Animal Intelligence

By far my favorite aspect of animal intelligence are the stories of interspecies friendships. A goat that hangs out with tiger cubs? A pig that befriends a bear? A moose and a tern who are inseparable? These sorts of things make my day. I want to believe that on some level, all animals are capable of empathy with other animals. (I realize that I may be stretching things there, but that’s okay. I’m aware of my weakness in this area.)

Therefor, I love this video:

Here we have a dog. And a cat. And a rat. The three of them live in what seems to be perfect harmony. “The dog raised the cat,” says Greg, the animals’ owner. “That’s her puppy.”

I love how these animals seem to want to be around each other. They huddle together (probably out of fear, it’s true — they’re in a downtown area), they groom each other.

It’d be great to find more videos like this…

Here’s one a couple months old. The 20 January 2008 edition of the Toronto Star reported on two new stuides about the brains of squirrels.

First, from the journal Animal Behaviour (which sounds like something I need to be reading!), biologist Michael Steele at Wilkes University in Pennsylvania has been examining how squirrels cache nuts. Apparently, they’re concerned enough about theft to “fake it” sometimes:

While the furry-tailed creatures made a show of digging a hole in the ground and covering it with dirt and leaves when watched, one time out of five they were faking and nothing was buried. The proportion of phony caching increased after the squirrels saw their morsels being filched by undergrads who had kept a keen watch on where the nuts were really buried. Steele speculates that the squirrel brains have an inkling about the intention to steal, by either two- or four-legged thieves.

The second study is interesting, too. Some squirrels in the southwestern part of the United States are bitter enemies with the rattlesnake. Their bodies provide some defense (they can tolerate snake venom), but they’ve also developed special behaviors to avoid being attacked in the first place:

Animal-behaviour researcher Barbara Clucas, at the University of California, Davis, investigated how squirrels employ false scent to reduce detection in the first place.Scientists had already discovered that squirrels will chew on discarded rattlesnake skins and then vigorously lick their fur, effectively applying an olfactory camouflage.

This might have been a way to repel fleas or drive away other squirrels. In the current issue of the Royal Society’s Proceedings B, Clucas and colleagues ruled out these two possibilities. By recording the rate of tongue flicking, they showed that rattlesnakes were more attracted to squirrel scent on its own than to squirrel scent combined with their own snaky scent.

“Snaky scent” — ha!

[Toronto Star: A week's worth of science news — Squirrel Smarts]

A recent Discovery News article indicates that some primates may have a richer vocabulary than previously believed — but that their language may just take an unfamiliar form. Author Jennifer Viegas writes:

While such syntax-like behavior has been described in other species, such as whales and dolphins, the new findings are the first to clearly demonstrate the skill in a non-human primate.

“What our research shows is that individual calls do not carry any specific meanings, but different call sequences do,” co-author Klaus Zuberbuhler told Discovery News.

“So, for example, a series of hacks almost certainly indicates the presence of a crowned eagle, whereas a series of hacks preceded by 1 to 2 pyows reliably indicates that the caller is about to start traveling away,” added Zuberbuhler, who is a researcher in the School of Psychology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

The article describes the study’s method, which consisted of researches playing recorded calls and observing the results. I’m fascinated how our own preconceptions about language play into studies like this. It’s easy for humans to observe other animals and conclude that no language-based communication is occurring — it doesn’t resemble our language after all! But our lack of comprehension does not necessarily imply a lack of language.

[Discovery News: Monkey vocab richer than thought]

In an older post about elephants in love, Lynne shared the following story. With her permission, I’m posting it as an entry.

I volunteered at a zoo back in the 1970’s doing animal behavior observations with elephants and others.  I spent one hour each week observing and recording what I saw.

One week I watched the herd bull and a young cow who had never been pregnant. It was hoped that would soon change, so the two were cooped up in the viewing rooms of the barn to get acquainted and do the deed.  The youngster was utterly disinterested.  The bull was gentle, interested, and persistent, using his trunk to stroke her and sniff her.  Repeatedly, she simply moved off to the other side of the room.  Nothing more happened in that hour. 

