible to the human hand.

    So that they could, or with the hope that maybe they could also get some [01:15:00] food in the, in the long term. And, um, yeah, following this test, we always let, we, we opened a curtain in between these compartments to see how the birds would interact after the test condition. So we looked at the proximity towards each other, but also whether they would allo feed and, um, yeah, then we repeated those tests again with, uh, another partner.

    So we test them once with a highly affiliated partner and once with a non-affiliated partner, always from the same social group. And what we found was that they exchanged more tokens. So now only speaking for the African grace, because the blue did not help another, so the African race exchanged more tokens with their partners that were highly affiliated and less with their less affiliated partners.

    But still, they exchanged tokens with all partners and, um. Yeah. What we also found was in this interaction afterwards, they spent more time closely towards their partner if they exchanged lots of tokens. And, uh, something that I forgot to explain in the [01:16:00] description of the test was that we reversed those roles always after one test trial.

    Um, so that the bird that could exchange tokens before was another, the one that could only give tokens to the partner. And so what we found was that if the, the, this first actor exchanged lots of to, or transferred lots of tokens towards the receiver bird, that then the receiver bird, once the road were reversed, also gave back lots of tokens.

    So it was kind of a. Form of reciprocity, which, yeah, unfortunately with this data, we cannot say for sure if this is really reciprocity or if they're just kind of in a happy mood once they received something like that. But yeah, still these results show that on the one hand, parrots. So a non mammalian species is able to, to help another, and also that potentially some form of social tolerance or social organization explains species differences.

    While the African grace, they live in really huge flux of 1000 individuals and they show [01:17:00] this vision fusion dynamics, which means that they roost together during the night in a tree and during the day they, yeah, separate again in small groups for foraging, but then they always come back together during the night.

    So it might be for these African grace, which live in these huge flux, it might be a way to build up something like a good reputation so they, they help another. So maybe it's a way of showing or signaling that they're a good cooperative partner. So it might be important for them to build up this reputation and the, um, blue headed Macau on the contrary.

    So while they're very endangered in the wild, there are still some studies on the social organization and they've been found in much smaller flocks. So only up to 10 individuals. And they do not mix with other flocks or anything, so they're always in this constant composition. So it might be that for them it's less important to build up a good reputation or anything because they're always together with the same set of individuals.

    And yeah, well the social life was maybe more struck by dominance or whatever. And um, another thing that we [01:18:00] found between the two species was that the African race were much more tolerant in the food context compared to the blue headed Macau. So it might be that the African race, they're just much more prone to share food compared to the blue headed.

    What does food 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: tolerant mean? 

    Desiree Brucks: So in this regard, we did like a food, we called a food tolerance study in which we presented a small bowl of food. So it was a bowl filled with seeds to two birds and then just watched how they would feed from this bowl. So do they both put their head and then like Yeah.

    Happily share with each other as one Monopolizing the bowl and Yeah. Chasing away the other one. This is how we assess the, the food tolerance. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: It's not a tolerance towards the food, it's more tolerance towards sharing food with another or the other bird. 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. Yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: It's a very good summary. I think you seem to have practiced it through all the media stuff.

    Yeah, true. Um, [01:19:00] um, let's see, where should we start? Maybe, maybe we can again start with a bit more of the. More technical stuff, um, and then get to the more broader things. So in the video that I saw and that, you know, I'll put in the description. So you always put your hand immediately underneath the hole, uh, where the parrot could exchange tokens for food, right?

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Doesn't that suggest to the other parrot that they, you know, it's expected? I mean, if they already know that they can exchange tokens, whole food. Aren't you kind of suggesting that, that they should give over the thing, get over the token to the others because they want them to give some tokens?

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. It, it could be, yes. But, um, so from the, the training, they, they knew that there was this barrier in between so that they could not just walk to the head still, it could somehow Yeah. This movement of holding the hand anchor Yeah. Elicit this. Yeah. This strange response of grabbing the token, [01:20:00] 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: what I thought, like if, if you don't have your hand there, the parrot can still drop it and then you can still change it.

