The map to human and animal behavior

Manfred Fuchs Prize for Fumihiro Kano’s animal behavior research

Grant and Award Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF KONSTANZ

What are humans? What are animals? And what makes humans unique? The comparative psychologist Fumihiro Kano has set himself a life goal to answer those questions. On 28 February 2023 it was announced that the scientist from the Cluster of Excellence “Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour” (CASCB) at the University of Konstanz will receive the Manfred Fuchs Prize from the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities of the State Baden-Württemberg for his interdisciplinary work in animal behaviour research.

• Photo gallery for the article: https://www.campus.uni-konstanz.de/en/science/the-map-to-human-behaviour

Fumihiro Kano wears a motion capture suit, eye tracking glasses, and holds a table tennis racket with markers in his hand. “I am interested in what animals see, feel, and think, and ultimately how humans, as one of the primate species, are unique in perception, cognition, and social behaviour,” he says and then starts to play table tennis in his lab. Fumihiro Kano has been a group leader at the CASCB since 2021. He started his career at Kyoto University and was enrolled at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and at the University of Oxford before coming to Konstanz. He describes himself not a passionate table tennis player, but the Japanese researcher thinks that everyone is able to play the sport. That is the reason he chose table tennis for an experiment.

How groups interact

Together with his Postdoctoral Researcher Prasetia Putra, Kano conducts a study where they want to unravel the underlying mechanism of human coordination in sports using behavioural and physiological modalities. “Sometimes groups coordinate nicely, sometimes they fail, but what is the secret behind it?” asks Kano. “So far, the individuals’ anticipation ability, movement coordination, and physiological difference is unknown,” he says.

Therefore, this study aims to fill those gaps by measuring an individual’s gaze direction, body movements, and heartbeat. Participants play table tennis in teams of two while wearing a motion capture suit as Kano does. Even the table tennis ball is marked. A motion caption camera system tracks the movements.

The focus is on micro behaviour

Overall, Fumihiro Kano concentrates on micro behaviour to map human and animal behaviour. His research species include birds, primates, and human adults. They target various collective behaviour, including team cooperation, vigilance, and collective foraging. “Basically, I just bring non-inversive cutting edge technologies to the field,” he says.

In another experiment, he focuses on group performances in pigeons, “a very social bird species,” as he says. While pigeons forage, they want to eat as much as possible. Nevertheless, they need to be attentive collectively, to be aware when a predator attacks them. “In our experiment, my PhD student Mathilde Delacoux and I created a situation where the pigeons see warning cue and we tried to find out the group performance during the pretended attack.”

Thanks to modern tracking technology, the research group knows precisely where each individual is looking at and if the individual has the head up or down while the pretended predator calls. The researchers conduct the experiment in the Imaging Barn, a collaborative project between the CASCB and the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior. It is a core facility for studying the dynamics of highly naturalistic interactions.  Both experiments are still running, so they themselves are still curious about the results.

“In a highly creative way, Fumihiro Kano uses and extends state-of-the-art informatics methods as tracking and modelling to study cognition and behaviour of humans and different animal species, from birds to monkeys, from individuals to groups of humans and animals,” Oliver Deussen, speaker of the CASCB mentions.

 

Key facts Fumihiro Kano will be awarded the Manfred Fuchs Prize of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities for his interdisciplinary work in animal behaviour research. He is a group leader at the Cluster of Excellence “Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour” (CASCB) at the University of Konstanz. Fumihiro Kano is interested in what animals see, feel, and think, and ultimately how humans, as one of the primate species, are unique in perception, cognition, and social behaviour.

 

Note to editors:

Photos can be downloaded here:

1) https://www.uni-konstanz.de/fileadmin/pi/fileserver/2023_EXSTRA/der_schluessel_1.jpg
2) https://www.uni-konstanz.de/fileadmin/pi/fileserver/2023_EXSTRA/der_schluessel_2.jpg

 

Caption: Table tennis experiment with Fumihiro Kano. For tracking his movements, he wears a motion-capture suit, eye-tracking glasses and holds a table tennis bat with marker dots in his hand.

