Gorillas and humans use similar body language to communicate, reports the U.K. Daily Mail. Researchers at the University of Sussex studied a family of gorillas in a British animal park.
Psychologist Dr Gillian Sebestyen said: “We shared 23 million years of evolution with great apes and then diverged approximately six million years ago. Gorillas have [...]
Tags: Behavior · Communication · Research
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 [...]
Tags: Communication · Research
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 [...]
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 [...]
Tags: Research
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 [...]
Tags: Research
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 [...]
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; [...]
Tags: Implications · Learning · Research
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 [...]
The 23 April 2007 edition of Newsweek featured an article by Sharon Begley entitled “Can animals and robots be self-aware?“. She writes: “To know what you know is [the mark] of consciousness, the last stand for human exceptionalism. Now, however, this claim is on the rocks as both animals and machines show signs that they [...]
Tags: Research
Lynn forwarded a story from Fox News about bats who have learned how to sober up when they become intoxicated.
Bats often risk getting drunk off cocktails of alcohol that stew inside ripened fruit. And just as driving is dangerous for intoxicated humans, so is flying for drunken bats.
Now scientists find bats are savvy enough to [...]
Tags: Behavior · Current Events · Research
An Animal Intelligence reader (I’m sorry, I don’t remember whom) alerted me to a recent article in The New York Times about recent research into the brains of chimpanzees.
Chimps display a remarkable range of behavior and talent. They make and use simple tools, hunt in groups and engage in aggressive, violent acts. They are [...]
Tags: Current Events · Learning · Research
Science News reports that researchers at the University of Cambridge have discovered that some birds have a concept of time that includes the future, and that they’re able to plan their meals accordingly.
The strongest evidence yet that animals plan ahead may come from western scrub jays preparing for their morning meals.
Plenty of animals perform actions [...]
Tags: Behavior · Learning · Research
Live Science is reporting that scientists have concluded that fish are capable of human-like logic, at least in certain realms.
Fish have the reasoning capacity of a 4- or 5-year-old child when it comes to figuring out who among their peers is “top dog,” new research shows. Stanford University scientists made the discovery—said to be the [...]
Tags: Current Events · Research
allAfrica.com has a story about how chimpanzees use the same plants as traditional human healers to treat physical ailments.
In her five-year study at Kanyawara research station, located on the edge of Kibale, [Sabrina] Krief found that chimps carefully select and consume plants like mululuza, which have little nutritive value. These plants, however, have medical properties [...]
Dogster recently pointed to a Discovery Channel article from last June. This piece, by Jennifer Veigas, notes that animal intelligence is often difficult to measure.
People generally define intelligence in terms that place our own species at the apex, but recent studies on other animals suggest skills such as abstract thinking, problem solving, reasoning, and language [...]
Tags: Research
Animal Intelligence reader Nicole forwarded a story about birds who have learned to “rap”. That is, certain birds living in cities have learned to modify their song to increase their chances of finding a mate. Here’s the full text of the article:
Birds living in cities are performing a type of “avian rap” while their rural [...]
Florida’s manatees are an endangered species. These lumbering sea cows have no natural predators, but increased contact with humans has hurt their population. From the wikipedia:
Many manatees are injured or killed by collisions with powerboats. Manatees occasionally ingest fishing gear (hooks, metal weights, etc.) while feeding. These foreign materials do not seem to harm [...]
It’s not often that a piece of animal intelligence news gets wide exposure, but one Associated Press report is doing just that. Andrew Bridges writes that elephants show self-awareness when looking in a mirror.
In a 2005 experiment, Happy [a 34-year-old female Asian elephant in the Bronx Zoo] faced her reflection in an 8-by-8-foot mirror [...]
Tags: Research
In a previous entry I wrote:
As much as I believe animals possess profound intelligence, I don’t quite extend this to fish. By all reports, fish are pretty dumb.
Canaduck commented:
There is plenty of evidence that many fish are fairly intelligent. Here’s a whole set of links discussing the matter.
This set of links resides at a site [...]
Tags: Research