Behavioural innovations have become central to our thinking about how animals adjust to
changing environments. It is now well established that animals vary in their ability to …

Across a range of disciplines, researchers are becoming increasingly interested in studying
the variation in cognitive abilities found within populations. Behavioral ecology is no …

Courtship displays are behaviours aimed to facilitate attraction and mating with the opposite
sex and are very common across the animal kingdom. Most courtship displays are …

“Lovely, celebratory. For all the belittling of 'bird brains,'[Ackerman] shows them to be
uniquely impressive machines...”—New York Times Book Review “A lyrical testimony to the …

Highlights•Problem-solving performance was assessed in artificially reared pheasant
chicks.•Performance was consistent within same/similar tasks but not across different …

Individuals exhibiting a high level of cognitive ability may also exhibit more elaborate traits
and so gain higher levels of mating success. This suggests that selection may act on …

Linking the cognitive performance of wild animals with fitness consequences is crucial for
understanding evolutionary processes that shape individual variation in cognition. However …

Highlights•Species vary in their tendency to forage innovatively but it is not known why.•We
compared noisy miners and Indian mynas on an innovative problem-solving task.•Mynas …

Behavioural innovations are increasingly thought to provide a rich source of phenotypic
plasticity and evolutionary change. Innovation propensity shows substantial variation across …

Darwin proposed that mate choice might contribute to the evolution of cognitive abilities. An
open question is whether observing the cognitive skills of an individual makes it more …