Copyright: Elisabeth Böker, CASCB, University of Konstanz

 

U.S. birds’ Eastern, Western behavior patterns are polar opposites

Study analyzes avian cross-country biodiversity changes over a year

Peer-Reviewed Publication

OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

COLUMBUS, Ohio – There is much more to avian biodiversity in the United States than the number of different species living in a given region or community, but the diversity of birds’ ecosystem contributions – assessed through measures of their diet, body structure and foraging methods – are much tougher to study.

And with hundreds of species migrating south for the winter and north for summer breeding, birds’ ecosystem function patterns change over space and time – creating a serious analytical challenge.

But two scientists from The Ohio State University have established what could be considered a baseline map of annual avian functional and species diversity patterns in the U.S., logging 11,000 code-running hours at the Ohio Supercomputer Center to produce their findings.

And what they found was a stunner: Functional diversity patterns in the West, where species and functional richness are both highest during the breeding season, are the polar opposite of what is seen in the East, where functional diversity is lowest when species richness is high. That pattern in the East is particularly puzzling because it means the overall diversity of birds’ ecosystem contributions are highest when a huge number of migratory species are gone.

“This tells us that, probably, migratory birds in the East versus the West have very different functional contributions to assemblages,” said lead author Marta Jarzyna, assistant professor of evolution, ecology and organismal biology at Ohio State.

“It suggests that resident birds in the East have a wider array of functional characteristics than migratory birds, and in the West, it’s the opposite: Migratory birds contribute more to functional richness than resident birds.”

Jarzyna, also a core faculty member in Ohio State’s Translational Data Analytics Institute, completed the study with James Stagge, assistant professor of civil, environmental and geodetic engineering at Ohio State. The study was published Feb. 22 in the journal Current Biology.

The researchers used 2019 data from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s eBird Status and Trends, which provided seasonal abundance estimates for over 800 species. Beyond quantifying species richness, Jarzyna and Stagge also incorporated four characteristics to derive estimates of functional diversity: birds’ body mass, diet (ranging from bugs and rodents to nectar and seeds), foraging niche (in or near water or the ground, or in spaces among or above trees) and activity time, at night or during the day.

The collaboration with Stagge was key to incorporating the passage of time, Jarzyna said: As a hydrologist studying climate data, he was proficient in research techniques used to analyze seasonal variations.

Scientists have known for some time that knowledge of the functional richness birds bring to their communities tells us much more about biodiversity than a simple count of resident and migrating species, Jarzyna said.

“Different species obviously have different characteristics and different traits, and contribute in different ways to the community composition and ecosystem functioning,” she said.

“You can have 10 species in a community that just eat seeds, or 10 species in a community, five of which eat seeds and five of which eat insects. The community with more diverse attributes will have more functional diversity, even though in terms of species richness they might be exactly the same.”

To date, efforts to describe avian functional diversity have tended to focus only on one breeding season at a time – a summer in the Northern Hemisphere. This study is the first to take species and their traits’ differences into consideration as their abundances change across the country over all 12 months of a year.

By determining that functional diversity patterns in the East and West differ so dramatically, the researchers now have a much better handle on what is going on across the seasons – but lots of questions remain about why.

“Why is it in the East that in the winter, when we are seeing so many species leaving those regions, we see an increase in functional richness? It didn’t make a lot of sense that you would gain this other dimension of diversity while losing something else,” Jarzyna said. “It’s not the case in the West, where we are seeing both the highest species richness and highest functional richness in the summer.”

Though one could surmise that topography or climate have something to do with these differences, Jarzyna said there is no way to know for sure without further study.

“We still don’t even know about individual species’ contributions to functional diversity and whether there is, indeed, a difference between migratory and resident birds,” she said.

Having a better understanding of how functional diversity among birds – and other species – changes over space and, the researchers noted, time, in particular, is needed to inform forecasting, conservation and management of biodiversity.

“I would argue that we can’t conserve anything if we don’t understand where it is and what it is,” Jarzyna said. “It’s the first step to telling us, ‘this is what we’ve got, and this is how it’s changing.’ What we are going to do about it is the next step.”

