Footedness Of Yellow-bellied Tit(Pardaliparus Venustulus) And Cinereous Tit(Parus Cinereus) And Its Correlation With Cognitive Ability And Responses To Predation Risk

Behavioral lateralization commonly exists in animals and is related to the evolution of cerebral lateralization,which may bring animals certain benefits.However,at present,the species involved in lateralization research is still limited,and the relationship between limb lateralization and the behaviors related to individual fitness is not well understood.In this study,we tested the footedness of wild-caught yellow-bellied tits Pardaliparus venustulus,cinereous tits Parus cinereus and investigated its association with their cognitive ability(problem-solving performance),responses to the risk of predation and escape ability.The results show that:(1)The distribution of laterality in yellow-bellied tit population was uneven,with most individuals showing obviously left laterality or right laterality,and only a few showing non-laterality in foot-use.The cinereous tit population was consisted of left-and right-lateralized individuals,with no non-lateral individuals being found.(2)In the problem-solving experiment,the male yellow-bellied tits with left footedness showed superior learning ability.Opposite result was found in female cinereous tits,in which the learning ability of right-footed individuals was better.By contrast,no difference was found in problem-solving ability between left-and right-footed individuals for male cinereous tits and female yellow-bellied tits.These results suggest that there may be interspecific and sexual differences in the relationship between footedness and cognitive ability.(3)The results of response to human and predators tended to prove that the male cinereous tits with left footedness had a higher proportion to stop the action when hear the human interference.But there was no significant difference of male cinereous tits to stop the action when hear the calls of predators nor the time to recover from shock response to human or predators between left-footed and right-footed individuals.There was also no significant difference of female cinereous tits between left-footed and right-footed individuals,in the proportion to action and the time to recover from shock when hear the human interference or the calls of predators.(4)In the test of escape ability when being captured by humans,there was no significant difference between left-footed and right-footed individuals,regardless of the bird were housed individually,housed together with an individual showing opposite footedness,or being grouped with other individuals after removing the outlier values.(5)This study also analyzed the body mass changes of individuals with different laterality as a result of being raised by human beings during the experiment,and it was not found that the footedness of the two tits was related to the change of individual body mass.The results suggested that the adaptability of individuals with different footedness to the caged environment was similar during the experiment.In conclusion,the study of the two tit species showed that the footedness of tits may be related to an individual's cognitive ability and responses to dangerous stimuli,and the relationship between laterality and cognitive ability may differ between species and the two sexes.These results will help to understand the evolution of animal laterality.