Highlights•The ecological approach to cognitionaims at understanding within and between
species differences in cognitive performance.•It is key to understand individual and species' …

An animal that tries to remove a mark from its body that is only visible when looking into a
mirror displays the capacity for mirror self-recognition (MSR), which has been interpreted as …

In pretty much any species, an individual's survival and reproduction depends crucially on
the outcome of interactions with other individuals. Key interactions may take place between …

It is generally agreed that variation in social and/or environmental complexity yields variation
in selective pressures on brain anatomy, where more complex brains should yield increased …

Mosaic brain evolution, the change in the size of separate brain regions in response to
selection on cognitive performance, is an important idea in the field of cognitive evolution …

The social environment of animals influences individual social decisions, which in turn feeds
back on the social environment. The two halves of this feedback loop are rarely studied in …

Wild-type Norway rats reciprocate help received in a well-replicated experimental food-
giving task, but the criteria to appraise the received help's value are unclear. We tested …

The 'social brain hypothesis' proposes a causal link between social complexity and either
brain size or the size of key brain parts known to be involved in cognitive processing and …

Memory is essential to enhance future survival and reproduction as it helps in storing and
retrieving useful information to solve particular environmental problems. However, we lack …

Males and females of the same species are known to differ at least in some cognitive
domains, but such differences are not systematic across species. As a consequence, it …