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center at Ohio State.

#

Contact: Marta Jarzyna, Jarzyna.1@osu.edu

Written by Emily Caldwell, Caldwell.151@osu.edu; 614-292-8152

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JOURNAL

Current Biology

DOI

10.1016/j.cub.2023.01.066 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Decoupled spatiotemporal patterns of avian taxonomic and functional diversity

AVIAN PANDEMIC

Bald eagles aren’t fledging as many chicks due to avian influenza

As more eagles die from H5N1, researchers concerned virus may undo decades of conservation efforts

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA

Bald eagles are often touted as a massive conservation success story due to their rebound from near extinction in the 1960s.

But now a highly infectious virus may put that hard-fought comeback in jeopardy.

Published in Nature’s Scientific Reports, new research from the University of Georgia showed highly pathogenic avian influenza, also known as H5N1, is killing off unprecedented numbers of mating pairs of bald eagles.

“Even just one year of losses of productivity like we’ve documented regionally is very concerning and could have effects for decades to come if representative of broader regions,” said Nicole Nemeth, lead author of the study and an associate professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine. “There were nights where I couldn’t sleep based on what we were hearing and seeing. We have already lost unprecedented numbers of wild birds due to this virus in the U.S. and it appears here to stay.”

Less than half of Georgia bald eagle nests fledged one chick in 2022

The researchers found that just under half of bald eagle nests along coastal Georgia successfully fledged at least one eaglet in 2022. That’s 30% below average for the region.

The study also showed the success rate for nests was halved in one Florida county, dropping to 41% from an average of 86.5%. Another Florida county experienced a less dramatic but still concerning decrease from an average of approximately 78% to 66.7%.

“We had reports from people who faithfully monitor eagle nests year after year with these heartbreaking stories of an adult eagle found dead below their nest. Within a few days, often its mate and the chicks were also found dead below the nest. It is clear the virus is causing nest failures,” said Nemeth, who is part of the UGA-based Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study (SCWDS).

The collaboration is the first diagnostic and research service established specifically to investigate wildlife diseases.

Number of infected wild birds likely an undercount

In April 2022, SCWDS researchers confirmed highly pathogenic avian influenza had hit Georgia’s eagle populations for the first time.

The three dead eagles were found in Chatham, Glynn and Liberty counties in March.

At the time, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) had confirmed around 660 cases of the H5N1 virus in wild birds, only 11 of which were from Georgia. 

That number has since skyrocketed to more than 6,200 reported cases across the country, according to the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

Those cases include a variety of vultures and other raptors, waterfowl like geese and ducks, as well as other aquatic birds like pelicans and herons, and even some songbirds, though they are less common victims of the virus. (Tens of millions of commercially farmed poultry have died or been culled due to risk of infection.)

“I think the number of wild bird cases is drastically underreported,” Nemeth said. “People will submit one snow goose, for example, and it will test positive for the virus. And then they’ll tell you, ‘Well, there are thousands of geese dying at the same site.’ But it only goes down as one infected bird.”

H5N1 doesn’t pose massive threat to humans but may to other species

The birds at biggest risk of infection are those that live in coastal or other aquatic areas inland or prey on other birds that do.

The virus can persist in water for over a year, given the proper conditions. While not a risk to people, birds can pick up the virus from spending time in the water and carry it to new locations through migration.

Raptors like eagles and vultures then catch the virus when they consume the infected birds.

“Worst case scenario, we get into a scary place with some of these bird species,” Nemeth said. “We could see a lot more decline in the numbers of eagles, raptors, waterfowl and other birds than what we’ve already seen. It could be devastating.”

Bears, red foxes and coyotes among animals infected with virus

Avian influenza has hopped species as well.

H5N1 has infected wild mammals such as red foxes, coyotes, racoons, seals, opossums and even some bears in North America. However, very few people have been infected with the virus in the U.S. and have recovered with minimal symptoms, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“A virus that can spread and be maintained as this virus can, it’s everywhere now,” Nemeth said. “We can’t contain the virus, and we can’t vaccinate wild birds. But we can document the losses and try to help conserve affected species and populations the best we can.”

