As cultivators of behavior, we recognize that attention to an animal's social needs is as essential as a farmer's attention to good soil. Farmers begin to see the effects of poor soil quite quickly as yields decline. Social malnourishment is harder to recognize and easier to ignore. To achieve this goal, we leave the typical laboratory cage behind and fashion semi-naturalistic environments, environments balancing our need to see an animal with the animal's need to space and security. Such settings reveal behaviors even hard to see in the wild.
Social experience affects the process and outcome of vocal ontogeny in two populations of cowbirds.
Female visual displays affect the development of male song in the cowbird.