    Right. Whereas the, the, I mean, I, I dunno how good parrots are reading gestures, but like mm-hmm. Especially like I if as a human, like seeing the hand upwards, you know? Mm-hmm. That's very much a give me something gesture. Mm-hmm. Um, so yeah, that's just what I was thinking when I saw that. 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. So on the one end it was, so this exchange behavior was trained like this with holding the hand open with the birds for Yeah.

    For other studies as well. So they were quite familiar already with this gesture in a way. And, um. So that's why we, we used the same way of requesting the tokens, but in a way that, or we, we controlled for, um, yeah, for this effect that this hand might facilitate the transfers with this non-social control condition in which we still held the hand in the whole, um, in front of the hall of the empty compartment.

    So there was no other bird there to take the token, but still the birds did not drop the token in the empty compartment, at least not the African [01:21:00] grays. But, um, yeah, they, they did not try to bring the token close to the hand in this condition. And we did it the same in all conditions, except for the social control in which we left the test room.

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I have a more comment than a question. One thing that, so I was just thinking through kind of what the para are doing. So they would, you know, give the tokens the one condition, not the others, and that kind of stuff. And it really does seem like they. They have to go through quite a lot of, lot cognitively, right?

    They have to realize like, oh, the other ones the token and can or can't give it, and all these kind of things. Yeah. I was just, I think it's always funny like when you have these tasks that are so natural to humans to realize, like it's quite a lot that actually goes into being able to make that kind of, well to, to act in that kind of way.

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. I mean, I guess like the parrots and that kind of stuff are supposed to be very intelligent birds, right? Um 

    Desiree Brucks: mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: But yeah, I dunno. [01:22:00] 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. But that's, that, that comes again, again to the theme that we talked about in the beginning, that we, humans always think of this is how the task should look like and how the animals are.

    Yeah. As opposed to interact with all the items within the test room, let's say. But then again, in the end it's like there Yeah. A completely different view of how it looks like, or Yeah, that they try to get to the other side as well. So we needed to fix some things in the beginning. So prevent the birds from Yeah, I dunno.

    Trying to go through the, this exchange hole or Yeah, rip open the, the curtain. So there's always a lot of piloting going in before you can actually test them and Yeah, especially parrots are very destructive. So you to make everything per proof. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Actually, here's a question. You did do this, I'm assuming, speculating.

    Um. Do you think, so let's say you had a parrot proof method of only giving one parrot the tokens and the other couldn't get them, but there's no barrier between them. Do you [01:23:00] think the parrot would've given the other some tokens or would they have just walked past the and, uh, given the tokens over themselves?

    Do you know what I mean? Like in the, in the test condition like you have there, there's, they have to basically like walk past the other parrot with a token in them mouth. In their beak mouth. Mm-hmm. Um, and give it to the whole, do you think they would've like, shared some tokens there or was it just because they couldn't do anything with them themselves?

    Desiree Brucks: That's a good question. So, so right now we we're conducting a follow up study to see if they not only share tokens, but also food directly with one another, because the tokens, I mean, they're just like a yeah. Intermediate step towards the food. So why shouldn't, shouldn't they share food with each other and yeah, this is something we are currently looking into, whether they, yeah.

    For example, if you give them a bottle of food, do they just eat it up all on their own, or do they give something to their hungry partner as well? But this is not yet analyzed, but we are definitely trying to figure out what's, what's happening [01:24:00] there. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. I mean, for me, because it's also a question slightly about the boundary conditions here, because in a way, showing voluntary cooperation when you, this thing has no value to you because you can't do anything with it.

    It's, it's a different kind of thing, right. Than if you could actually do something with it yourself. Mm-hmm. Like if I have something that has no meaning for, to me Sure. You take it like, you know. Okay. Yeah. Um, and that's a very different statement than something that I care about. Right. 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah, that's true.

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: But I guess, sorry, is this again then the kind of thing also to show cognitively whether they can. Do this kind of thing is, is it again? 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. So again, this was, or this was, yeah. The first study looking in birds, whether they would Yeah. Provide this help to another partner in this instrumental paradigm.

    There was one study using the exact same, same methods in Ravens, and they did not help another, so it's always good in [01:25:00] this comparative setting to use the same methods to test another species to see how they perform comparatively. But um. Yeah, I mean it's, it's difficult to design a task in which something of value, you have something of value to yourself, but then again, you have somebody else close by who could also use the same things.

