Similar to the symbolic act of walking a mile in someone else's shoes, visual perspective-taking involves perceiving the world from another person's viewpoint. By following someone's gaze, it is easy to understand what captures their attention, and even attempt to infer what others are seeing.
A recent study, titled "Gaze Following in Archosauria-Alligators and Palaeognath Birds Suggest Dinosaur Origin of Visual Perspective Taking" published in Science Advances, calls into question the widely held belief that animals were the first to gain these profound cognitive capacities.
Visual Perspective-Taking Originated in Dinosaurs Long Before It Evolved in Mammals, Study Reveals
Birds Vs. Crocodilians
A group of cognitive zoologists from Lund University in Sweden carried out a study where they observed alligators and birds. Based on their observations, the researchers put forward the idea that visual perspective-taking, a skill that humans usually develop around the age of two, could have originated in dinosaurs as far back as 60 million years ago.
Visual perspective-taking is a cognitive ability that has been observed in only a few species, including some apes, monkeys, wolves, dogs, and certain bird species. However, the evolutionary origins of this skill and how it developed remain largely unknown.
According to Science Alert, researchers compared paleognaths or birds with brains resembling their dinosaur ancestors and crocodilians which are the closest living relatives of birds. These two groups, birds and crocodilians, are the only surviving members of the archosaur clade, which also includes non-avian dinosaurs and pterosaurs.
Cognitive Scientist Stephan Reber from Lund University explained in the news release that crocodilians serve as excellent models for studying the evolutionary origins of cognitive abilities in birds. The shared characteristics between crocodilians and birds likely existed in the common ancestor of dinosaurs and crocodilians, making them valuable for studying extinct species' cognition.
In a study with 30 participants, researchers conducted three experiments to assess the animals' ability to track gazes in various directions, including behind barriers.
While alligators followed the gazes of their fellow alligators to visible locations, they did not exhibit visual perspective-taking. In contrast, all tested bird species demonstrated clear visual perspective-taking by successfully navigating barriers to view stimuli from the viewpoint of their demonstrator bird.
The study's first author, Claudia Zeiträg, a cognitive zoologist at Lund University, emphasizes that birds are often underestimated in terms of their cognitive abilities. The findings indicate that birds possess cognitive skills comparable to those of apes and suggest that their ancestors likely had these skills long before they evolved into mammals.READ ALSO: Dinosaurs Could Have Been Declining 2 Million Years Before the Asteroid Impact, Study Reveals
Implication of the Neuroanatomical Similarities Between Birds and Crocodilians
The neuroanatomical similarities between birds and their non-avian ancestors suggest that visual perspective-taking may have originated even earlier in the dinosaur lineage, Sci-News reported. However, this skill is less likely to have been present in the earliest dinosaurs, which had brains resembling those of alligators.
Future research may reveal that visual perspective-taking is more widespread among mammals than currently known, but it is still likely to have originated in dinosaurs.
The emergence of visual perspective-taking in dinosaurs, including birds, aligns with their superior vision compared to most mammals, which historically relied on adaptations for nocturnal activity. It was only with the evolution of primates and certain carnivores that visual capabilities improved.
These findings challenge the prevailing notion that mammals were the driving force behind the evolution of complex cognition and suggest that birds, as avian dinosaurs, possess remarkable neurocognition, prompting a reevaluation of the natural history of cognition.
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