The study was co-authored by the University of Georgia’s Mark Ruder, Rebecca Poulson and David Stallknecht. Additional co-authors include Robert Sargent of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Shawnlei Breeding of Audubon’s EagleWatch, Meaghan Evans, Jared Zimmerman, Rebecca Hardman, Mark Cunningham of Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and Samantha Gibbs  of U.S. Fish & Wildlife.

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JOURNAL

Scientific Reports

DOI

10.1038/s41598-023-27446-1 

ARTICLE TITLE

Bald eagle mortality and nest failure due to clade 2.3.4.4 highly pathogenic H5N1 influenza a virus

Physicians should screen youth for cyberbullying, social media use

Physicians discuss perils and pitfalls of social media use in teens/young adults

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: ONLY 23 PERCENT OF STUDENTS WHO WERE CYBERBULLIED REPORTED IT TO AN ADULT AT THEIR SCHOOL, WHICH SHOWS THAT MANY INCIDENCES GO UNREPORTED. view more 

CREDIT: FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY

Most adolescents and young adults have experienced bullying in some form, with about one-third of them experiencing cyberbullying, contributing to mental health concerns. Cyberbullying involves electronic communication such as texts, emails, online videos and social media, which has become increasingly problematic over the last few decades. Several reasons include the anonymity it allows, the fact that it is not as easily monitored, and that adolescents and young adults have easier access to devices.

In an article published in the journal Primary Care Clinical Office Practice, physicians from Florida Atlantic University’s Schmidt College of Medicine recommend primary care physicians screen adolescents and young adults for inappropriate or misuse of social media and cyberbullying utilizing screening tools developed for use in the health care setting. 

“As primary-care physicians, it is our job to screen and evaluate things that can harm our patients,” said Jennifer Caceres, M.D., first author, senior associate dean for student affairs and admissions and an associate professor of medicine in FAU’s Schmidt College of Medicine. “Among these responsibilities includes screening for social media use, bullying, cyberbullying, mental health issues, as well as countless others.”

Caceres and Allison M. Holley, M.D., corresponding author and an assistant professor of family medicine in FAU’s Schmidt College of Medicine, point out that only half of health care providers who see pediatric patients were found to be consistently screening for bullying. They say this is partially because there aren’t many screening tools specifically designed for health care settings. Among the screening tools they recommend that are available for health care providers include the Revised Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire (R-OBVQ), the California Bullying Victimization Scale (CBVS), the Child Adolescent Bullying Scale (CABS) and the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center (MARC).

“It is staggering that only 23 percent of students who were cyberbullied reported it to an adult at their school, which shows that many incidences go unreported. This is another crucial reason why we need to screen patients as well as educate parents,” said Holley. “A screening tool of the providers’ choice should be worked into the work-flow of pediatric visits to ensure that screening is consistently done and results are addressed in a timely manner.”

Among resources available is a Cyberbullying: Top Ten Tips for Health Care Providers,” developed by the Cyberbullying Research Center, which is co-directed by Sameer Hinduja, Ph.D., professor, FAU School of Criminology and Criminal Justice within the College of Social Work and Criminal Justice, and a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University.

“Physicians who work with children and teenagers must consider in their provision of care the significant emotional and psychological impact that mobile devices, social media platforms, and gaming environments can have,” said Hinduja. “Given that youth move seamlessly between their online and offline experiences - indeed, there is no longer a clear distinction - it is essential to assess health risks from not only the home, school and community, but from their electronic interactions as well.”

Caceres and Holley suggest that to screen for technology and social media use, physicians can easily ask parents or the patient themselves the following questions: “How many hours per day are spent on screens of any kind?” and “Is there a television or other device with Internet access in the bedroom?” To screen for cyberbullying or bullying of any kind, they say physicians also can ask patients if they feel safe at school, home and online, and if they have ever experienced bullying or cyberbullying either themselves or someone they know.