    So the private studies that looked into, or that used the very similar paradigm, they used, uh, three different sets of tokens. So one were self-serving tokens, which they could exchange with an experimenter, and they got food themselves. Then they had tokens that were only of value to their partner. So they could not do anything with them, but give the only to the partner.

    And then they also had some no value tokens, which yeah, had no value. And um, obviously if you do it like that, it gives you some more information about what's going on. So do they first exchange of their self value tokens or do they first exchange of their partner value tokens. But it also adds like an additional cognitive component because [01:26:00] they need to discriminate those tokens.

    They need to. Reach a certain learning criteria for performing the task. And so what we try always is to keep the, the paradigms as simple as possible, but again, allowing to draw some conclusion and that's why we use this. Yeah, rather simple setup of just one set of tokens instead of three different set of tokens.

    And also, yeah, blocking just the exchange rule and not having them walk past someone who also has tokens for example, or who also could exchange them. But this is definitely something for follow up studies to look into what's going on there. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. Uh, so one had you, you explained it briefly earlier, but if you can, it would be great if you could elaborate a bit on it.

    And this is this fish and fusion dynamics, um, that the African grace. Mm-hmm. And. Can you just, um, explain a bit more detail what that is, because I had never heard that before and it seems kind of [01:27:00] important for understanding the natural ology of the animals. 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah, so fish fusion dynamics are social dynamics that you see across a range of different species, which basically just describe the way that they are organized so that you have different subgroups within a bigger group that always, yeah, merge together during certain times of the day or during certain weeks or whatever, and then split up again.

    And these kind of societies which are in way open fluid but still Yeah, recognize each other potentially are thought to, um, yeah, to produce individuals that are more cognitively advanced compared to societies which are just really stable and with a small number of individuals. Because if you have these visions, fusion dynamics, you kind of need to remember whom you've interacted with before, how this in interaction turned out or how.

    Yeah, which individuals are good cooperators, for example, which ones are bad cooperator and you do not see them like on a daily basis [01:28:00] or on an hourly basis or whatever, but they disappear and then come back together. So it, it's taught to require more cognitive abilities compared to these really stable societies.

    Sorry, 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: if I'm understanding this correctly, humans live in vision fusion dynamics or 

    Desiree Brucks: Yes. I, I think with humans it's always difficult to say, but I think like, 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: it sounds like, like it sounded like you have, like your, let's say you live with your family and then you go to school and there's a different set of people and then maybe you go somewhere else for football team or whatever.

    Like you, you have like these different contexts in which is different people and Yeah. Is that an example of one of the sufficient fusion dynamic or is it different? 

    Desiree Brucks: No, I think it's the same that you always, that you have some people that you do not meet regularly, but then they come back into your life at some point.

    But I, I don't, I'm not sure if this was the Yeah. The natural condition for humans. Because if you think of all those hunter gatherers they live in rather more like stable [01:29:00] societies. They're not, some strangers coming in from time to time, but it's rather always the, the same group of people. But I think like the modern societies definitely are.

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. So a ci, so a city is but, um, evolutionary maybe not so much. 

    Desiree Brucks: Could be. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. I mean, you said like up to a thousand. Mm-hmm. Per flock grid isn't dunbar's number for humans 150, I dunno, like how close human societies were to that number. If you already have like 130, 40 people. Mm-hmm. I guess you already have like these slightly.

    But yes, still everyone knows each other very well. Yeah. Yeah. I dunno, I should ask an anthropologist. 

    Desiree Brucks: Exactly. I do not know. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: But so, so just so I understand the species a bit better and this dynamic, so you, so should we imagine, should I imagine this, like you have like a few birds that sleep in the same place and [01:30:00] then Yeah.

    Sorry. How do they first, do they, they nest, I'm assuming, um mm-hmm. Or how 

    Desiree Brucks: many they, they, they roost. So roosting is just that the, the birds get together during the night because it's safer to stay together during the Yeah. Night in which predators are more active and yeah. This getting together for sleeping is called roosting and bird.

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: And they, so how many birds are, is, is the entire flock together or is it in just a few in groups or how does 

    Desiree Brucks: No, no. The, the roosting is always like all individuals together. And for African grace, it was like the biggest, yeah. Flock recorded, getting together during the night was like 1000 individuals. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I see.

