title: European starlings recognize the location of robotic conspecific attention.
abstract: Looking where others are allocating attention can facilitate social interactions by providing information about objects or locations of interest. We asked whether European starlings follow the orientation behaviour of conspecifics owing to their highly gregarious behaviour. Starlings reoriented their attention to follow that of a robot around a barrier more often than when the robot's attention was directed elsewhere. This is the first empirical evidence of reorienting in response to conspecific attention in a songbird. Starlings may use this behaviour to obtain fine-tuned spatial information from conspecifics (e.g. direction of predator approach, spatial location of food patches), enhancing group cohesion.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA srbutler@purdue.edu.
authors.forename: Shannon R
authors.initials: SR
authors.lastname: Butler
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA.
authors.forename: Esteban
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Fernández-Juricic
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001288:Attention; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology*; D012371:Robotics; D012919:Social Behavior; D046749:Starlings / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: European starling; Sturnus vulgaris; attention; gaze following; gaze sensitivity; geometric gaze following