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 [...]

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“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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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Nicole forwarded an amazing video. Christian the lion was raised by humans and then released into the wild. Watch the cat’s reaction when these people return to see him a year later.

After a year apart, after a year in the wild, Christian still recognizes his old friends and greets them with enthusiasm. Aside from [...]

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I’m back from vacation and eager to write more about animal intelligence. While I was gone, a couple of readers (this site has readers!) forwarded stories about amazing animals. I’ll share those in the coming days.
For now — and seemingly at random, I know — here are several clips of chickens who live with cats. [...]

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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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Here’s an MSNBC article from 04 April 2007 about two swans released on an ape preserve in Iowa. The apes were pleased to see the birds, and will even get a chance to name them.

The eight bonobos at the Great Ape Trust of Iowa howled Tuesday as they watched two trumpeter swans dip into a [...]

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The Associated Press reports that birds may be able to understand each others’ language. Randolph E. Schmid writes:

Nuthatches appear to have learned to understand a foreign language — chickadee.
It’s not unusual for one animal to react to the alarm call of another, but nuthatches seem to go beyond that — interpreting the type of alarm [...]

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Last summer a chicken appeared at my office.
I work in the country, on former farmland in rural Oregon. We’d just been granted the gift of feral kittens a few weeks earlier. They lived and romped and played in a shed on the back of the property.
One day a chicken appeared. Where it came from is [...]

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If I’m not careful, this is going to turn from “Animal Intelligence” into “Cute Interspecies Friendships”. Here’s a dog that’s willingly taking care of some abandoned kittens.

I have no idea what is being said in Japanese here. As with many of these stories, this comes via frykitty.

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Interspecies friendships are awesome. Here are some photographs from Tanja Askani of a deer and a rabbit who are apparently pals.

Askani is a photographer and animal scientist. She has a book entitled Kinship with the Wolf: The Amazing Story of the Woman Who Lives with Wolves. From the Amazon page:
Czech author and animal scientist Askani [...]

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In May 2001, the Medford (OR) Mail Tribune reported on an unlikely friendship between a fish and a dog.

Here’s lookin’ at you, fish
by JONEL ALECCIA
This is the story of a fish named Falstaff and Chino, the dog who loved him. The two met three years ago, when Chino’s owners, Dan and Mary Heath, traded Portland [...]

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An Animal Intelligence reader sent this amazing story of interspecies friendship. Meet Cassie the kitten and Moses the crow:

This clip is from 1999. I wonder if there’s more information available about the pair. I haven’t been able to find any, though I did find this year-old thread at Monkeyfilter.

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I love interspecies interaction, especially interspecies friendship. But even I am amazed by this clip.

In the end, the impala did not survive, but the hippo did its best.

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The following passage is excerpted from Go East, Young Man, the autobiography of William O. Douglas, the longest-serving Supreme Court justice in United States history. This episode probably occurs during the mid-1930s in central Washington state.

As Prairie House was being built, I spent my time planting the meadow around the house and watering it. This [...]

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Here’s a report from a Swedish news site about a duck and a chicken that are raising a family together. I don’t read Swedish, but fortunately a Boing Boing reader provided a translation:

A duck and a hen on a farm outside Söderköping have found each other. The duck is now a foster-father to five chickens.
Annika [...]

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