TOOL-USING PERFORMANCES AS INDICATORS OF BEHAVIORAL ADAPTABILITY
TOOL-USING PERFORMANCES AS INDICATORS OF BEHAVIORAL ADAPTABILITY
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DOI：
10.1086/200419
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发表时间：
1963-01-01
影响因子：
2.2
通讯作者：
HALL, KRL
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
HALL, KRL
动物使用物体作为其四肢的功能延伸，以获得食物或促进其他一些寻求目标的活动，通常被认为是智力或复杂学习能力的特别重要的指标。本综述从不同类型的动物（如黄蜂、螃蟹、鸟类、亚灵长类哺乳动物和非人类灵长类动物）中选择了经过充分验证的工具使用行为的例子，并研究了它们发生的背景和所涉及的表现的明显复杂性。这些表现涉及： a) 获得食物； b) 针对捕食者或入侵者的进攻性或防御性用途； c) 其他功能，例如自我梳理、求爱、筑巢。类别 (a) 和 (b) 包含迄今为止最多的实例，而 (c) 则包含很少的实例。在尝试对此类情况进行比较分析时，问题是评估动物能力的整个背景下的表现以及这些能力在各种生态环境中的表达方式。引用的证据主要来自自然主义研究，来自动物园或实验室等限制性环境，仅在强调差异时引用。例如，迄今为止，狒狒在野外的觅食行为中尚未表现出使用工具的行为，但在圈养条件下，如果有机会，它们很容易就会这样做。因此，它们具有自然环境很少发挥作用的潜力，而黑猩猩在野外和圈养中都以不同的方式展示了这种表现的能力。加拉帕戈斯啄木鸟或加州海獭等非灵长类动物的某些表现表明，栖息地范围狭窄的动物可能会进化出一种非常有效（尽管可能受到限制）的工具使用能力，因此，这些动物可能会缺乏其他重要的适应性方面。此外，通过对野生猴子和猿类中大量（b）类实例和极少数（a）类实例的评估，初步表明，情感进攻-防御类型的工具使用可能在进化中比获取食物和其他杂项实例具有首要地位。无论如何，提出此类评论以及此类建议，主要是为了澄清问题，这可能会导致对所讨论的动物进行更进一步的详细研究，包括实验和自然主义研究。与往常一样，在描述复杂行为以及从描述中推导出模型或推论时，术语的丰富和混乱很难整齐或清晰地整理出来。但是，如果刻意避免使用有争议的术语，能够表明需要一种新的研究方法来对动物的行为适应性进行比较研究，以便比目前更令人满意地得出这些证据可能对人类进化的基本问题产生的影响，那么本次审查的目的就已经实现了。
Use of an object by animals as a functional extension of their limbs in order to obtain food or to facilitate some other goal seeking activity has quite commonly been reported as an especially significant indicator of intelligence or complex learning ability. The present review has selected well authenticated examples of tool-using behavior from different types of animal, such as wasps, crabs, birds, subprimate mammals, and nonhuman primates, and examined the context of their occurrence and the apparent complexity of performance involved. These performances have been concerned with: a) attainment of food; b) offensive or defensive use against predators or intruders; c) miscellaneous functions such as self-grooming, courtship, nest-building. Categories (a) and (b) contain by far the most instances, and (c) has very few indeed. The problem, in attempting a comparative analysis of such instances, is to evaluate the performance within the whole context of the animal's capacities and the way these are expressed in various ecological settings. The evidence cited is primarily from naturalistic studies, that from restrictive settings, such as Zoo or laboratory, being adduced only in emphasizing discrepancies. As an example, baboons have, so far, not been seen to demonstrate tool-using in the wild in their food-seeking behavior, but they do so readily when given the opportunity in captivity. They thus have a potential which their natural surroundings perhaps only rarely bring into action, whereas chimpanzees demonstrate their capacity for this kind of performance in diverse ways both in the wild and in capativity. Certain performances by nonprimate animals, such as the Galapagos woodpecker finch or the California sea otter, indicate that tool-using of a very effective, though presumably restricted, kind can evolve in animals having a narrow habitat range, and in whom, therefore, other significant aspects of adaptability may be missing. Further, from assessing the many instances of category (b) and the very few instances of category (a) in wild monkeys and apes, it was tentatively suggested that the emotional offensive-defensive type of tool-using might have had primacy in evolution over that of food-getting and the other miscellaneous instances. A review of this sort, with a suggestion of this kind, is put forward anyway chiefly as an attempt at clarification which may lead to much further detailed studies, experimental and naturalistic, of the animals in question. As always in describing complex behavior and in deriving models or inferences from the description, the profusion and confusion of terminology are difficult to sort out neatly or clearly. But the objective of this review will have been achieved if, in deliberately avoiding the use of controversial terms, it has been possible to show the need for a fresh research approach to the comparative study of behavioral adaptability in animals with a view to working out much more satisfactorily than at present the bearing that such evidence may have upon fundamental questions of human evolution.