“In addition, physicians can ask about the many symptoms that could be warning signs of cyberbullying such as sleep disorders, mood disorders, eating disorders, suicidal thoughts, self-harm behaviors, academic problems, fatigue and headaches,” said Caceres. “Physicians can undergo training to detect bullying and ensure that their staff is trained appropriately.”

Caceres and Holley encourage establishing community contacts with groups and organizations such as local schools, law enforcement, mental health counselors specializing in trauma care, suicide prevention groups, as well as patient and family support groups that can provide services for prevention, screening, and victim support services, which also are crucial to helping patients. In addition, posters in the waiting room or exam rooms or helpline numbers can help to educate patients and their families on how to prevent and deal with cyberbullying.

“Parents also must teach their children about appropriate online behavior, set boundaries, and give clear guidelines with appropriate consequences for rule-breaking,” said Holley.

The authors suggest setting boundaries that include not posting personal information, not sharing login information such as usernames and passwords, not responding to inappropriate messages, turning off technology if these type of messages are received, and immediately reporting an incident to an adult.

“Cyberbullying, sextortion, digital dating abuse, digital self-harm, and other forms of victimization are occurring to a nontrivial degree among youth, and initiating nonjudgmental conversation among their experiences online will help to further positive adolescent development and functioning,” said Hinduja.

- FAU -

About the Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine:

FAU’s Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine is one of approximately 156 accredited medical schools in the U.S. The college was launched in 2010, when the Florida Board of Governors made a landmark decision authorizing FAU to award the M.D. degree. After receiving approval from the Florida legislature and the governor, it became the 134th allopathic medical school in North America. With more than 70 full and part-time faculty and more than 1,300 affiliate faculty, the college matriculates 64 medical students each year and has been nationally recognized for its innovative curriculum. To further FAU’s commitment to increase much needed medical residency positions in Palm Beach County and to ensure that the region will continue to have an adequate and well-trained physician workforce, the FAU Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine Consortium for Graduate Medical Education (GME) was formed in fall 2011 with five leading hospitals in Palm Beach County. The Consortium currently has five Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) accredited residencies including internal medicine, surgery, emergency medicine, psychiatry, and neurology. The college’s vibrant research focus areas include healthy aging, neuroscience, chronic pain management, precision medicine and machine learning. With community at the forefront, the college offers the local population a variety of evidence-based, clinical services that treat the whole person. Jointly, FAU Medicine’s Primary Care practice and the Marcus Institute of Integrative Health have been designed to provide complete health and wellness under one roof.

 

About Florida Atlantic University:
Florida Atlantic University, established in 1961, officially opened its doors in 1964 as the fifth public university in Florida. Today, the University serves more than 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students across six campuses located along the southeast Florida coast. In recent years, the University has doubled its research expenditures and outpaced its peers in student achievement rates. Through the coexistence of access and excellence, FAU embodies an innovative model where traditional achievement gaps vanish. FAU is designated a Hispanic-serving institution, ranked as a top public university by U.S. News & World Report and a High Research Activity institution by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. For more information, visit www.fau.edu.

 

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JOURNAL

Primary Care Clinics in Office Practice

DOI

10.1016/j.pop.2022.10.008 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Commentary/editorial

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

Skin samples reveal where southern right whales feed

And how their shifting use of Antarctic waters shows effects of climate change.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: SOUTHERN RIGHT WHALE view more 

CREDIT: ROB HARCOURT

Scientists have analysed chemicals in the skin of southern right whales to give new insights into the animals’ distribution, as well as long-term environmental changes in the Southern Ocean.

The research was published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). [https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2214035120]

The scientists from the US, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, Europe, UK, and Aotearoa New Zealand measured the amounts of various carbon and nitrogen isotopes in 1002 skin samples taken between 1994 and 2020.

Concentrations of these isotopes vary between different marine locations and animals feeding in an area retain that isotopic fingerprint in their skin. It takes up to six months for the isotopes to show up in a whale’s skin and so scientists can pinpoint where the animals were six months earlier.

“Despite their large size, whales can be very hard to track,” says Professor Robert Harcourt, a marine scientist at Macquarie University, and one of the authors of the paper. “Using this technique, we have been able to piece together a map of where the southern right whales have travelled across the Southern Ocean.”

