Animal Cognition

Inequity aversion, the sensitivity to inequitable outcomes or processes, has been widely studied in nonhuman primates since 2003. Yet, findings remain debated as some could be explained by alternative mechanisms such as frustration or loss aversion, so-called individual contrasts. Previous work on nonhuman animals has restricted the definition of inequity aversion to the social domain. Here, we propose distinguishing between two different forms: a socially driven form, which depends on comparison with another individual, and an individually based form, caused by a discrepancy between ones own effort and the expected outcome. Using a task-based methodology, we manipulated both effort and the amount of reward to test for the existence of those different forms and distinguish them from individual contrasts. We presented seven Tonkean macaques (Macaca tonkeana) and three brown capuchins (Sapajus apella) with low and high effort tasks associated with low and high reward quantities. To test for the presence of individually based inequity aversion, subjects were tested alone in an individual phase. In some of the trials, they were rewarded less than they deserved for the task. To test for socially based inequity aversion, two individuals performed the same task in a social phase but, in some trials, one received a higher-value reward than the other. We recorded the latency to engage in the task as an indicator of reluctance. In the individual phase, macaques were slower to engage with inequitably rewarded tasks, a pattern consistent with an individually based expectation of equity. By contrast, capuchins were faster in this context, suggesting that their responses were more likely driven by individual contrast effects. In a context of social inequity, both species slowed engagement in tasks with inequitable rewards, suggesting an aversion to socially based inequity. These results demonstrate that such a methodology provides a means to study non-social components of inequity aversion. Future studies, conducted on larger and more diverse samples, with rigorous motivational controls and explicit tests looking at the understanding of the link between task and reward, are needed to confirm whether nonhuman primates can display inequity aversion independently of social comparison.

Human pointing is often used to test whether dogs extract object-specific information from human communicative cues. However, above-chance responses in standard object-choice tasks do not by themselves distinguish between a referential interpretation, in which the gesture identifies a specific target, and an attentional interpretation, in which it primarily biases behaviour toward a broader spatial region. We addressed this issue using an asymmetric six-cup arrangement designed to separate coarse side guidance from exact cup localisation more clearly than a symmetric multi-cup design. Performance in domestic dogs was analysed using three measures: the probability of reaching the correct side, the probability of choosing the correct cup overall, and the probability of choosing the correct cup conditional on having first reached the correct side. The principal comparison involved three matched trial classes: the symmetric 3-vs-3 condition, 2-vs-4 trials with the baited cup on the 2-cup side, and 2-vs-4 trials with the baited cup on the 4-cup side. Descriptively, pointing trials exceeded matched no-point control trials more clearly for side selection than for overall cup choice. The clearest condition effect was observed at the level of side guidance. Dogs were most likely to reach the correct side when the baited cup was located on the 4-cup side of the unequal arrangement. Mixed-effects models confirmed a reliable group effect for side accuracy, whereas overall cup accuracy showed only a weaker and less robust condition effect, and within-side localisation revealed no reliable group difference once condition-specific chance baselines were taken into account. A complementary generative model comparison converged on the same conclusion: a referential-only model fit poorly, an attention-only model captured most of the grouped outcome structure, and a combined model yielded only a modest improvement. Dog point-following is therefore best understood as a layered process dominated by attentional guidance, with only limited additional target-specific localisation.

Behaviour innovation plays a pivotal role in a species adaptability to dynamic environments. Investigating innovative behaviour and its underlying mechanism is therefore crucial for elucidating the development of cognitive flexibility across animals. Animal personality--which shapes how individuals perceive and engage with their surroundings--could offer insights into individual variation in this process. This study used a three-step foraging puzzle to evaluate the innovation capacity in 28 rosy-faced lovebirds (Agapornis roseicollis), specifically examining their capacity to recombine individually innovated component behaviours into integrated, more sophisticated techniques. We found that nearly half of the individuals spontaneously innovated multiple component behaviours to solve novel puzzles. Crucially, when challenged with a more sophisticated task, they recombined these behaviours into functionally dependent sequences without prior social demonstration. We further identified sex, persistence, and asocial learning capacity as key predictors of innovative problem-solving performance, with females, persistent individuals, and superior asocial learners excelled at problem-solving. Our findings demonstrate that behavioural innovation is not a static event, but a dynamic process--modulated by physical, cognitive, and personality variables--in which behaviours are flexibly transferred and recombined into increasingly complex forms to enable rapid individual adaptation.