The next week, I observed the same two animals plus another female. My supervisor told me the new animal was an experienced female who understood sex, and who might be able to teach the reluctant youngster a thing or two.  This ‘older woman’ flirted w/ the bull unashamedly.  The bull immediately responded. The two stood face to face, trunks stroking, exploring, and sniffing each other’s bodies.  The reluctant youngster simply watched from across the room. She seemed to be glaring, but I think it was her constant slight agitation that made me think that.

She stood beside an enormous metal chain with a ring on the end, which hung from the roof.  This chain could be pulled by the elephants at any time to activate a carwash that had been installed in their doorway.  The elephants could then give themselves a shower whenever they wanted.  The reluctant youngster never left the immediate area of the chain.  She stood watching intently as the happy couple petted and rumbled and attempted to copulate.  As soon as the couple neared the doorway, the youngster pulled the chain dousing them both with cold water, and the five foot erection would disappear.  

She did this 3 times during my hour of observation.  I couldn’t believe my eyes. The zoo patrons were pretty amazed too.  It was interesting to see the women going up close to watch, giggling and talking to one another.  The few men who came in abruptly left without a word. 

On the following week, the experienced ‘older woman’ was gone.  Little Miss Reluctance and the bull were happily groping each other and ignoring the crowd of interested visitors.

Elaine sent me more evidence of fish intelligence. Researchers have discovered that certain fish can count. But only up to four. According to the London Telegraph:

Previously it was known that fish could tell big shoals from small ones, but researchers have now found that they have a limited ability to count how many other fish are nearby. This means that they have similar counting abilities to those observed in apes, monkeys and dolphins and humans with very limited mathematical ability.

Christian Agrillo, an experimental psychologist at the university of Padua in Italy said: “We have provided the first evidence that fish exhibit rudimentary mathematical abilities.”

Last year, he and his colleagues showed that if a female mosquito fish is harassed by a male, she will try to avoid his attentions by seeking solace in the largest nearby shoal; demonstrating that the fish can tell bigger shoals from smaller ones. The team first conducted a series of experiments to see whether a lone mosquito fish would prefer to join a shoal of between two and four others.

This article is fascinating because it describes the notion of numbers, not just among animals, but among non-mathematical humans.

[London Telegraph: Fish can count to four — but no higher]

“You’re home blogging full-time now,” a friend wrote me recently. “Does that mean there’s a chance you’ll revive Animal Intelligence? Again?” Why sure!

A couple of people sent me this BBC News story about a New Zealand dolphin that helped to rescue a pair of beached whales. Due to copyright issues, I’ve been trying not to quote entire articles, but this one is so good that I’m going to make an exception:

A dolphin has come to the rescue of two whales which had become stranded on a beach in New Zealand. Conservation officer Malcolm Smith told the BBC that he and a group of other people had tried in vain for an hour and a half to get the whales to sea.

The pygmy sperm whales had repeatedly beached, and both they and the humans were tired and set to give up, he said. But then the dolphin appeared, communicated with the whales, and led them to safety.

The bottlenose dolphin, called Moko by local residents, is well known for playing with swimmers off Mahia beach on the east coast of the North Island. Mr Smith said that just when his team was flagging, the dolphin showed up and made straight for them.

“I don’t speak whale and I don’t speak dolphin,” Mr Smith told the BBC, “but there was obviously something that went on because the two whales changed their attitude from being quite distressed to following the dolphin quite willingly and directly along the beach and straight out to sea.”

He added: “The dolphin did what we had failed to do. It was all over in a matter of minutes.”

Mr Smith said he felt fortunate to have witnessed the extraordinary event, and was delighted for the whales, as in the past he has had to put down animals which have become beached.

He said that the whales have not been seen since, but that the dolphin had returned to its usual practice of playing with swimmers in the bay.

