Totally undomesticated animals such as kangaroos can deliberately communicate with human beings, reversing the script on the notion of deliberate association from animals to humans, just transpiring with occurring in animals such as horses, goats, or dogs.
Such an animal behavior has been shown in a study published in the Biology Letters journal. Specifically, the study found that kangaroos could "talk to humans" using a unique gaze.
This new investigation engaged kangaroos, also known as marsupials without domestication in the past, in three locations within Australia.
A blog post the University of Roehampton posted on its official website presented how kangaroos are gazing at humans when they are trying to access food contained in a closed box. The said university worked on this project in collaboration with the University of Sydney.
Unique Gaze
An Interesting Engineering report specified that instead of attempting to open the box themselves, these animals attempted to get humans to do it with their unique gaze.
Instead of trying to open the box themselves, the kangaroos tried to get humans to do it with a gaze - a behavior typically expected of domesticated animals.
Of the 11 kangaroos examined, 10 actively looked at the person who would put food in a box with the assumed intention "to get the humans to open it" via an experiment named "the insolvable problem task."
In addition, nine out of 11 kangaroos also exhibited remarkable changes in terms of gaze type between the box and the human present, suggesting a heightened communication type involving a switching gaze between the human and the box containing the food.
Kangaroos Exhibiting Similar Behaviors to Dogs and Goats
This most recent study develops on past work in the field, which has investigated communication in some domesticated animals, including dogs and goats, among others. On top of answering the question of whether deliberate communication in animals results from domestication or any other source.
University of Roehampton's Alan McElligott, now at Hong Kong's City University, also the study's lead author, led earlier research, which associated behavior of goat to human hints, including collecting "information on their environment form human pointing."
Similar to goats and dogs, kangaroos are found to be social animals, and this latest research of McElligott proposes, they can adapt social behaviors as well, to adapt the way they are interacting with people.
Through this research, the lead author explained, they were "able to see that communication between animals can be learned" and that such a behavior of gazing at human beings to access food is not linked to domestication.
Indeed, McElligott added, kangaroos exhibited a very similar behavioral pattern seen in horses, dogs, and even goats when put to the same assessment.
First Marsupials to Be Examined in this Manner
The lead author said their study presents that the potential for referential intentional communication by animals towards humans has been underestimated, which indicates an interesting development in such an area.
Kangaroos, he continued, are the first marsupials to be examined in this manner, and the positive outcomes should result in more cognitive study beyond the typical domestic species.
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