The Cognition of Nest Building

尽管几个世纪以来鸟巢一直吸引着人们的兴趣，但我们对鸟类筑巢的原因几乎一无所知。在这里，我们打算回答这些问题，并通过这样做来洞察认知的进化。这里提出的工作的主要目标是确定认知在筑巢中所起的作用，以及大脑对筑巢的控制发生在哪里。20世纪90年代，新喀里多尼亚乌鸦制造和使用工具的发现，引起了人们对这种行为所需的认知能力的极大兴趣，并可能为人类制造工具提供线索。这些见解虽然令人兴奋，但还没有解决为什么有些鸟类会制造工具而另一些不会的问题。回答这个问题可能会让我们确定身体认知进化的条件，并确定身体认知与更一般的认知能力有何不同。在这里，我们建议鸟类筑巢，其中对植物和无生命材料的操纵与在工具使用中看到的惊人相似，可能使我们能够解决这些问题。与工具的使用不同，工具的使用相对较少，往往要么存在，要么不存在，而筑巢是普遍存在的，而且在程度上变化很大。如果筑巢确实需要一些认知能力，这种变化的多样性允许跨物种进行比较，以检查筑巢变化发生的条件，以及那些导致这些结构精细化的条件。在这个项目中，我们建议建立鸟巢是否需要认知，并通过确定行为的神经基础，来检查认知和运动技能的相对贡献。我们打算采用结合现场和实验室实验的多链方法和两个“模型”系统：织布鸟，标志性的“复杂”筑巢者和斑马雀，标志性的鸟类神经系统。我们将进行实验，包括操纵巢结构和改变筑巢材料的可用性和种类，以检验认知的作用，利用交叉培育作为工具来检验筑巢的遗传性，使用即时早期基因表达和体积分析来确定大脑中控制筑巢的位置，并对巢结构进行跨物种比较，以查明导致该结构变化的主要变量。总之，我们认为这种方法提供了一种新颖的方式来解决一些激烈争论的问题，如：什么是复杂认知？为什么复杂认知会进化？为什么有些动物能制造工具，而有些动物不能？

For all that bird nests have attracted centuries of interest, we know almost nothing about why birds build the nests they do. Here we propose to answer these questions and by so doing provide insight into the evolution of cognition. The prime objectives of the work proposed here are to determine the role that cognition plays in nest building and where in the brain control of nest building occurs. The discovery of tool manufacture and use by New Caledonian crows in the 1990's has led to considerable interest in the cognitive abilities required for such behaviour and the light that might then be shed on tool manufacture in humans. These insights, exciting as they are, have not yet enabled the issue of why some birds manufacture tools and others do not. Answering that question might allow us to determine the conditions under which physical cognition evolves and to determine how physical cognition differs from more general cognition abilities. Here we suggest that nest building in birds, in which the manipulation of plant and inanimate material bears a striking outward resemblance to that seen in tool use, may allow us to address these issues. Unlike tool use, which occurs relatively rarely and tends to be either present or absent, nest building is both ubiquitous and varies considerably in degree. If nest building does require some cognitive ability, the diversity of that variation allows for comparisons across species to examine the conditions under which variation in nest building occurs and those that have led to elaboration of those structures. In this project we propose to establish whether nest building does require cognition and, by determining the neural basis of the behaviour, to examine the relative contributions of cognitive and motor skills. We intend to do this using a multi-stranded approach incorporating field and laboratory experiments and two 'model' systems: weaver birds, iconic 'complex' nest builders and zebra finches, the iconic avian neural system. We would carry out experiments involving manipulation of the nest structure and varying the availability and kind of nesting materials to examine the role of cognition, utilize cross-fostering as a tool to examine heritability of nest building, use immediate early gene expression and volumetric analyses to determine where in the brain control of nest building occurs and carry out a cross-species comparison of nest structure to pinpoint the major variables contributing to the variation in that structure. In sum, we contend that this approach offers a novel way to address a number of hotly debated questions such as: what is complex cognition?, why did complex cognition evolve? and why are some animals makers of tools and others not?