“I shouldn’t do this I know, we are meant to remain scientific,” Mr Smith said, “but I actually went into the water with the dolphin and gave it a pat afterwards because she really did save the day.”

This is one of my favorite animal intelligence stories ever. I love the interaction between the whales and humans, between dolphin and whales, and between humans and dolphin. I love that the locals know this dolphin. I love that the story involves one of the great animal mysteries: why do whales beach themselves? And, too, I love that Mr. Smith obviously has great respect and affection for Moko.

Animal Intelligence is back up and running. Again. Send me your stories!

[BBC: NZ dolphin rescues beached whales]

I am in awe over this newstory about a Siberian woman who shares her apartment with 136 cats. 136 cats!

I have four cats, and even they are too much to control. Every one of them is an individual being with a strong personality. How in the world could anyone cope with 136 of the critters.

This woman intends to help these animals, but is she really? I can’t decide. I, too, would want to keep them from being euthanized, but perhaps euthenization is better than some fates.

And where are the litter boxes? Please tell me there are litter boxes. Like 40 of them…

People keep sending me animal intelligence links, but I haven’t found the time to post them. Instead, here I am on a Saturday morning posting a video of a cat in a bathtub.

Have you ever seen such behavior? Most of my cats hate water. I have one, Max, who will drink from the faucet, and who likes to walk around the edge of the tub while I’m bathing, but he’d never do anything like this. Strange little kitten.

In August, the Guardian Unlimited reported on an elephant love story. It’s a short piece, so I’ll quote it in its entirety:

It’s a very traditional love story — just on a bigger scale than usual. A tame female elephant has fled an Indian circus after eloping with a wild bull elephant that broke open a gate and led her off into the jungle, her distraught handler said today.

“I brought up Savitri since she joined the circus two decades ago,” Kalimudddin Sheikh, who unsuccessfully tried to lure his charge away from her new beau, added.

The wild male, who wildlife officials believe was probably in musth — the periodic condition in which bull elephants seek to mate — turned up at the travelling circus when it stopped in the village of Kumar Bazar, in West Bengal state, yesterday. It broke into an enclosure and led Savitri into the jungle, with the pair being followed by three other female elephants in the same pen. Their trumpeting alerted circus workers, who led them back.

Savitri’s mind, however, seemed made up. According to one forestry official, she was last seen bathing with the bull in a jungle pond. When handlers called for Savitri to come to them, she looped her trunk around the bull’s leg and “he protectively shielded her like in a Bollywood blockbuster,” the official said.

The forestry department said it would continue to monitor the pair to ensure they did not cause any damage.

Anyone who has spent a lot o time around animals knows that they show individual preferences for one person (or animal) over another. On a basic level, our cats and dogs prefer one family member to other family members. But as my past entries on interspecies friendships have shown, there’s more to it than that. Is it emotion? Is it instinctual? Is it an actual conscious preference?

[Guardian Unlimited: Jumbo romance]

Newsweek has an awesome slideshow profiling the Rhesus monkey infestation in northern India. There are ten photographs with brief captions describing the ways in which these creatures interact with the humans around them. Here’s the full text of the introduction by Rajesh Kumar Singh:

The Oct. 20 death of Delhi Deputy Mayor S. Bajwa, who died from a fall he took while trying to scare a troop of rhesus macaques off the balcony of his home, brought to the world’s attention a growing problem in India’s cities: how to make sure the country’s various primate species live in harmony with the dominant one — Homo sapiens.

Recently, Delhi’s rhesus macaques have been getting into all sorts of, well, monkey business, tossing around top-secret documents at the defense ministry, pursuing commuters right on to the cars of the city’s new subway system, even invading hospitals and yanking IVs out of patients’ arms so they can suck up the glucose.

photo by Channi Anaqnd, Associated Press

But dealing with the problem is tricky: the simians are sacred to Hindus; the cute but deceptively dangerous critters are representations of the monkey god Haruman.

