ECR Spotlight – Akihiro Itahara Free

Akihiro Itahara

How did you become interested in biology?

I became fascinated with the various roles that animals play in myths when I was in high school. Among them, crows in particular play an important role in myths such as the creation of the world and as messengers of the gods. That's how I became interested in crows. As I read fascinating studies on the mind and intelligence of crows conducted over the last 30 years, my interest in understanding what animals understand, what they are capable of, and how they interact with human was sparked.

Describe your scientific journey and your current research focus

I have been working on gaze tracking in large-billed crows (Corvus macrorhynchos) since I was an undergraduate. At the time that I visited Kumamoto Sanctuary to observe chimpanzees and bonobos, my current supervisor, Dr Kano, was building a new crow house to start the project to study cognition in crows. While observing crows, I became interested in their interactions with each other and joined this project. Due to the difficulty of tracking head movements in crows stably, our first work was to construct a motion capture room specifically designed to track the head movements of crows. Since both Dr Kano and I enjoy making things, we built most of our facility ourselves. Using this system and our data processing pipeline, we achieved high accuracy (rotational errors <1 degree) in tracking the head orientation of crows. Furthermore, we were able to demonstrate the feasibility of inferring a crow's attentional focus using this system. This method allows us to study the behavior and cognition of birds in more detail. My current research focuses on their gaze communication and information-seeking behavior.

How would you explain the main findings of your paper to a member of the public?

To understand the minds of animals who don't speak human language, it is necessary to infer cognitive abilities from their behavior, which is why many researchers have used gaze direction to study perception and cognition in human infants and primates. However, tracking gaze direction in birds is challenging due to the difficulty of tracking rapid three-dimensional head movements and the wide variation in visual field configuration between bird species. In our previous study, we established a motion capture system specialized for tracking head movements in crows. In the current study, we investigated the possibility of using the motion capture system to infer the direction of attention in crows. As visual field configuration has never been measured in this crow species, we first examined their visual field configuration to predict the head angle at which crows could orient to a visual target. We then tracked the head orientations of freely moving crows using a motion capture system and examined how crows orient their visual field to a visual target. The results showed that the crows oriented certain regions of the visual field to visual targets. When visual targets were moving, the crows frequently used their binocular visual field, especially around the projection of the beak-tip. When visual targets were not moving, the crows frequently used non-binocular visual fields, particularly around the regions where their eye centers (optic axes) were located. This selective use of the visual field means that head orientation is useful for inferring a crow's focus of attention. Using our unique method, we will continue to investigate behavior and cognition in crows.

Why did you choose JEB to publish your paper?

JEB is a well-known journal in the field of biology and contains many cutting-edge and innovative technologies for the study of animal behavior and psychology. As this journal covers a wide range of biological topics (e.g. anatomy, ethology, morphology, technology), JEB has given us many insights and helped us a lot to develop our system and to imagine a future possibility of our system. We are proud to publish in this journal, which has long been at the forefront of biology.

What do you enjoy most about research, and why?

The most enjoyable part of my research is when I'm making equipment for experiments. Thanks to my supervisor, Dr Kano, I have been able to gain a lot of experience in crafting and building. When I joined this research project, we built a crow house and an infrared motion capture room ourselves in a few months. Through the construction, my handicraft skills improved a lot. Now I design and build various equipment and environments for the experiments. It's rewarding when, after repeated destruction by crows and improvements, the equipment finally works well.

What is the hardest challenge you have faced in the course of your research and how did you overcome it?

The biggest challenge was getting research funding. When I was a masters student, I did not have enough secured research funding. And I found out that there are not many funding opportunities. So, I decided to start crowd funding. Contrary to my prediction, thanks to the support of 80 people, I was able to get enough funding to continue my studies during my masters. I'm glad I started crowdfunding because the support I received from friends, teachers, local residents, researchers and many other people made me realize the need not only to do research that people would find interesting, but also to give the results back to society.