Animal cognition Animal cognition Animal cognition describes the mental capacities of non-human animals and the study of those capacities. The field developed from comparative psychology, including the study of animal conditioning and learning. It has also been strongly influenced by research in ethology, behavioral ecology, and evolutionary psychology, and hence the alternative name cognitive ethology is sometimes used. Many behaviors associated with the term "animal intelligence" are also subsumed within animal cognition. Researchers have examined animal cognition in mammals (especially primates, cetaceans, elephants, dogs, cats, pigs, horses, cattle, raccoons and rodents), birds (including parrots, fowl, corvids and pigeons), reptiles (lizards and snakes),
Animal model of autism Animal model of autism The development of an animal model of autism is one approach researchers use to study potential causes of autism. Given the complexity of autism and its etiology, researchers often focus only on single features of autism when using animal models. One of the more common rodent models is the Norway rat ("Rattus norvegicus"). More recent research has used the house mouse ("Mus musculus") to model autism because it is a social species. Other strains of mice used include mu opioid receptor knockout mice, as well as "Fmr1" knockout mice; the latter are also used as animal