As India’s metropolises expand, the monkeys’ natural habitat has been squeezed, resulting in even more confrontations between man and monkey. But animal-rights advocates have been critical of efforts to combat the problem — leading some local bigwigs, who live in the primates’ path, to bring in bigger monkeys in hopes of scaring off the smaller fry.

According to this week’s issue of Newsweek, this slideshow was the most-viewed story on newsweek.com last week. I love it.

[Newsweek: Monkeys in the middle]

Digging through the archives at Ask Metafilter, I stumbled upon an awesome discussion from last month. User showbiz_liz writes:

What are the arguments for and against the idea that animals have self-awareness?

I’m in an anthropology class called Moral Consciousness that discusses human conceptions of selfhood. It’s a very interesting class, but I have one problem with it- the professor has stated several times, in an off-hand, of-course-this-is-true sort of way, that ONLY humans have selfhood. He seems to have a basic assumption that animals don’t, and that humans have overcome their instincts in a way that animals can’t.

I’ve always been very interested in the idea that humans and animals are far less different than we usually assume, and I’m not sure if I can just accept my professor’s assumption without some evidence. I’m reminded of statements like “animals don’t use tools” and “animals don’t have emotions” that were accepted for years and later disproven. So, when he says that only humans are capable of thinking of themselves as “I”, or of rejecting food when they are starving, or of sacrificing themselves, or of thinking abstractly, it bothers me that he isn’t presenting any evidence. I’m not sure if there actually IS evidence for these things, or if they’re just baseless assumptions.

So- where can I find some decent evidence for and/or against my professor’s statements? Are there actually papers and studies on the question of animal self-awareness?

Last year, I wrote that researchers have concluded that elephants are self-aware. One commenter notes that primates and dolphins have also passed tests of self-awareness.

From the discussion at Ask Metafilter:

• It seems obvious that animals have emotions. My own experience backs this up. Every animal I have ever known has moods, and most seem to have emotions of some sort. I’m not always able to decipher their exact emotions — is my cat sad, angry, or just bored? — but it seems clear that they’re feeling something.
• It also seems obvious that different individual animals within a species have different levels of intelligence, just as different humans have different levels of intelligence. Again, I’ve known some very smart cats. But I’ve also known some cats who were as dumb as posts. There’s some sort of statistical distribution at play.

Anyhow, this thread isn’t too long — it can be read in ten or fifteen minutes — and it’s filled with fascinating discussion on the subject. Well worth your time if you find this subject interesting at all.

[Ask Metafilter: Dogs: People too?]

After yesterday’s story about drunken elephants, an Animal Intelligence reader pointed me to this video clip from the 1974 documentary Animals Are Beautiful People. In this scene, a variety of animals get a little tipsy from consuming fermented marula fruit.

According to the Wikipedia entry on this film, some critics believe this scene was staged. It’s possible, I suppose, but I believe it’s equally likely that these creatures like their marula fruit!

(By the way, I thought the film’s style looked familiar. Sure enough: writer/director Jamie Uys also created The Gods Must Be Crazy, a film of which I have fond memories.)

I’ve read many reports of animals who love alcohol just as much as humans do. But until now, I never knew that their wild parties could lead to drunken brawls. The West Australian has a story about a herd of elephants that had a little too much beer and then went on a rampage. Here’s an excerpt:

Six Asiatic wild elephants were electrocuted as they went berserk after drinking rice beer in India’s remote northeast, a wildlife official said today [23 Oct 2007].

The 40-strong herd uprooted an electric pole while looking desperately for food on Friday in Chandan Nukat, a village nearly 240km west of Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya state, said Sunil Kumar, a state wildlife official. “There would have been more casualties had the villagers not chased them away,” said Dipu Mark, a local conservationist.

The elephants are known to have a taste for rice beer brewed by tribal communities in India’s northeast. Four wild elephants had died similarly in the region three years ago.

There’s another story of elephants raiding the liquor cabinet at the end of this piece.