Growing evidence of animals combining discrete, meaningful calls into sequences--a feature once thought unique to linguistic syntax--has presented the opportunity to investigate the evolutionary origins of syntactic communication. The arbitrary assignment of meaning to words marks an important step in human language evolution, and a necessary precursor to generating further meaning through sentences. Studying how other animals that produce call sequences learn the meaning of these signals could help shed light on how referentiality and semantic combinatoriality evolved. Given the presence of meaningful call sequences has only recently been revealed in several non-human animals, ontogenetic studies of the comprehension of these vocalisations are, to date, non-existent. Western Australian magpies (Gymnorhina tibicen dorsalis) combine discrete calls into a diverse array of call sequences. Recent evidence shows these sequences are socially learned, but the developmental stage at which fledglings respond correctly to them remains unstudied. We performed playbacks of a discrete alarm call and call sequence to fledglings over the course of their first 18 weeks out of the nest, identifying when they differentiate between the low-level disturbance associated with the discrete call and the high-grade aerial threat associated with the sequence. Fledglings showed immediate vigilance to both vocalisations but exhibited significantly greater vigilance and upward scanning following the sequence. Critically, fledglings showed this response to the sequence from the first week of testing, with no effect of age on the response to either vocalisation. These findings suggest that comprehension precedes production of sequences in magpies and that sequence meanings are either learned rapidly or have an innate basis. While further investigation is essential, this study offers the first empirical insight into the ontogenetic emergence of combinatorial comprehension in a non-human animal.

Considerable evidence suggests that the motivational control of instrumental action depends on incentive learning; i.e., on the opportunity to learn how the value of the consequences or outcome of an action, (e.g., a specific food) varies under different motivational conditions (e.g., under different degrees of hunger). The current study investigated whether learning the values of high-protein and high-carbohydrate rewards under different degrees of protein and carbohydrate appetite is also necessary for these nutrient-specific appetites to exert control over instrumental performance. Experiment 1 gave differing consummatory experience to whey protein and polycose carbohydrate outcomes under protein and carbohydrate appetite and found that, without the opportunity for incentive learning, the performance of actions earning these outcomes was insensitive to a shift in appetite. However, once the opportunity for incentive learning was provided, the rats increased their instrumental performance on a lever that earned the whey outcome relative to the polycose lever when protein hungry and on the polycose lever relative to the whey lever when carbohydrate hungry. Experiment 2 assessed how these nutrient-specific states exerted this control; whether, once learned, nutrient values were immediately controlled by nutrient appetite or whether this was based on conditional control acquired during experience with the outcomes under different nutrient appetites. We found that exposure to an outcome under a single nutrient-specific state was not sufficient to establish state-specific control. Instead, establishing the conditional control of outcome value required exposure to both the whey and polycose outcomes under both protein and carbohydrate appetites.

Social decisions often require animals to integrate information across multiple attributes of potential partners. Using biological motion stimuli, point-displays generated from tracked live shoals, we tested how adult zebrafish (Danio rerio) weigh shoal size and movement speed during social preference, and whether these preferences are susceptible to contextual manipulation by an asymmetrically placed alternative. In Experiment 1, we established a multi-attribute indifference point by presenting males and females with dichotomous contrasts in which shoal size and movement speed were traded off. Both sexes showed no preference when a larger, slower shoal (4 fish at 0.75x speed) was pitted against a smaller, faster shoal (2 fish at 1.25x speed), but preferred the smaller, faster shoal when the speed difference was greater (4 fish at 0.5x versus 2 fish at 1.25x), indicating that zebrafish are sensitive to graded differences in movement speed relative to numerical cues. In Experiment 2, unidimensional tests confirmed that both sexes preferred larger shoals when speed was held constant but revealed sex-based differences in speed sensitivity: males preferred faster-moving shoals at both shoal sizes tested, whereas females showed no significant speed preference. Male shoal size preferences were stronger at higher movement speeds, suggesting that speed modulates the strength of size preference. In Experiment 3, we tested the asymmetric dominance effect in males, the only sex sensitive to both dimensions, using the indifferent contrast from Experiment 1 as the primary options and four decoy shoals asymmetrically placed along either the size or speed dimension, under counterbalanced presentation orders. No decoy shifted male preference significantly from chance under any condition. These results indicate that zebrafish weigh social cues in a sex-specific manner, and that asymmetric decoy options do not induce preference biases in males when shoals vary along the dimensions of movement speed and size.

