Taking someone else’s visual perspective marks an evolutionary shift in the formation of advanced social cognition. It enables using others’ attention to discover otherwise hidden aspects of the surroundings and is foundational for human communication and understanding of others. Visual perspective taking has also been found in some other primates, a few songbirds, and some canids. However, despite its essential role for social cognition, visual perspective taking has only been fragmentedly studied in animals, leaving its evolution and origins uncharted. To begin to narrow this knowledge gap, researchers at Lund University investigated living archosaurs (non-avian dinosaurs, pterosaurs, birds, and living and extinct crocodylians) by comparing the neurocognitively least derived living palaeognath birds with the closest living relatives of birds, the crocodylians.
Visual perspective taking has, to date, only been found in very few species. Mainly in apes and some monkeys, but also in dogs and crow birds.
However, there is limited knowledge regarding the evolutionary origins of this crucial social skill.
Lund University’s Dr. Claudia Zeiträg and her colleagues aimed to investigate a potential early emergence of visual perspective taking in dinosaurs.
Through a comparison of alligators with the most primitive living birds, known as palaeognaths, they discovered that visual perspective taking originated in the dinosaur lineage likely 60 million years, or more, prior to its appearance in mammals.
“Crocodilians are ideal models to study the evolutionary origins of cognitive capacities in birds,” said co-author Dr. Stephan Reber, also of Lund University.
“What they share most probably existed in the common ancestor of dinosaurs and crocodilians.”
“If crocodilians lack an ability birds possess, it likely evolved in the dinosaur lineage after the split. This approach allows us to study the cognition of extinct species.”
Crocodilians are the closest…
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