[The West Australian: Drunk elephant rampage ends in death]

My friend Joel loves pigs. That’s probably putting it a little strong. Joel respects pigs and believes they’re too intelligent to eat. He refuses to eat pork products. A life without bacon isn’t something I’m ready to pursue, but I’ll grant that our porcine cousins do have a reputation for braininess.

While browsing the web recently, I stumbled upon the story of Tom and DJ:

The story of Tom and DJ is a story about animal intelligence.  It’s a story of animals making up games among themselves and having fun, even between different species.  And most importantly, they do it on their own without human direction or prodding.

Peggy Couey of Dragonwood Farm, a pig sanctuary, wrote, “Today I was able to catch a shot of my little kitten Tom (aka Tom Mix) and his brother Jerry as Tom saddled up and rode out into the sunset on DJ, one of the little piglets here.   This is an every day event here, and they both love it.  Once DJ sets off Tom sits down lower and holds on.  I didn’t get the award winning picture but I did get one before they were both full grown!”

The Dragonwood Farm link led me to Shepherd’s Green Sanctuary, a non-profit that “exists to provide rescue, lifetime care and other aid and assistance to abandoned, abused, neglected, homeless and otherwise endangered pigs.” A shelter for pigs? I never knew such a thing existed.

There’s a lot of stuff here. As you’d expect, there are pig gifts (which are not gifts for pigs, but gifts of pig-related items such as calendars). But there are also pig stories! “Read them to your children, your parents, your friends. They will make you laugh, they will make you cry and they will make you think twice about these little beings we call pigs.”

There’s a huge list of pigs, many of which have mini-biographies.

This site is like some sort of strange obsession, but I love it.

While it would be keen of me to actually post some more animal intelligence news — I have ten browser tabs open, each with a different AI story — I’ve taken the liberty of sprucing things up around here instead. The original blog template was a makeshift thing, thrown together on the spur of the moment. This new template is still rather rushed, but I think it looks sharper. Plus it has pictures of animals!

Look for actual animal stories coming soon to a blog near you…

Patrick sent me the story of Peanut the parrot, who saved the life of his family by imitating a smoke detector. Here’s the story from the Associated Press (it’s short, so I’m quoting the entire thing):

MUNCIE, Ind. - A noisy parrot that likes to imitate sounds helped save a man and his son from a house fire by mocking a smoke alarm, the bird’s owner says.

Shannon Conwell, 33, said he and his 9-year-old son fell asleep on the couch while watching a movie. They awoke about 3 a.m. Friday to find their home on fire after hearing the family’s Amazon parrot, Peanut, imitating a fire alarm.
“He was really screaming his head off,” Conwell said.

The smoke alarm had activated, but it was the bird’s call that caught Conwell’s attention.”I grabbed my son and my bird and got out of the house,” he said. The fire destroyed the home’s dining room, kitchen and bedroom, Muncie fire officials said. It remains under investigation.

Aside from Peanut, Conwell said the fact that he and his son fell asleep on the couch helped save them. They may not have heard the alarm or the bird if they were asleep in their bedrooms. Conwell said he runs an air conditioner and a breathing machine in his bedroom and they drown out a lot of noise around the house.

[MSNBC: Parrot imitates fire alarm, saves family]

Since moving to our new house a little over three years ago, my wife and I have begun to love watching birds. We’re not serious about the hobby — we just dabble in it. We’ll stand at the kitchen counter and watch the jays, crows, pigeons, starlings, flickers, nuthatches, and more, as they go about their business in the yard.

From even casual observation it’s clear that each species has its own personality. The flickers seem to be pair-oriented — we wonder if maybe they bond for life? The pigeons are big, dumb eating machines. The starlings are bossy, but not nearly as bossy as the jays. The jays — which are plentiful in our yard — provide hours of entertainment. They’re full of personality. And they’re smart.