One challenge of reintroduction programs is ensuring that captive individuals are prepared for life in the wild, including having the ability to forage on wild resources. Foraging proficiency can be especially challenging to foster in species with a wide dietary breadth or reliance on ephemerally available resources. A relatively unexplored obstacle to release readiness may be an animals hesitancy to approach or consume unfamiliar foods, i.e. their neophobia and dietary conservatism. In this study, we examined the responses of a conservation breeding population of the extinct-in-the-wild alal[a] (Corvus hawaiiensis), a dietary generalist, to novel and familiar native and non-native fruits. Birds were similarly willing to contact both novel and familiar fruits, suggesting little aversion to the presence and appearance of novel food items. However, birds showed a clear preference for contacting non-native fruits over native fruits, regardless of familiarity. Additionally, while birds were willing to contact novel items, they were less likely to consume novel native fruits, suggesting that dietary conservatism may limit incorporation of these resources in the wild. Finally, juvenile birds were less likely to approach the testing setup and contact items, suggesting that neophobia may constrain their exploration of novel environments and resources. We discuss the implications of alal[a] preferences for non-native foods and reluctance to consume novel native items for pre-release preparations and the goal of wild species recovery.

Social isolation has profound effects on behavior and cognition, but these effects can differ across sex and behavioral domains. We asked how social isolation shapes foraging decisions in male and female rats using a patch-leaving task that combines spatial navigation with sequential stay-or-go choices across varying travel costs and reward depletion rates. All groups scaled patch residence times with travel cost in a manner consistent with the marginal value theorem yet consistently overstayed beyond the optimal leaving time. The magnitude of overstaying was shaped by a strong interaction between sex and social status, with socially isolated females leaving patches closest to optimal and consuming food at the highest rate. Their foraging was accompanied by a coherent spatial and behavioral profile where the socially isolated females spent more time idle, preferentially occupying protected regions near the door and corridor, and avoiding the exposed patch center during both active foraging and periods of idling. These patterns are consistent with a conservative, safety-oriented strategy that simultaneously minimizes exposure and maximizes caloric return. Social isolation does not uniformly impair cognition but can selectively bias female rats toward efficiency-maximizing foraging decisions, consistent with the ecological pressures faced by outcast females in wild rat colonies.

Species in stable social groups engage in diverse social interactions, where social competence - the ability to adjust behaviour using social information - can influence fitness. Yet, whether adaptive behavioural flexibility is expressed across contexts within individuals remains relatively untested. To address this, we exposed cooperatively breeding cichlids (Neolamprologus pulcher) to a role-reversal paradigm. In this species, the early social environment shapes social competence, with more competent individuals adjusting behaviour flexibly to social challenges, while individuals also show consistent differences in traits such as aggression. In the present study, individuals were successively assigned to two contrasting roles, smaller territory owners (TOs) and larger intruders (INTs). We predicted role-specific social competence metrics based on behaviours facilitating shelter acquisition. Social competence metrics correlated within, but not across the two roles. Competent TOs showed shorter latencies to submit, more submissive responses to received aggression, and low aggression after initial submission. Competent INTs escalated quickly and relied more on overt aggression rather than displays, allowing faster shelter acquisition. Across roles, individuals competent as TOs were not competent as INTs. In contrast, consistent individual differences in aggression across social roles suggest that stable behavioural tendencies ( animal personalities) may constrain how social competence shapes behavioural strategies.

Colour and contrast are commonly deployed in anti-predator signals like aposematism or deimatism. In oceans, colour information diminishes with depth, leaving blue bioluminescence the most common visual signal, regardless of function. Bioluminescence can deter predators, but without contrasting colours, how so is largely uncharacterized. Here, we test this by observing fish predators responding to prey that use defensive bioluminescence (Ostracods, Cypridinidae). By manipulating potential chemical defences of prey, and by comparing feeding responses to both luminescent and nonluminescent prey, we show that luminescent prey are unpalatable and use facultative bioluminescence as an aposematic signal. We observed active, luminescent prey secrete bioluminescence only after being attacked. Predatory fishes rarely consumed luminescent prey, especially compared to nonluminescent alternatives. Food treatments revealed that luminescent species may possess some unidentified defence over nonluminescent relatives because fishes also readily ate luminescent prey that had been treated (frozen or boiled), which removed such defences. Over the course of four experimental trials, predators were less likely to consume luminescent prey as their cumulative exposure to anti-predator light displays increased, indicative of learning. Despite their intermittency, temporally dynamic signals like aposematic bioluminescence may be as common and effective as better-studied static coloration, especially in marine ecosystems.

