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Anthropocentric bias may explain research disparities between animal tool use and nest building

Street, Sally E., Hamilton, Inga and Healy, Susan D. (2025) Anthropocentric bias may explain research disparities between animal tool use and nest building. Animal Behaviour, 226. p. 123240. ISSN 0003-3472

Item Type: Article

Abstract

Scientists are not immune from bias. Studying nonhuman species objectively is inherently challenging, especially for ‘charismatic’ and ostensibly human-like behaviours. Animal tool use is a prime example: while often considered a hallmark of intelligence, the amount of research attention and public interest it generates seems disproportionate when compared with other behaviours involving similar manipulative skills, particularly nest building. Here, we reveal striking disparities in the treatment of tool use and nest building in the animal behaviour literature. We find that tool use publications are more highly cited, are more likely to be published in higher-impact journals and use more terminology suggestive of ‘intelligence’ and human-like cognition compared with nest building publications. Our findings are not confounded by taxonomic biases: these disparities persist even within studies of great apes and Corvus species. Further, we find that articles with more frequent use of ‘intelligent’ terminology are more highly cited, suggesting incentives for the use of anthropomorphic language in scientific articles. Finally, we find that tool use papers are more highly cited than nest building papers even when controlling for the use of ‘intelligent’ language, showing that both language use and behaviour have additive effects on research attention. We argue that these research disparities are partly driven by a widespread assumption that tool use requires more complex cognition than nest building. Since the cognitive mechanisms underpinning either behaviour are still not well understood, we suggest that the widespread appeal of animal tool use is partly due to anthropocentrism.

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Additional Information: ** Article version: VoR ** From Elsevier via Jisc Publications Router ** History: accepted 06-03-2025; epub 27-06-2025; issued 31-08-2025. ** Licence for VoR version of this article starting on 06-06-2025: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
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Identifiers

Item ID: 19181
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123240
ISSN: 0003-3472
URI: http://sure.sunderland.ac.uk/id/eprint/19181

Users with ORCIDS

ORCID for Sally E. Street: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-8939-8016
ORCID for Inga Hamilton: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-8831-1780

Catalogue record

Date Deposited: 30 Jul 2025 14:22
Last Modified: 30 Jul 2025 14:42

Contributors

Author: Sally E. Street ORCID iD
Author: Inga Hamilton ORCID iD
Author: Susan D. Healy

University Divisions

Faculty of Education, Society and Creative Industries

Subjects

Social Sciences > Sociology
Psychology
Sciences

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