According to research presented a couple of years ago (but just unearthed through my internet ramblings), crows and jays top the bird IQ scale:

The avian intelligence index is based on 2,000 reports of feeding “innovations” observed in the wild and published in ornithology journals over a period of 75 years.

“We gathered as many examples as we could from the short notes of ornithology journals about the feeding behaviours that people had never seen or were unusual,” said Dr Lefebvre, of McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

“From that we established different numbers for different birds. There are differences. There are some kinds of birds that score higher than others. The crows, the jays, that kind of bird — the corvidae — are the tops; then the falcons are second, the hawks the herons and the woodpecker rank quite high.”

Dr Lefebvre said that many of the novel feeding behaviours he included in the work were mundane, but every once in a while, birds could be spectacularly inventive about obtaining their food.

During the war of liberation in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, a soldier and avid bird watcher observed vultures sitting on barbwire fences next to mine fields waiting for gazelles and other herbivores to wander in and get blown to smithereens. “It gave them a meal that was already ground up,” said Dr Lefebvre.

I’m constantly amazed that a jay will come flitting into the yard, lift up a leaf, and voila! there is a peanut it left for itself some time ago.

I believe that animals possess greater intelligence than most people give them credit for. But plants? I’ve never considered the possibility of plant intelligence. The idea seems absurd.

Yet I’ve had friends argue that plant intelligence might exist. “What are the differences between plants and animals?” they ask, and then argue about certain species (none of which I can remember) that seem to share traits of both.

New research suggests that plants communicate via “networks”. Plant communication is not a new idea, and not indicative of intelligence, but interesting nonetheless:

Recent research from Vidi researcher Josef Stuefer at the Radboud University Nijmegen reveals that plants have their own chat systems that they can use to warn each other. Therefore plants are not boring and passive organisms that just stand there waiting to be cut off or eaten up. Many plants form internal communications networks and are able to exchange information efficiently.

Many herbal plants such as strawberry, clover, reed and ground elder naturally form networks. Individual plants remain connected with each other for a certain period of time by means of runners. These connections enable the plants to share information with each other via internal channels. They are therefore very similar to computer networks. But what do plants want to chat to each other about?

Recently Stuefer and his colleagues were the first to demonstrate that clover plants warn each other via the network links if enemies are nearby. If one of the plants is attacked by caterpillars, the other members of the network are warned via an internal signal. Once warned, the intact plants strengthen their chemical and mechanical resistance so that they are less attractive for advancing caterpillars. Thanks to this early warning system, the plants can stay one step ahead of their attackers. Experimental research has revealed that this significantly limits the damage to the plants.

Again, I don’t believe this reflects intelligence, but it is certainly fascinating.

[Physorg: Clever plants chat over their own network]

If I saw it on Digg, it must be good, right? The Presurfer writes:

These video clips are from the film, Daylight Robbery II, which aired on the Discovery Channel in November of 1995. It was produced by the B.B.C. and presented by Dr. Jessica Holm.

In any event, it’s amazing stuff:

We have a lot of squirrels on our property. We don’t have anything this elaborate rigged for them, but if they run out of peanuts in their special basket (which my wife keeps filled), they’ll make assaults on the bird feeder outside the kitchen window, which requires a little rodent intelligence to accomplish…

Golb Guru passed along yet another article about the intelligence of the of the New Caledonian crow. Like the last one, it’s written by Rebecca Morelle of the BBC. This time she reports that scientists have developed away to mount small cameras to the birds in order to learn more about their behavior.

Recent advances in mobile phone technology enabled the researchers to construct a camera that was small enough to attach to a crow’s tail without impairing its movements. They attached the 14g (0.5oz) units — which also contained a radio tag to transmit location coordinates — to the tail feathers of 18 New Caledonian crows.

The footage, broadcasted to the researchers’ custom-built receivers, provided the team with a unique insight into the crows’ behaviour — including some that had never been seen before.