    And then a few of those. Is it always the same kind of team that goes out for foraging during the day? Like would you have like your, your teammates, your, your few people with whom you go, or is it always like random 

    Desiree Brucks: selection from the group? I think we do [01:31:00] not know yet. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. 

    Desiree Brucks: But you, I think you would expect that you always get out at least with your mate and maybe some, yeah.

    Relatives or friends in a way. But I think for every race it has not been reported yet how this group composition changes. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. Yeah, I was just curious because for, for trust, this obviously has some implications, right? Like if it were that, let's say, I don't know, you have this flock of 500 birds and they always sleep in this one tree, let's say.

    Mm-hmm. And then at random birds would go together obviously for that you trust doesn't work or mm-hmm. Well, it's difficult to remember that many people, right? 

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I guess, but it's not people. Um, but it's also difficult to remember that many people. Yeah. Um, but I guess you could still have like indirect trust where at least Yeah, but still.

    Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I guess if you, if 

    Desiree Brucks: we don't dunno, we dunno. Yeah. I don't think that they, they know like all 1000 individuals within their [01:32:00] flock, but at least they, they may be able to discriminate between, okay. This is one as a familiar individual that I've seen before. And this is an unfamiliar one coming out from another or coming Yeah.

    To join us from another flock. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. Yeah. I just find it so funny, like, 'cause obviously to us they all look the same. 

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: At least from someone who hasn't actually interacted with them. So just imagine like 500 gray parrots and you get like, uh, which one? 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: To them obviously it's different. 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Um.

    And then one has a wider beak or gray. 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. But it, it is really those, those, uh, yeah. Slight individual differences that you observe if you inject with them for a longer time. So them are, yeah, a little bit more lighter on the head or more dark or, yeah. Have a scratch on the beak. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. So you've worked on, you know, dogs, well the stuff we discussed today was with dogs and parrots, um 

    Desiree Brucks: mm-hmm.

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Why did you work on those two species? Was it kind [01:33:00] of there were positions available that worked with those animals? Did you, uh, specifically, I don't know, like Yeah. Why, why dogs and parrots and now farm animals? 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. So with, with the dogs, it was in particular that I wanted to, to do something with dogs because yeah, I had a dog at that time as well, and it was really, yeah.

    Interesting. Easily available as well to, to work with you. You don't need to go into the Yeah. Forest in Africa to study them, but they're already around you. And for me it was always that I felt like I could Yeah. Read their behavior more easily because I was Yeah. So familiar with them. That's why I started out working with dogs and yeah, during my PhD I realized that dogs are really interesting, but there's so much research in dogs and so that, and other species that, uh, yeah, for me it was kind of land.

    No, I want to, to move on. Dogs are awesome and I also got the chance to work with wolves as well in, in Austria. So there was, yeah, really great experience and a great start. But then after the PhD, I wanted to, yeah, [01:34:00] use this knowledge and work with another species. And then, uh, yeah, the, the first postdoc kind of came up by chance, so I didn't decide before to, to do so something with parrots.

    But parrots are awesome. I mean, they're so intelligent. They often use them as, as models for convergent evolution because they have this really big brains they have this, yeah. High neuro density and yeah. You know, of the research from, from, I dunno if you know her, Irene Pepperberg, who just, who did this first pioneer research with African grace showing how they Yeah.

    Can learn about concepts, how they can talk. It's really impressive. And so I heard about her before and then yeah, when I got the chance to work with African Grace, it was, yeah, really amazing to finally see how, how intelligent they are and that I can use here, my knowledge from the PhD and the Yeah.

    Research topics in general and apply them to another species. And Yeah. Following that or, yeah, following the work with the parents, I kind of realized, okay, they're really interesting, but there's not [01:35:00] really like an applied perspective in this way. So the research is super interesting and I'm really into it, but I want to kind of also change something or get a result out of it.

    I have that kind applied context and yeah, it was always, so 

    there's 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: more than just publishing papers? Delight? 

    Desiree Brucks: Yes. Yes, definitely. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I didn't know. Okay. Oh God. 

