Animal Observation: A Qualitative Study

Desjardins and Fernald (2010) wanted to discover whether fighting an opponent is similar to fighting a mirror image. These male fish are territorial and tend to engage in fighting when they encounter another size-matched male. Thus, Desjardins and Fernald (2010) measured differences in behavioral, hormonal and brain activity between the different conditions. They also measure the immediate early genes such as the egr-1 and c-fos in four brain regions: dorsomedial telencephalon (amygdala), dorsolateral telencephalon (hippocampus), pre-optic area and, the cerebellum. These four brain regions are known to have control in fear responses. In the experiments, they had size-matched males placed in a tank that was subdivided into two compartments in …show more content…
The employed three experiments. In experiment one, they had dogs choose between two boxes by pressing a lever and being awarded food. Afterwards, to test their information-seeking behaviour, they were trained to choose among four boxes: three boxes were black and one had a white side in which the food tray was always under. Afterwards, the dogs had learned visual discrimination. In experiment two, the dogs were presented with two women in which one informed them of the boxes and one who did not (McMahon, Macpherson, & Roberts 2010). When the dog went towards the informant, they were rewarded. In experiment three, it was conducted similarly to experiment two, but this time the dogs were awarded similar amount of rewards for choosing both the informant and non-informant. The results of these three experiments were subjective. Whether these experiments showed metacognition is debatable (McMahon, Macpherson, & Roberts 2010). However, this experiment does display clear evidence that dogs have information-seeking behaviours that involved communication with women, However, this experiment does display clear evidence that dogs have information-seeking behaviours that involved communication with