Animal Intelligence

I’m swamped with preparations to leave for vacation! I have plenty of great animal intelligence stuff bookmarked, but haven’t found time to post it. To tide you over, here’s a video of a duck and a dog engaged in some sort of inexplicable behavior.

Is the duck preening the dog? What is going on? I love [...]

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Lynn forwarded a story from Fox News about cultural transmission in chimpanzees. Charles Q. Choi reports:

In the wild, chimpanzee troops are often distinct from one another, possessing collections of up to 20 traditions or customary behaviors that altogether seem to form unique cultures.
Such practices include various forms of tool use, including hammers and pestles; [...]

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The Washington Post has a fascinating article about a new study of canine behavior.

New research is adding to the growing evidence that man’s best friend thinks a lot more than many humans have believed. The provocative new experiment indicated that dogs can do something that previously only humans, including infants, have been shown capable [...]

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My friend Dave pointed me to a brief story at NPR’s “Morning Edition”. Here it is in full:
If you’re an elephant turned bandit, you don’t need a gun; a couple of pointy tusks will do. The Hindustan Times reports an elephant bandit is holding up motorists in the eastern state of Orissa. His modis operandi [...]

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