📄 Category

animal behavior and cognition

138 papers

Animal behavior and cognition explores the fascinating inner lives of creatures big and small, from how a crow solves a puzzle to why dogs seem to understand human emotions. This field investigates the mental processes and social interactions that drive the natural world, revealing that intelligence and awareness take many forms across species.

At Gist.Science, we bring these discoveries directly from bioRxiv to your screen. Our team processes every new preprint in this category from bioRxiv, ensuring you have access to the latest research through both detailed technical summaries and easy-to-understand plain-language explanations. Whether you are a researcher or a curious reader, you can dive deep into the data or grasp the core concepts without the barrier of dense academic jargon.

Below are the most recent papers exploring the minds and behaviors of animals, freshly processed and ready for you to explore.

📄 animal behavior and cognition

Animal collocation revisited: intercohort comparison and a case study comparing call combinations between sexes in common marmosets

This paper introduces and validates a statistically rigorous method called Multiple Distinctive Collocation Analysis using Pearson residuals (MDCA-Pr) to overcome existing limitations in animal collocation analysis, enabling robust identification of non-random signal combinations and accurate comparisons between different cohorts, as demonstrated through simulations and a case study on common marmoset vocalizations.

Howard-Spink, E., Mircheva, M., Burkart, J. M., Townsend, S. W.2026-03-22
📄 animal behavior and cognition

From Breath to Behavior: Respiratory Features Predict Visual Detection Performance

This study demonstrates that in nonhuman primates, the temporal structure of respiration (such as inhalation onset and cycle length) is a more reliable predictor of visual detection performance than amplitude-based measures, highlighting the critical role of breathing rhythms in shaping moment-to-moment cognitive behavior.

Skog, E. E., Issar, D., Grigg, M., Nelson, S. E., Kainerstorfer, J. M., Smith, M. A.2026-03-19
📄 animal behavior and cognition

Machine learning of honey bee olfactory behavior identifies repellent odorants in free flying bees in the field

This study demonstrates that an iterative machine learning approach, which predicts aversive valence from chemical structure and refines models with behavioral data from both honey bees and Drosophila, successfully identified and validated potent repellent odorants capable of protecting free-flying honey bees from pesticide exposure in the field.

Kowalewski, J., Baer-Imhoof, B., Guda, T., Luy, M., DePalma, P., Baer, B., Ray, A.2026-03-18
📄 animal behavior and cognition

Evidence for timing in the midsession reversal task with rats in operant conditioning boxes

This study demonstrates that rats in the midsession reversal task utilize a mixed strategy integrating local reinforcement cues with global temporal information, as evidenced by their ability to adjust switching behavior based on manipulated intertrial intervals rather than fixed trial numbers.

Reyes, M. B., Ferreira, F. d. R., Gobbo, G., Caetano, M. S., Machado, A.2026-03-18
📄 animal behavior and cognition

Context-dependent reshaping of defensive responses to predators in head-fixed and freely moving mice

This study demonstrates that defensive responses to predators in mice are not obligatory or uniform but are instead flexibly shaped by environmental context, task demands, and individual variability, challenging the assumption that innate fear behaviors are automatically triggered by threat.

Ritter, M., Barreira, L. M. C., Sach, L., Hakus, A., Oektem, S. K., Bergmann, R., Voigt, A., Schmitz, D., Poirazi, P., L (…)2026-03-16
📄 animal behavior and cognition

Geometric Structure in Sperm Whale Communication:Hyperbolic Embeddings, Topological Analysis, and AdversarialRobustness

This paper applies differential geometry, algebraic topology, and adversarial robustness testing to sperm whale codas, revealing their complex hierarchical and topological structures, individual identity encoding, and social turn-taking dynamics while introducing the first adversarial benchmark for cetacean communication decoders.

Bond, A. H.2026-03-13