    Desiree Brucks: And yeah. Which, which species are like treated the worst by humans? It's farm animals and often you hear there's comparison between dogs and pigs that they are, yeah.

    But the pigs are even more intelligent than dogs and Yeah, if you compare the way we treat them, it's really crazy. And yeah, since there's not been so much done on farm animal cognition, this is something that I felt really. Yeah, close to it. My way to improve the world or to leave a little bit of my, my work for future generations.

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. And so what did you, you also Zurich, right? Um, yes. What did you do there? 

    Desiree Brucks: There I worked with Rho, so again, switching species, [01:36:00] completely rho. The small idea that you find all over Europe. Oh, it's type 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: of deer. Okay. Sorry. Yes. I thought, I thought rodia. I thought, what's a rodia like as if that was like one word, two words.

    Okay. Okay. A type of deer. Okay. Yeah. 

    Desiree Brucks: Yeah. And uh, yeah, this will also kind of by chance coming up the opportunity. And, uh, this was a bit unrelated to my previous research, but, um, again, I was able to acquire some new skills like looking at the social dynamics within a group of captive road and seeing how they adapt to captivity in general, which was really interesting.

    And going a bit more to, in the area of behavioral biology and pure observational work instead of this experimental work with parents. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Is that published already or? 

    Desiree Brucks: No. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. Okay. So I can't remember reading anything about Dear. Yeah. And on your Google Scholar. So one, um, you know, I guess we're nearing the end here at some point soon, but, um, [01:37:00] one kind of overall question I always have when I read studies about animals studies about, let's say evolutionary semination of corporation mm-hmm.

    Um, is, does that actually tell us anything? And if so, what about human corporation? Um, so is there anything that you learned about human corporation from studying? Dogs, parrots. Deer, animal farms. Farm animals. Not animal farm. Animal farm. You can learn stuff about humans there too, but that's a different thing.

    Mm-hmm. Um, but yeah. Did you learn anything? Yeah. Is there anything that you can kind of draw from, from, from your research to humans? Or is it just, I don't mean just in a negative way, but it's, it's, it's limited to knowledge about species. 

    Desiree Brucks: Um, yeah, so I think definitely about, just scientifically speaking, uh, that there, there's this evolutionary origin, not just in humans, that we are able to cooperate with one another, but [01:38:00] also in other primates, but not even primates, but also other mammals and birds are able to work together to achieve this, uh, common goal.

    And yeah, apart from this evolutionary background that we know that probably a common ancestor, this how many million years ago already was able to do this, um. I think for me personally, it was also always really interesting to see that we, humans are not as unique as we always think that we are. So, especially with this helping behavior and parents was always said like, yeah, well we, humans are so exceptional because we cooperate and we, we do something for strangers without expecting anything in return.

    But actually it's not that we, humans are so special, we just did not look properly when the animals all around us. So this is something that I'm, yeah, taking out as a message that if we look properly, obviously we won't find talking parrots or whatever, which are super similar to as humans, but these really basic concepts of social life are also present in other species.[01:39:00] 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. And maybe in many contexts we just can't. We don't understand the species well enough to really understand what they're doing or, 

    Desiree Brucks: exactly. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. This for sure is also like that, that we can't even Yeah. See those really subtle signals that, I don't know, ants are exchanging between each other following chem.

    Yeah. Chemical signals or whatever. So we, we can't even see that. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I was gonna say the fun thing is that you said, you know, seeing, right. 'cause that's the primary perception modality that humans use, but of course for many animals that they don't care too much about vision. 

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Um, so. Yeah, it's really hard to escape that, isn't it?

    To, 

    Desiree Brucks: yeah. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I'm assuming for you it's maybe a bit easier because you've actually had to create experiments for animals, but 

    Desiree Brucks: mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I mean, like that's the whole, I haven't read it, but you know, this famous paper, like what's it like to be a bat? 

    Desiree Brucks: Mm-hmm. 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: You know, as far as I can tell, there's something you can't really [01:40:00]escape, right?

    I mean, 

    Desiree Brucks: yes. Yeah. We are just, just humans. So we see the world, how we see it, and that's okay. I mean, 

    Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: yeah. Yeah. But if you, 

    Desiree Brucks: as long as we are like tolerant of acknowledging that other species see it completely different.