Dr Rutz told the BBC News website: “Before, we thought the crows targeted their tool use at fallen dead trees where they probe for grubs; but now we have observed them using tools on the ground - and that has never been seen before. We also filmed them doing this using a new type of tool, which was very surprising.

“We found them using grass stems - and that is interesting because these stems have very different physical properties from the sticks and leaves that we knew they use. They are using the grass stems on the forest floor, probing the leaf litter, possibly fishing for ants.”

The team is using its video footage to investigate why New Caledonian crows might have evolved their tool-using abilities. This species of crow is the only non-primate animal known to create and use new tools.

The article includes several videos of the crows in action, including examples of tool use. (Unfortunately, I cannot figure out how to link directly to the videos.) You can also read more about this at the National Geographic web site.

[BBC News: Clever crows are caught on camera]

Birds are smart. But some birds are smarter than others. I’ve mentioned before the tool-making skills of New Caledonian crows. Turns out these animal are capable of complex problem-solving. Here’s what Rebecca Morelle says, writing for the BBC:

A University of Auckland study has revealed that New Caledonian crows can use separate tools in quick succession to retrieve an out-of-reach snack. The birds were using reasoning that was more commonly seen in great apes and humans, the New Zealand team reported in the journal Current Biology.

New Caledonian crows are renowned for their tool-making ability. The birds (Corvus moneduloides), which are found on the South Pacific island of New Caledonia, use their bills to whittle twigs into hooks and cut and tear leaves into barbed probes that can extract bugs and grubs from crevices.

To further test the crows’ tool-using talents, scientists set seven wild birds a tricky task. The crows were presented with:

• A scrap of meat, which was tucked away, out of reach, in a box;
• A small twig, which was too short to reach the food;
• And another longer twig, which was long enough to reach the food, but was locked away well out of bill-grabbing range in another box.

The birds surprised the scientists with their quick thinking.

Alex Taylor, lead author of the paper, said: “The creative thing the crows did was to use the short stick to get the long tool out of the box so that they could then use the long stick to get the meat.”

Russell Gray, another author of the paper, told the BBC News website: “What is most amazing is that most of them did this on the first trial. The first time we gave them the problem, six out of seven tried to do the right thing.”

To read more — and to see a short video of this problem-solving behavior in action — check out the complete article.

[BBC: Cleverest crows opt for two tools]

My father-in-law forwarded this story of a wayward bear and the people who saved him:

The black bear had tried to cross the two-lane California highway on Sept. 15. But…cars approaching in both lanes honked, and the scared bear climbed over the concrete railing. Somehow in his panic, the bear reached the bridge arch, a few feet in from the car deck edge.

“We were very impressed with what he did,” said Dave Baker, president of the Truckee BEAR League, who was called in for the rescue. “There were scratch marks on top of the guard rail.”

Brooks said about every half hour, the bear would crawl to the edge of the arch and try to find a footing to climb down. “Everybody, including me thought he was going to fall,” Brooks said.

Brooks, Baker and others who gathered at the bridge that Saturday night realized about 9 p.m. there wasn’t much then they could do. When they came back early the next morning, the bear was still there, peering out with no place to go…

I’m always heartened when humans help animals instead of hurt them. This was a lot of work to save one bear. For the complete story of the rescue (with more photographs), check out the complete story at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

There was actually a big animal intelligence three weeks ago, but where was I? Focusing on other projects, I’m afraid. No matter! Let’s catch up now…

photo by Mike Lovett

Alex, a 31-year-old African grey parrot, died earlier this month of natural causes. Alex was more than just a pretty bird: he could count, recognize colors and shapes, and knew more than 100 words. Here’s an excerpt from The New York Times:

Alex’s language facility was, in some ways, more surprising than the feats of primates that have been taught American Sign Language…In 1977, when Dr. [Irene] Pepperberg, then a doctoral student in chemistry at Harvard, bought Alex from a pet store, scientists had little expectation that any bird could learn to communicate with humans, as opposed to just mimicking words and sounds. Research in other birds had been not promising.