In turbulent environments, odorants from different sources arrive at different times, potentially providing cues for odor source segregation. In several invertebrate species, short differences in odorant onset enable freely moving animals to discriminate odorant mixtures. In vertebrates, however, studies of sensitivity to odorant onset asynchrony have been conducted under highly constrained sampling conditions, such as with odor delivery tightly coupled to respiration. In this study, we investigated whether domestic dogs could detect odorant onset asynchrony in odorant mixtures under conditions that preserve key features of natural odor sampling. Dogs performed a discrimination task in which odor stimuli were presented as ongoing pulse trains that began independently of animal behavior, avoiding artificial synchronization of odor delivery with sniff cycles. Dogs were trained to discriminate between mixtures of two odorants with synchronous onsets and mixtures with asynchronous onsets. Of the dogs trained, one was able to discriminate odorant onset asynchronies as short as 633 ms. Dogs also displayed sensitivity to auditory stimulus onset asynchrony, discriminating auditory asynchronies as short as 30 ms. These results provide the first demonstration of temporal sensitivity in canine olfaction and the first evidence that vertebrates can use odorant onset asynchrony under conditions that permit free odor sampling.

Risk-taking behaviour permeates daily decision-making across many taxa and has significant impact on fitness outcomes. Previous research finds that individuals display consistent tendencies in their propensity to take risks, often labelled as a "Boldness-Shyness" personality trait. In this experimental study, we investigated repeatability in risk-taking behaviour in 241 wild vervet monkeys by measuring their responses to capture threat (via human-initiated darting procedure) and predation threat (via two predator models). We further examined the influence of socio-demographic, group identity and hormonal factors on risk-taking behaviour. We found that multiple behavioural responses, including the likelihood of approaching a food source under threat, were consistent across contexts. Risk-taking behaviour was influenced by age, sex, dominance rank, and hormonal profiles: juveniles, males, and higher-ranking individuals were more likely to approach food under (perceived) predation risk. Additionally, we observed significant among-group differences, suggesting that individuals within the same social group exhibit similar risk sensitivities, potentially due to social facilitation or shared environmental effects. The findings contribute to our understanding of animal personality and the ecological and social drivers underlying variation in risk-related behaviours.

Songbirds, such as Bengalese finches (Lonchura striata domestica) produce syntactically organized vocal sequences, composed of individual syllables strung together in variable order. Adult birds can learn to modify transition probabilities between syllables through sequence modification training: when punishing one transition with manipulated auditory feedback, birds will gradually reduce the targeted transition. This protocol is thought to rely on a circuit for vocal-auditory monitoring of the birds own song. Despite the overwhelming usefulness of food rewards for other kinds of trained animal behavior, reinforcing birdsong features with food rewards has remained elusive, possibly because the slow timescale of food reward does not match the fast and precise vocal-auditory feedback loops underlying learned birdsong. Here, we use second-order conditioning to selectively increase the frequency of target transitions in song with food rewards. Bengalese finches learned to associate a delayed primary reinforcer (food delivery by an automated feeder after song ends) with a secondary reinforcer (a short click sound). We then reinforced specific target syllables with the click during ongoing song, leading birds to selectively increase the frequency of the targeted syllable transitions. Learned changes were specific to the target and evident in catch trials without reinforcement, indicative of a learning process. Our results demonstrate that song control circuits can learn from different feedback modalities, including learned associations with food reward.

