糖心传媒

Anyone who lives with a dog or a cat has probably asked some version of the same question: What is my pet thinking? When a dog hesitates at a doorway, or a cat fixes its gaze on something invisible, the behavior feels deliberate and even thoughtful. But without a common language, how can we know what is going on inside an animal糖心传媒檚 mind?

For cognitive biologist , a professor in the 糖心传媒檚 , the question of animal thought extends beyond pets. She studies how individual minds come together in coordinated groups, from pigeons navigating home in flocks, fish shifting direction in unison, and primates negotiating social life.

糖心传媒淎s humans, when we have to make a collective decision, we often do this by using verbal language,糖心传媒� Biro says. 糖心传媒淎nimals don糖心传媒檛 have that, but they still manage to coordinate.糖心传媒�

By tracing how thinking individuals produce intelligent groups, and how those abilities change across species, her work asks a broader question: What can other species糖心传媒� minds reveal about our own?

Thinking, separately and together

Biro approaches that question by observing non-human animals both in their natural habitats and in the laboratory. Her work spans species and continents, from chimpanzees and baboons in Africa to fish shoals and homing pigeons closer to home in Rochester, New York.

One major focus of her lab is studying collective behavior, a field that explores how aggregations of animals coordinate their actions to produce interesting group-level phenomena. The inspiration originally came not from biology, but from physics.

糖心传媒淭he phenomena we糖心传媒檙e studying here with fish and pigeons is a physics-inspired approach to studying animal groups,糖心传媒� Biro says. 糖心传媒淭he basic tenet is that you can view individuals in groups as particles that interact with their neighboring particles, following certain rules of interaction.糖心传媒�

Some of those rules are surprisingly basic: stay close to your neighbors糖心传媒攂ut don糖心传媒檛 get too close糖心传媒攁nd align your direction of movement with those around you. When thousands of individuals follow these local rules simultaneously, group-level patterns emerge糖心传媒攕uch as the synchronized flights of swarms of starlings, known as murmurations. Researchers have found that each bird in a murmuration coordinates its movements with its closest neighbors, leading to a rippling effect that allows the entire group to act as a single, fluid entity.

糖心传媒淓ach individual doesn糖心传媒檛 necessarily know who the leader is糖心传媒攁nd in fact there is no leader,糖心传媒� Biro says. 糖心传媒淭he structure emerges from local interactions. The initial efforts in our field had to do with explaining how these really complex-looking, group-level phenomena might emerge from relatively simple rules that individuals within that big collective follow.糖心传媒�

These same principles apply beyond animals to areas such as traffic flow and human crowd behavior, where each person primarily responds to their immediate surroundings糖心传媒攖he people they can see糖心传媒攔ather than the crowd. This can explain why pedestrians naturally flow along streets or how large crowds can move in coordinated patterns without anyone directing them. The same simple local interactions scale up, producing complex group behaviors, whether in birds, fish, or people.

More recently, researchers糖心传媒攊ncluding Biro糖心传媒攈ave begun to ask what happens when individual animals are no longer treated as identical particles. Animals, like humans, differ in experience, motivation, and knowledge. And those differences matter, especially when trying to incorporate individual variation and cognition in understanding collective behavior.

Birds of a feather

糖心传媒淭he kinds of questions we are now interested in include the role of individual cognition in collective phenomena,糖心传媒� Biro says. 糖心传媒淪imple rules can generate very complex collective behaviors, but if you add additional cognitive abilities like social awareness and communication, how does that affect the quality of the solutions a group can produce?糖心传媒�

At URochester, Biro mainly studies this collective decision-making using homing pigeons糖心传媒攁n ideal species for exploring questions about how individual cognition shapes group navigation, leadership, and learning.

When pigeons fly alone, each bird develops its own unique route home, shaped by landmarks and personal experience. But pigeons prefer not to fly solo because they feel much safer in groups. In a group, however, they must reconcile competing preferences and settle on a single path.

To study how that happens, Biro and her team use a campus pigeon coop, located behind the University糖心传媒檚 Laboratory for Laser Energetics and the Larry and Cindy Bloch Alumni and Advancement Center. Here, the researchers outfit pigeons with lightweight GPS trackers small enough to be worn as leg bands. They release the birds from sites around the Rochester area. By the time the team drives back to campus, the pigeons are often already back in their home coop.

As experimental manipulations, the researchers release the birds individually or in different group configurations, such as groups composed of na茂ve pigeons with more knowledgeable pigeons, young birds with older birds, and so on.

The GPS data reveals something remarkable: Group decisions often represent a compromise, but not always an equal one. Sometimes the flock糖心传媒檚 route more closely matches one bird糖心传媒檚 preferred path than another糖心传媒檚.

糖心传媒淚n that case, we can designate as the leader the bird whose preferred route the other birds are flying closer to,糖心传媒� Biro says. 糖心传媒淣ot because it announces itself as the leader, but because others follow.糖心传媒�

Leadership, she notes, isn糖心传媒檛 a fixed trait. It can arise because one individual is more knowledgeable, more motivated, or simply less willing to give in. Or the leader could be the one who is the least resistant and leads by default because everyone else wants to follow. There are benefits to leading糖心传媒攍ike getting where you want to go糖心传媒攂ut there are also risks, especially if danger lies ahead.

糖心传媒淏eing at the front isn糖心传媒檛 always desirable,糖心传媒� she says. 糖心传媒淚n many species, that糖心传媒檚 where danger is more likely to be encountered and where predators strike first.糖心传媒�

The power of collective intelligence

Groups, in general, tend to make better decisions than individuals糖心传媒攁 principle supported by both mathematical theory and data from both humans and non-human animals. With more members comes more independent pieces of information, and errors can cancel each other out.