But by using novel methods of teaching, Dr. Pepperberg prompted Alex to learn scores of words, which he could put into categories, and to count small numbers of items, as well as recognize colors and shapes.

[...]

Other scientists, while praising the research, cautioned against characterizing Alex’s abilities as human. The parrot learned to communicate in basic expressions — but he did not show the sort of logic and ability to generalize that children acquire at an early age, they said.

[...]

Alex showed surprising facility. For example, when shown a blue paper triangle, he could tell an experimenter what color the paper was, what shape it was, and — after touching it — what it was made of.

[...]

Even up through last week, Alex was working with Dr. Pepperberg on compound words and hard-to-pronounce words. As she put him into his cage for the night last Thursday, she recalled, Alex looked at her and said: “You be good, see you tomorrow. I love you.”

He was found dead in his cage the next morning, Dr. Pepperberg said.

There are few “superstars” in the world of animal intelligence, but Alex was one of them. Rest in peace, little buddy.

[New York Times: Brainy parrot dies, emotive to the end]

Newsweek recently published a cover story about the recent murder of mountain gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I found the article, written by Scot Johnson, quite moving. Here’s how he describes the discovery of the corpses:

The mammoth gorilla lay on her side, a small pink tongue protruding slightly from her lips. She was pregnant and her breasts were engorged with milk for the baby that now lay dead inside her womb.

The rangers crowded around and caressed the gorilla’s singed fur. They shook their heads and clicked their tongues with disapproval. One grabbed her hand and held it for a long time, his head bowed in grief. This gorilla—whom the rangers knew as intimately as they do all those who live in their sector of the park—was named Mburanumwe. Her killers had set her alight after executing her. Now her eyes were closed, as if in deep concentration.

“My God,” one ranger said in disgust, “they even burned her.” Nearby the rangers found the bodies of two other adult females, all from the same 12-member family. Two infants had been orphaned. A male would be found dead the next day. The massacre, first discovered on July 23, could be the worst slaughter of mountain gorillas in the last quarter century.

Seven mountain gorillas have been killed this year. But who is killing them? And why? The Congolese economic and political situation is complicated, and ongoing conflict threatens Virunga National Park, where these gorillas live. Park rangers who speak out for the wildlife find their own lives threatened.

[Newsweek: Gorilla Warfare]

Animals are often credited with possessing an uncanny sixth sense, a level of perception beyond those that we as humans possess. Some people believe that animals are able to sense barometric changes and can be used as an indicator of impending rain. (I never believed this until recently when we were hit with an unexpected heavy storm which was precursored by a sudden silence from the birds. I’m still skeptical, but less so than before.)

photo by Stew Milne of Associated Press

Amy F. sent me the story of Oscar, a cat who lives in a nursing home in Providence, Rhode Island. Oscar apparently is able to tell when a patient is about to die. This story was reported widely in the world media at the end of July. Here’s an exceprt from ABC News:

The 2-year-old feline was adopted as a kitten and grew up in a third-floor dementia unit at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. The facility treats people with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease and other illnesses.

After about six months, the staff noticed Oscar would make his own rounds, just like the doctors and nurses. He’d sniff and observe patients, then sit beside people who would wind up dying in a few hours. Dosa said Oscar seems to take his work seriously and is generally aloof. “This is not a cat that’s friendly to people,” he said.

Oscar is better at predicting death than the people who work there, said Dr. Joan Teno of Brown University, who treats patients at the nursing home and is an expert on care for the terminally ill. She was convinced of Oscar’s talent when he made his 13th correct call.

[...]

Nursing home staffers aren’t concerned with explaining Oscar, so long as he gives families a better chance at saying goodbye to the dying.

This article from WebMD features some conjecture into Oscar’s ability, including thoughts from three animal behavior experts. In the most recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. David Dosa published a short essay descriving A Day in the Life of Oscar the Cat. (This is a great version of the story.)

[ABC News: The Grim Reaper with a Furry Tail]