When encountering a predator, prey must choose between immobility and flight, a decision shaped by predator proximity, habitat structure, body size, and evolutionary history. Despite extensive work on optimal escape theory, few studies have jointly modelled both the decision to flee and the intensity of flight in a phylogenetic comparative framework. Here, we used a Bayesian phylogenetic hurdle log-normal model to analyze the probability of immobility and the conditional jump distance in 534 trials from 89 males across 17 Neotropical frog species (seven families), exposed to a simulated snake predator in three arenas of varying structural complexity. Physical contact with the predator (touch) was the strongest predictor, reducing immobility probability from 94% to 15% and increasing jump distance by 26%. Habitat complexity increased immobility (bush > leaf litter > empty), and frogs in open arenas jumped 31% farther. Larger-bodied species were substantially more likely to remain immobile but did not jump farther, indicating that body size determines strategy choice rather than locomotor magnitude. Phylogenetic signal was strong for both components (Pagels {lambda} = 0.80 for jump distance; {lambda} = 0.71 for immobility), with phylogeny accounting for 69-75% of variance. Species random effects formed a phylomorphospace in which fossorial species showed highest immobility and arboreal/torrent species favored active escape. Substantial individual-level variation in immobility tendency (25% of variance) provides a heritable substrate for ongoing selection. Frog antipredator strategies are jointly shaped by ecological context and evolutionary history; hurdle models offer a powerful framework for decomposing behavioral decisions. LAY SUMMARYWhen a predator approaches, prey must choose between staying still or fleeing -- a decision depending on body size, habitat, and shared evolutionary history. We exposed 17 frog species to a snake in arenas of varying vegetation cover. Frogs fled when touched but mostly stayed still when only approached; larger species and those in dense vegetation were most likely to remain immobile. These antipredator strategies were strongly shaped by frogs shared ancestry.

Animals rely on a wide range of environmental signals, including celestial and terrestrial cues for navigation. While celestial cues, such as the sun, play a major role in maintaining a constant heading during long-distance migration and dispersal, terrestrial cues provide an animal with a short-range navigation system, ideal to pinpoint highly specific locations. In Monarch butterflies, the simulation of a terrestrial landmark, i.e. a vertical stripe, induces an attraction behavior (all animals head toward the stimulus) while a small green light spot, simulating the sun, elicits menotactic orientation (animals adopt individual-specific headings relative to the stimulus). However, the mechanisms underlying how the animal distinguishes between a stimulus as a terrestrial landmark versus a celestial cue remains unclear. To explore this, we tested non-migratory Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) in a flight simulator. The inner surface of simulator was equipped with an area of LEDs, allowing to present different visual stimuli to the butterflies during tethered flight. By systematically manipulating the stimulus width, height, brightness, and elevation we found that Monarch butterflies exhibited attraction behavior to high contrast areas, like stripe edges. Menotactic behavior was not achieved by solely decreasing the stimulus to a small light spot but also required for the stimulus to be presented at higher elevation to be interpreted as a sun stimulus. These findings suggest that multiple parameters, inherently set by the butterflys navigation system, are critical to interpret a visual stimulus as celestial cue or terrestrial landmark, producing dynamic switches between different orientation strategies during navigation.

Collective movement requires coordination between individuals, yet how this emerges during early interactions remains poorly understood. We investigated how partner familiarity influences coordination, leader-follower dynamics, and learning in homing pigeon pairs navigating from novel sites. Birds were released repeatedly with either familiar or unfamiliar partners, followed by solo releases to assess learning. By quantifying bidirectional information flow, we found familiarity influenced information-transfer dynamics during the first release: familiar pairs exhibited more asymmetric information transfer, likely reflecting established leader-follower relationships, whereas unfamiliar pairs showed more symmetric exchange. These differences disappeared after one release. Conversely, familiarity had little effect on cohesion or navigational performance. There was some evidence for an influence on learning: birds from familiar pairings had higher homing efficiency on a subsequent solo release. Finally, across partnerships, followership was more predictable than leadership with respect to individual identity and flight speed, indicating stable variation in individuals' tendency to follow rather than lead. This suggests that a shift in emphasis from leadership to followership might enhance our understanding of collective decision-making dynamics. Our results demonstrate how flight partners rapidly coordinate, producing limited downstream effects on navigation and learning, with implications for many animals that travel in fission-fusion transitory collectives.

