‘Do I know you?’ Categorizing individuals on the basis of familiarity in kea ( Nestor notabilis )

Abstract

Categorizing individuals on the basis of familiarity is an adaptive way of dealing with the complexity of the social environment. It requires the use of conceptual familiarity and is considered higher order learning. Although, it is common among many species, ecological need might require and facilitate individual differentiation among heterospecifics. This may be true for laboratory populations just as much as for domesticated species and those that live in urban contexts. However, with the exception of a few studies, populations of laboratory animals have generally been given less attention. The study at hand, therefore, addressed the question whether a laboratory population of kea parrots ( Nestor notabilis ) were able to apply the concept of familiarity to differentiate between human faces in a two-choice discrimination task on the touchscreen. The results illustrated that the laboratory population of kea were indeed able to differentiate between familiar and unfamiliar human faces in a two-choice discrimination task. The results provide novel empirical evidence on abstract categorization capacities in parrots while at the same time providing further evidence of representational insight in kea.