ArticleScientific reports2020
Play behaviour, not tool using, relates to brain mass in a sample of birds.
Article in Scientific reports, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 36 citations in OpenAlex.
- T. rex cognition was T. rex-like-A critical outlook on diverging views of the neurocognitive evolution in dinosaurs.Anatomical record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) · 2026Review
- Evidence of self-care tooling and phylogenetic modeling reveal parrot tool use is not rare.iScience · 2025Article
- Selection for tameness alters play-like behaviour in red junglefowl in line with effects of domestication.Biology letters · 2025Article
- Dining with wolves: Are the rewards worth the risks?PloS one · 2025Article
- Playing with the rope: a house sparrow behaviour related to its breeding activity.Animal cognition · 2024Article
- Play Behavior Varies with Age, Sex, and Socioecological Context in Wild, Immature Orangutans (International journal of primatology · 2024Article
- Enhancing their quality of life: environmental enrichment for poultry.Poultry science · 2023Article
- Problems with using comparative analyses of avian brain size to test hypotheses of cognitive evolution.PloS one · 2022Article
- Birdsong and the Neural Regulation of Positive Emotion.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Review
- The Evolution of Playfulness, Play and Play-Like Phenomena in Relation to Sexual Selection.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Evolution and function of neurocognitive systems in non-human animals.Scientific reports · 2021Article
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Abstract
Play behaviour and tool using in birds, two well-delineated and amply researched behaviours, have generally been associated with cognitive abilities. In this study, these behaviours were related to relative brain mass in a sample of Australian native birds. Despite suggestive research results so far between cognition and tool using, this study found no significant difference in relative brain mass or in lifespan between tool-using birds and non-tool users. By contrast, in play behaviour, subdivided into social players and non-social players, the results showed statistically very clear differences in relative brain mass between social, non-social and non-players. Social play was associated with both the largest brain mass to body mass ratios and with the longest lifespans. The results show that play behaviour is a crucial variable associated with brain enlargement, not tool using. Since many of the tool using species tested so far also play, this study suggests that false conclusions can be drawn about the connection between tool using and cognitive ability when the silent variable (play behaviour) is not taken into account.
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