One of the

authors of this review, in his pre-school years, attempted to levitate by flapping his arms after observing ducks in a park, and to increase his running speed by imitating the sound of a galloping horse. Neither of these produced impressive results, indicating to this author that birds and equines were not suitable role models for locomotion. However, the implication is that some animals might be relatively flexible in what other animals they ‘copy’, and subsequently evaluate the usefulness of the copied behaviour, or the usefulness of the particular model in general. The level of flexibility might be determined Selleck isocitrate dehydrogenase inhibitor by sensory or perceptual filters, attention-related processes or motivation (Heyes, 2011). But so long as animals are equipped with mechanisms to extract contingencies between environmental cues and biologically relevant stimuli (and all animals are), it follows that they should be able to pick up these cues from

other animals, including individuals of other species. A.A.-W. was funded by a Fyssen Foundation postdoctoral fellowship. We thank Keith Jensen for the thoughtful comments on the paper. “
“A key response of animals to local environmental variation is altered use of space, but studies simultaneously examining local variation in habitat use and space use are uncommon. We predicted that elevated abundance of avian predators would result in grayling Thymallus CHIR-99021 mw thymallus, a stream-dwelling fish, using mesohabitats containing more cover,

superimposed on seasonal changes in use of key resources (and hence space use) for functions such as reproduction. Using radio-telemetry, the pattern of space and habitat use by 40 wild MCE公司 grayling was determined in neighbouring stream sections in relation to season and predator density. Grayling used different habitats between seasons, but displayed similar patterns of habitat use in adjacent sections. Although patterns of habitat use were stable between stream sections, space use was not. In two winter periods, grayling ranged significantly more widely where there were significantly greater densities of avian predators, especially cormorant, Phalacrocorax carbo. No such differences were apparent in summer when cormorants were absent, but experimental manipulation of predator densities was not possible, so results are correlative. Support for a predator effect is provided from significantly greater rates of injury, associated with avian beak scar marks, present on grayling from the section with highest avian predator densities, compared with adjacent sections with lower levels of avian predators.