We developed the Innovation Arena as a tool to compare different species or groups of animals in their innovative problem-solving abilities.The advantage of this method is that we present the subjects with 20 tasks simultaneously.With this, we can on the one hand identify differences that might be due to species-specific predispositions, but on the other hand also extract or estimate a more general problem-solving competence.In this first study we compared two groups of the same species:the Goffin
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The Innovation Arena is a novel comparative method for studying technical innovation rate per time unit in animals. It is composed of 20 different problem-solving tasks, which are presented simultaneously. Innovations can be carried out freely and the setup is robust with regard to predispositions on an individual, population or species level.
Rössler, T., Mioduszewska, B., O’Hara, M., Huber, L., Prawiradilaga, D. M., Auersperg, A. M. I. The Innovation Arena: A Method for Comparing Innovative Problem-Solving Across Groups. J. Vis. Exp. (183), e63026, doi:10.3791/63026 (2022).