SHORT COMMUNICATION Picture object recognition in an American black bear (Ursus americanus) Zoe Johnson-Ulrich 1 • Jennifer Vonk 1 • Mary Humbyrd 2 • Marilyn Crowley 2 • Ela Wojtkowski 2 • Florence Yates 2 • Stephanie Allard 2 Received: 18 January 2016 / Revised: 5 June 2016 / Accepted: 18 June 2016 Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016 Abstract Many animals have been tested for conceptual discriminations using two-dimensional images as stimuli, and many of these species appear to transfer knowledge from 2D images to analogous real life objects. We tested an American black bear for picture-object recognition using a two alternative forced choice task. She was presented with four unique sets of objects and corresponding pictures. The bear showed generalization from both objects to pictures and pictures to objects; however, her transfer was superior when transferring from real objects to pictures, suggesting that bears can recognize visual features from real objects within photographic images during discriminations. Keywords Bear Á Picture Á Object Á Recognition Á Discrimination Introduction Many animals show what is called ‘‘picture-object recogni- tion’’, in which they respond to pictures and their corre- sponding real-life objects in similar ways (Bovet and Vauclair 2000). This is an important issue in the field of comparative cognition considering the widespread use of photographic stimuli (e.g. Bussey et al. 2008; Cook et al. 2004) particularly in concept and categorization studies (see Weisman and Spetch 2010). Responses to photographs fall into two categories: acquired and spontaneous responses (Bovet and Vauclair 2000). Acquired responses are those that the animal acquires through learning in one modality (real or photograph); recognition is assessed by observing transfer of the acquired response to the alternate modality. Spontaneous responses are those that do not require learning; recognition is assessed by observing species-appropriate behaviors when presented with photographic stimuli. Recognition in this case does not necessarily indicate explicit correspondence or representation of objects as pictures (Weisman and Spetch 2010), but does show that discriminations can be transferred between modalities, regardless of what features an animal is attending to when making that transfer. Indeed, many species appear to respond to certain features of photographic stimuli in transfer, such as color (e.g., hens: Railton et al. 2014). To infer correspondence, as some studies have done, one must demonstrate stimulus generalization based on a concept of an object (e.g. Spetch and Friedman 2006; Watanabe 1993, 1997). Although studies that demonstrate picture- object correspondence are less common, there are many examples of recognition, both acquired and spontaneous. On two-alternative forced choice tasks, transfer between real objects and pictures of those objects has been shown with hens, rhesus monkeys (see Bovet and Vauclair 2000, for review), pigeons (Cabe 1976), tortoises (Wilkinson et al. 2013), and horses (Hanggi 2001). Picture-object matching has been shown with rhesus monkeys (Bovet and Vauclair 2000). Lion-tailed macaques will choose pho- tographs of preferred foods to receive that food (Judge et al. 2012). Dogs can follow human commands presented through video projection (Pongra ´cz et al. 2003), and many animals, including fish, reptiles, birds, sheep and non-hu- man primates, show appropriate behaviors in response to pictures (Bovet and Vauclair 2000). However, due to dif- ferences in visual abilities (e.g., acuity, color vision, depth & Jennifer Vonk vonk@oakland.edu 1 Department of Psychology, Oakland University, 654 Pioneer Drive, Rochester 48309, MI, USA 2 Detroit Zoological Society, Royal Oak, USA 123 Anim Cogn DOI 10.1007/s10071-016-1011-4