AVIAN

At the Avian Cognition Center, we investigate perception, foraging, and social behavior in birds, particularly corvids and parrots. Some of our studies have made use of wild populations, but we have also observed and recorded captive birds in aviary settings and operant boxes. Our primary emphasis has been on the exploration of cognitive representations, which are mental structures that reflect essential features of the outside world. An animal's cognitive representations enable it to model aspects of the world that are not immediately accessible to its senses, so it can make inferences about such things as the relationships between unfamiliar individuals or the location of concealed food resources... Field and laboratory research on behavior of corvids and parrots. The center studies cognitive mechanisms that were molded by evolution in response to particular ecological demands. Topics include visual search and attention; spatial perception and memory; social inference and social..