In over a thousand avian species, pairs coordinate vocalizations to form duets. Songbirds may use calls (simple, non-learned vocalizations) and songs (complex, learned vocalizations) to answer their partners. In Galapagos Yellow Warblers (Setophaga petechia aureola), song answers in duets appear to have evolved recently in addition to older call answers. Here, we explored the structure and functions of duets in an observational study to understand why song answers in duets may have evolved. We first described the temporal structure of duets initiated by either sex. We then tested whether the distance between pair members, countersinging with neighbours, and timing relative to aggressive encounters predicted answering probability for each sex. Finally, we tested whether the behavioral context of call and song answers differed. We found that most duets were initiated by males, and call answers were almost exclusively given by females. Female answers were also more tightly coordinated than those of males. Female answering probability decreased with increasing distance between pair members, whereas male answering probability did not. In addition, females were less likely to answer with songs when farther from their mate. Females answering probability also increased slightly when their mates initiation was preceded by a neighbors song. Our results show some evidence in support of the joint resource defence hypothesis for female answers. On the other hand, the significance of song in female answers may be related to some other functions that we did not test here, such as signaling quality or commitment to the pair bond. Lay summaryWho turns a song into a duet? In Galapagos Yellow Warblers, it is usually the female: she answers her mates song with a tightly timed call or song. Male replies were rarer and less coordinated. While male replies didnt seem to have a function, female replies were used in territorial disputes with neighbours and may indicate joint ownership of a territory. Female song replies, on the other hand, may signal commitment to the pair bond.

Many arthropods (insects and crustaceans) rely on their antennular chemosensory system to detect key environmental resources like food. While odor mediated food search is well studied in insects, characterization of crustacean chemosensory behavior has been limited by the long lifespans and large size of traditional crustacean model species. Here, we report the first characterizations of the food search behaviors of the genetically tractable amphipod crustacean, Parhyale hawaiensis. We find that Parhyale can locate an odorous food pellet, and predominantly approach food using direct, targeted swims from the arena walls. Removal of both first and second antennae dramatically reduced foraging success and impaired Parhyales ability to control take-off angle and maintain a stable heading during swims. Removal of the first or second antenna alone did not significantly disrupt foraging, and resulted in mild disruption of orientation phenotypes. Intact animals performed sharp turns near the location of the food pellet, which were observed when either first or second antenna were present, but not when all antennae were removed. Turns were longer and had higher average angular velocities following removal of either set of antennae, with full antenna removals representing the most extreme phenotype. In contrast with the long-held theory that the crustacean second antennae exclusively mediate contact chemosensation, we report that first- and second- antennae both contribute similarly to food localization and stabilization of locomotion in Parhyale in our behavioral paradigm. This work establishes Parhyale as an accessible model for studying olfactory behaviors in an aquatic arthropod.

The platform-mediated active avoidance (PMA) task has been used as a rodent model of decision-based active avoidance in which rat learn to avoid a tone-signaled shock. Prior studies utilizing the PMA task have primarily investigated avoidance, freezing, and food-seeking behaviors, but few studies have thoroughly assessed darting behavior, a more recently identified measure of fear that has been largely explored in conditional fear paradigms. Here, we investigated the properties of darting that occur during the PMA task, in which rats either acquired the PMA task alone or with a social partner. We found that rats undergoing solitary PMA produced significantly more darting bouts, whereas rats undergoing social partner PMA produced darts that were faster and shorter in duration. We also found that darting in solitary PMA was predominantly concentrated at the platform, whereas darting in social partner PMA occurred more often outside of the platform and lever zones. Analysis of darting trajectories, which included movements surrounding each darting bout, revealed that darting was embedded in a broader movement strategy between the platform and lever zones, especially during solitary PMA, and this pattern increased across training days. These findings suggest that darting during the PMA task serves as a learned strategy to navigate between reward and safety and is modulated by social context, which is distinct from escape-like darting observed in auditory fear conditioning.

To make adaptive foraging decisions, naive individuals need to gather information about the local prey community. Besides sampling prey personally, the young could gather information about prey profitability by observing the foraging behaviour of other individuals, and parental provisioning provides the first opportunity to acquire this social information. Still, previous research on vertical transmission of prey preferences from parents has provided mixed results that are often confounded with other information sources, such as siblings and peers. It is also not known whether information from parents can change potential innate biases against certain prey types, such as avoidance of warningly coloured insects. Here, we tested whether social information acquired by offspring during parental provisioning influences the development of prey preferences in a generalist predator, the Great Tit (Parus major). We brought 15 great tit broods and their parents into captivity at late nestling stage (14 days old) and divided them into three social information treatments where parents were provided with either brown, red or yellow palatable maggots to feed to their dependent young for 8 days. Once foraging independently from parents, we conducted a preference test where juveniles were offered the full array of coloured maggots. Regardless of palatable exposure to typical warning-coloured maggots (i.e. red and yellow), juveniles consistently preferred yellow over red, and preferred brown maggots the most (i.e. lacking warning coloration). This supports the existence of innate biases against typical warning colours, and that social information from parents is unlikely to override these, at least when alternative prey is easily available.