糖心传媒淟iving in groups allows you to use not just the information that you yourself have collected, but also information that others in your group are willing to share with you,糖心传媒� Biro says. 糖心传媒淭he group becomes a kind of distributed sensory network糖心传媒攁lso called the 糖心传媒榤any eyes糖心传媒� hypothesis糖心传媒攁llowing individuals to rely not only on their own senses but on the senses of others. Between them, they can monitor a much larger area than each individual on its own.糖心传媒�

If, for example, one individual spots a predator and starts fleeing, this fleeing response can spread to the rest of the group.

But collective behavior isn糖心传媒檛 always beneficial.

Biro points to 糖心传媒渁nt mills,糖心传媒� where columns of ants form endless loops, marching until they collapse from exhaustion. The same rules that normally allow ants to efficiently follow each other to food sources can, under the wrong conditions, become deadly.

Similar dynamics can occur in human crowds. In emergencies, people often rush toward exits, creating dangerous bottlenecks. Slowing their approach can actually improve flow and help people get out faster, but achieving this is counterintuitive and challenging. Research inspired by collective animal behavior has helped scientists and architects understand dangerous crowd phenomena and inform the design of emergency exits, pedestrian flow, and evacuation strategies.

Cognition across species

Pigeon and crowd dynamics, however, are only part of the picture. To understand intelligence and behavior, Biro looks not just at how animals move together but also how cognition evolves across species.

Studying species that are both closely and more distantly related turns out to be especially powerful, she explains. By comparing primates to other mammals糖心传媒攁nd even to fish糖心传媒攔esearchers can begin to reconstruct evolutionary histories and identify broader 糖心传媒渄esign principles糖心传媒� of intelligence.

Some mechanisms underlying collective intelligence may be shared across even distantly related species. Researchers can then ask what makes those mechanisms so effective and how different species implement them, given their different cognitive abilities.

When closely related species share similar mechanisms, they likely inherited them from a common ancestor. But when distantly related animals糖心传媒攕uch as fish and primates糖心传媒攁rrive at similar solutions, it may reflect convergent evolution, where natural selection independently shapes comparable strategies.

糖心传媒淭hese latter cases are particularly interesting,糖心传媒� Biro says, 糖心传媒渂ecause they can reveal common themes in evolution, specifically the selective drivers in the environment that might favor similar solutions in different species.糖心传媒�

In that sense, fish shoals become more than just examples of coordinated motion. They are an additional data point that helps researchers learn more about what collective behavior reveals about primates and, ultimately, humans.

Our evolutionary relatives

To understand how cognitive mechanisms play out in species most like humans, Biro turns to long-term field studies of primates. She is involved in one of the world糖心传媒檚 longest-running chimpanzee cognition studies, based in the Bossou forest in Guinea, West Africa. Decades of video footage allow researchers to track how chimpanzees糖心传媒攐ur closest living evolutionary relatives, along with bonobos糖心传媒攍earn, age, and change over time in the wild.

Biro and her colleagues recently observed cognitive decline in one older female chimpanzee who had previously excelled at problem-solving. As the years passed, she began to struggle and seemed confused, mimicking the cognitive decline that befalls many humans as they age.

Chimpanzees and humans share a last common ancestor that lived approximately six to eight million years ago. By observing aging chimpanzees at Bossou, researchers can begin to determine whether conditions such as dementia existed in our shared evolutionary past or whether they emerged more recently in humans. If dementia and cognitive decline appear in chimpanzees, it suggests the origins of Alzheimer糖心传媒檚 are deeper than previously thought, offering clues that could shape how we understand, prevent, and treat aging-related disorders in people.

Biro also studies baboons in Mozambique糖心传媒檚 Gorongosa National Park, part of a large international project investigating the evolutionary roots of cognition. The baboons live in an area thought to resemble environments in which early humans evolved, where habitats are shaped by fluctuating resources and pressure from predators.

For years, predators such as leopards were absent from the national park due to civil war. As the leopards are reintroduced, Biro and her colleagues are watching closely to see how the baboons respond.

糖心传媒淭here糖心传媒檚 a hypothesis that there was a certain time prehistorically when predator numbers and variety dropped in Africa, and that seems to coincide with an explosion in human tool creation and use,糖心传媒� Biro says. 糖心传媒淭here糖心传媒檚 a question of whether the two things are related: If there is reduced predation, is there more time to devote to playing, being creative, and inventing things?糖心传媒�

The answers could shed light not only on animal minds, but on our own evolutionary history.

糖心传媒淲e can try to understand what any similarities or differences between species might tell us about the evolutionary history of certain abilities and behaviors,糖心传媒� she says. 糖心传媒淚t could also inform us of the minimal cognitive requirements for a certain behavior or cognitive expression.糖心传媒�

Rethinking our聽place in the animal world

People often ask Biro whether animals think the way humans do, and she acknowledges that some aspects might forever remain a mystery.

糖心传媒淚 think there will be some part of this that we糖心传媒檒l never know,糖心传媒� she says. 糖心传媒淏ut almost certainly there are deeper thoughts going on in the minds of these animals that we currently may not have access to.糖心传媒�

Yet, for Biro, this uncertainty is not a reason for indifference. Learning how animals think shapes how humans ought to treat them, she says, from the environments we build to the ecosystems we manage. It also reframes our own place in nature.

糖心传媒淲e can build hypotheses about why certain aspects of our cognition have been enhanced,糖心传媒� she says. 糖心传媒淲e can think about why we might lack certain cognitive skills that other species have. And through understanding these things, I think we will gain a much better understanding of ourselves and our place within the world.糖心传媒