The study shows that over the years the whales’ foraging grounds have shifted reflecting the changing distribution of the whales’ prey. This change appears to be recent and driven by climate change.

Analysis of 2614 whale-catch records from 1792 to 1968 suggests that historical southern right whale foraging grounds were largely stable in mid-latitudes.

“These results suggest that climate change has driven recent shifts in the distribution of southern right whales,” Professor Harcourt says.

Not all populations have reacted uniformly.

The southern right whales in the South Atlantic Ocean and southwest Indian Oceans travel to Antarctic waters less often, probably as there are fewer krill there.

In the southwest Pacific, however, whales still head south at certain times of the year, suggesting krill are still plentiful in that ocean.

“An important aspect of this study is that it shows that climate change doesn’t mean one thing everywhere and it is causing different effects in different parts of the ocean,” says Dr Emma Carroll, from New Zealand’s University of Auckland Waipapa Taumata Rau, lead author of the paper.

“This could help prioritise areas where conservation efforts should be focused,” says Professor Harcourt.

“This study has shown the critical importance of understanding how wide-ranging animals are adapting their movements as climate change fundamentally alters ocean structure and where they may find their prey.

“Ongoing research includes satellite tracking of individual animals from the major populations along with continued tissue collection, further refining our understanding of important ocean regions for these magnificent ocean giants.”

Professor Harcourt led the Australian arm of the study, collaborating with researchers from 36 countries. The first author, Solène Derville, is from Oregon State University, the US and the French Institute of Research for Sustainable Development, Nouméa.

“This was a great global collaboration,” says Dr Carroll. “This sort of work is just not possible without the input of many people around the world.”

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2214035120 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Long-term stability in the circumpolar foraging range of a Southern Ocean predator between the eras of whaling and rapid climate change

Socioeconomic factors play a role in detection, transmission and treatment of HIV

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MCGILL UNIVERSITY

Those living in unstable housing conditions, such as hostels or informal dwellings and those who had not completed post-secondary studies were more likely to contract HIV in South Africa, according to a new study from McGill University. A team of researchers based at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) has reported survey results that show socioeconomic factors play a critical role in the detection, transmission, and treatment of HIV in regions of South Africa. “We found that factors such as education and dwelling situations still impact HIV infection,” said Cindy Leung Soo, a recent Master’s student who worked alongside principal investigator Nitika Pant Pai, MD, PhD, an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine. Researchers found that people who did not complete postsecondary education were 82% more likely to be infected with HIV compared to those with a postsecondary education. Women with lower levels of education were more likely to engage in having sex with multiple partners, where male participants who were living in less stable housing situations or who had lower levels of education were less likely to have recently sought testing. “It appeared that socioeconomic factors impacted their utilization of HIV services,” Leung Soo said.

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JOURNAL

PLOS Global Public Health

DOI

10.1371/journal.pgph.0001502 

ARTICLE TITLE

Socioeconomic factors impact the risk of HIV acquisition in the township population of South Africa: A Bayesian analysis

Insights into the evolution of the sense of fairness

Long-tailed macaques react with disappointment when their expectations are not met

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DEUTSCHES PRIMATENZENTRUM (DPZ)/GERMAN PRIMATE CENTER

 

IMAGE: LONG-TAILED MACAQUES (MACACA FASCICULARIS) IN THE ANIMAL HUSBANDRY FACILITY AT THE GERMAN PRIMATE CENTRE IN GÖTTINGEN. view more 

