Animal Intelligence

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 [...]

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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 [...]

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Here’s another in a long line of videos where I’m unsure what I’m seeing. The person who posted this at YouTube wrote, “A tortoise in our garden defends it’s territory against invading cats.”

Is the tortoise playing? Is it angry? (I lean toward the latter.) Are the cats hurting it when they respond? It doesn’t look [...]

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In the wake of the video I posted of my feral chicken, I had a couple of Animal Intelligence readers send me other chicken videos. First up is this video of two rabbits who are apparently fighting (I can’t tell — I don’t know much about rabbit behavior), only to be separated by two chickens:

What [...]

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Amanda sent a story of a cat who rides the bus. According to the London Daily Mail, a mystery cat has been hitching a ride for the past few weeks.

The feline, which has a purple collar, gets onto the busy Walsall to Wolverhampton bus at the same stop most mornings — he then jumps off [...]

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Here’s another one for the “cute” category:

Or maybe there is some intelligence here. Are the otters expressing affection? Are they playing a game? The one most certainly goes out of its way to “re-connect” after they’re separated.
(I like how the one otter becomes “beached” midway through, but keeps on sleeping.)

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I had an interesting conversation with my friend Paul last week. We were discussing socially-responsible investing via chat. The conversation eventually turned more philosophical:

5:27:50 PM radiofreewog: I can’t let my ego control my behavior
5:28:05 PM jdroth: ?
5:28:07 PM jdroth: Ego is all there is.
5:28:13 PM jdroth:
5:28:27 PM radiofreewog: hmmm
5:28:42 PM radiofreewog: getting beyond ego [...]

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This doesn’t show intelligence per se, but it is certainly curious behavior. Here’s Nora, the piano-playing cat:

What prompts animals to do things like this? I cannot believe it’s simply random. It’s certainly not instinctual. (I have friends who believe that all animal behavior is purely instinctive — a position I believe is completely indefensible if [...]

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The Associated Press has an odd piece of animal news:
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — About 10,000 Juneau residents briefly lost power after a bald eagle lugging a deer head crashed into transmission lines. “You have to live in Alaska to have this kind of outage scenario,” said Gayle Wood, an Alaska Electric Light & Power spokeswoman. [...]

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Animal Intelligence reader Nick, pleased to see some life in the site, forwarded the following video of clever animals stealing things.

I’m rather fond of the crow who steals from the kangaroo. The poor kangaroo looks baffled. And what prompts the bird of prey to steal the guy’s hat? That one’s a mystery to me.

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My cat Nemo has a favorite rag. It’s like a security blanket. He keeps the thing outside, but he carries it around with him. He plays with it. He sleeps with it. He keeps it in safe spots.
Oliver, a neighbor cat, is a glove thief. If I leave my garden gloves outside, chances are I’ll [...]

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