CREDIT: ANTON SÄCKL/DPZ

Göttingen, March 2, 2023. A sense of fairness has long been considered purely human – but animals also react with frustration when they are treated unequally by a person. For instance, a well-known video shows monkeys throwing the offered cucumber at their trainer when a conspecific receives sweet grapes as a reward for the same task. Meanwhile, researchers have observed similarly frustrated reactions to unfair rewards in wolves, rats and crows. However, researchers still debate the reasons for this behavior: Does the frustration really stem from a dislike of unequal treatment, or is there another explanation? In a study with long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis), researchers at the German Primate Center – Leibniz Institute for Primate Research (DPZ) have now confirmed an alternative explanatory approach in a collaborative project involving the Departments of Cognitive Ethology and Neurobiology. The team around Rowan Titchener, PhD student at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen and researcher in the Department of Cognitive Ethology at the DPZ, showed that long-tailed macaques rejected an inferior reward more frequently if it is selected and allocated by a person. In contrast, if the reward is provided by an automatic feeder, they accept it. The researchers conclude that the monkeys refuse the reward out of social disappointment towards the experimenter – and not because they feel that they are at a disadvantage compared to a conspecific. (Royal Society Open Science).

Humans have a strong sense of equity. If we believe that resources are being unfairly or wrongly distributed, we make this clear – with protest. This controlling behavior promotes successful cooperation and partly explains why cooperation has been a winning strategy in human evolution.

Equal effort, same reward

However, not only humans protest when the same performance is rewarded differently for no apparent reason. Many animals are likewise dissatisfied with a reward that is perceived as comparatively inferior and react in a frustrated way. The characteristic behavioral patterns can be reliably reproduced in experiments across various species of birds, rodents and monkeys. The interpretation of this protest behavior, on the other hand, is controversial among researchers. If the animals' frustration stemmed from a comparison of their own reward with that of their conspecific, this would indicate an abstract understanding of equal treatment.

The root of disappointment

In the present study, the researchers tested three alternative explanations for protest behavior following unequal treatment. The first hypothesis invokes "inequity aversion" and presupposes social comparison with conspecifics and a sense of fairness. This is based on the idea that the pattern of rewards is compared between oneself and others so that it may be perceived as unfair. The second hypothesis, "food expectation", assumes the visibility of the attractive food as a trigger for frustration. Thus, if a high-quality reward is visible, the animal expects to receive it. The third hypothesis is based on "social disappointment" about the trainer's decision to provide an inferior reward. Behind this stands an expectation to be rewarded in the best possible way by the responsible human.

Disappointing human

The results of the current study on long-tailed macaques are in line with a previously published chimpanzee study. Rowan Titchener, lead author of the study, states: "The animals' response patterns are best explained by frustration with the human trainer's decisions. Thus, the current results speak for the third hypothesis, based on social disappointment". This interpretation is supported in particular by the fact that the long-tailed macaques accepted an inferior reward from an automatic feeder more often than from a human.

Experimental setup

The researchers confronted the monkeys with four different scenarios in the experiment. The procedure was always the same: The activation of a lever was followed by the reward of low-quality food, which was brought within reach by a small conveyor belt. High-quality rewards were displayed, but remained out of reach. The experimental design was varied in two ways: Firstly, either a human provided the reward, or it was administered by an automatic feeder; secondly, the animal was either alone, or a conspecific solved the same task within sight, but received higher-quality rewards.

Clear result

The monkeys almost never refused their reward when it was provided by the automatic feeder – but did so in more than 20 percent of the experiments in which a human offered the food. This behavioural pattern is consistent with social disappointment with the human who decides to give them the inferior reward. "The monkeys have no social expectations of a vending machine and are therefore not disappointed," Titchener explains.

Stefanie Keupp, leader of the study at the German Primate Centre, draws the conclusion: "A combination of social disappointment with the human experimenter and some degree of food competition best explains the behavior of the long-tailed macaques in our study."

A long-tailed macaque (Macaca fascicularis) operates a lever in an experiment to obtain a reward. In the red carousels, high-value rewards (grapes) and low-value rewards (red pepper) are presented. If a human offers red pepper to the monkey, it reacts in frustration, but not if the reward is allocated automatically.

CREDIT

Screenshot: Jana Wilken, Video: Rowan Titchener/DPZ

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JOURNAL

Royal Society Open Science

DOI

10.1098/rsos.221225 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Social disappointment and partner presence affect long-tailed macaque refusal behaviour in an ‘inequity aversion’ experiment

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Mar-2023

Security vulnerabilities detected in drones made by DJI

Reports and Proceedings

RUHR-UNIVERSITY BOCHUM

 

IMAGE: THE SECURITY OF DRONES WAS ALREADY THE SUBJECT OF NICO SCHILLER’S MASTER’S THESIS AT RUHR UNIVERSITY BOCHUM. HE IS CURRENTLY RESEARCHING THIS TOPIC FOR HIS DOCTORATE. view more 

CREDIT: RUB, MARQUARD

Researchers from Bochum and Saarbrücken have detected security vulnerabilities, some of them serious, in several drones made by the manufacturer DJI. These enable users, for example, to change a drone’s serial number or override the mechanisms that allow security authorities to track the drones and their pilots. In special attack scenarios, the drones can even be brought down remotely in flight.

The team headed by Nico Schiller of the Horst Görtz Institute for IT Security at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, and Professor Thorsten Holz, formerly in Bochum, now at the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security in Saarbrücken, will present their findings at the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS). The conference will take place from 27 February to 3 March in San Diego, USA.

The researchers informed DJI of the 16 detected vulnerabilities prior to releasing the information to the public; the manufacturer has taken steps towards fixing them.

Four models put to the test

The team tested three DJI drones of different categories: the small DJI Mini 2, the medium-sized Air 2, and the large Mavic 2. Later, the IT experts reproduced the results for the newer Mavic 3 model as well. They fed the drones’ hardware and firmware a large number of random inputs and checked which ones caused the drones to crash or made unwanted changes to the drone data such as the serial number – a method known as fuzzing. To this end, they first had to develop a new algorithm.

“We often have the entire firmware of a device available for the purpose of fuzzing. Here, however, this was not the case,” as Nico Schiller describes this particular challenge. Because DJI drones are relatively complex devices, the fuzzing had to be performed in the live system. “After connecting the drone to a laptop, we first looked at how we could communicate with it and which interfaces were available to us for this purpose,” says the researcher from Bochum. It turned out that most of the communication is done via the same protocol, called DUML, which sends commands to the drone in packets.

Four severe errors

The fuzzer developed by the research group thus generated DUML data packets, sent them to the drone and evaluated which inputs caused the drone’s software to crash. Such a crash indicates an error in the programming. “However, not all security gaps resulted in a crash,” says Thorsten Holz. “Some errors led to changes in data such as the serial number.” To detect such logical vulnerabilities, the team paired the drone with a mobile phone running the DJI app. They could thus periodically check the app to see if fuzzing was changing the state of the drone.

All of the four tested models were found to have security vulnerabilities. In total, the researchers documented 16 vulnerabilities. The DJI Mini 2, Mavic Air 2 and Mavic 3 models had four serious flaws. For one, these bugs allowed an attacker to gain extended access rights in the system. “An attacker can thus change log data or the serial number and disguise their identity,” explains Thorsten Holz. “Plus, while DJI does take precautions to prevent drones from flying over airports or other restricted areas such as prisons, these mechanisms could also be overridden.” Furthermore, the group was able to crash the flying drones mid-air.

In future studies, the Bochum-Saarbrücken team intends to test the security of other drone models as well.

Location data is transmitted unencrypted

In addition, the researchers examined the protocol used by DJI drones to transmit the location of the drone and its pilot so that authorised bodies – such as security authorities or operators of critical infrastructure – can access it. By reverse engineering DJI’s firmware and the radio signals emitted by the drones, the research team was able to document the tracking protocol called “DroneID” for the first time. “We showed that the transmitted data is not encrypted, and that practically anyone can read the location of the pilot and the drone with relatively simple methods,” concludes Nico Schiller.

The researchers looked for security gaps in the firmware and scrutinised the inner workings of the drones.

CAPTION

The researchers looked for security gaps in the firmware and scrutinised the inner workings of the drones.

The security of drones was already the subject of Nico Schiller’s master’s thesis at Ruhr University Bochum. He is currently researching this topic for his doctorate.

CREDIT

RUB, Marquard

DOI

10.14722/ndss.2023.24217 

ARTICLE TITLE

Drone Security and the Mysterious Case of DJI’s DroneID