Animal Intelligence

I never understand those crazy Japanese television shows. But here’s a clip from one in which a chimpanzee learns to ride a Segway:

I especially like how, after crashing into the bushes a couple times, the chimp learns to steer. Neat.

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This summer, my wife and I have made friends with the blue jays that live in our yard. We have been shocked by how brave they are, and by how much personality they possess.
I grew up with birds in the house, but they were parrots and macaws and parakeets. I know that these birds are [...]

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Last fall I shared a two-minute video of the cat who was raised by a crow. Diane recently left a comment pointing to a longer video with a more complete story on this unlikely friendship:

There is nothing I like more than stories of interspecies friendship. I love the idea that different kinds of animals can [...]

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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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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 [...]

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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, [...]

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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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In response to the story of my office chicken, Canaduck forwarded a series of videos documenting the life of Hope, a chick rescued from a slaughterhouse. All of the text that follows is taken from the descriptions of these videos on YouTube.
07 Jan 2007
Hope is a broiler chicken found outside a slaughterhouse. He’s a runt [...]

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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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The Internet Archive has an 18-minute video entitled Trailblazer in Space, which tells the story of Ham the Chimp. Ham was the first primate launched into space. According to the Wikipedia:

In December 1960 the four-year-old chimpanzee was trained to do simple, timed tasks in response to electric lights and sounds. In his pre-flight training, [...]

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Canaduck forward a story about a dog that saved its owner from choking:

Toby, a 2-year-old golden retriever, saw his owner choking on a piece of fruit and began jumping up and down on the woman’s chest. The dog’s owner believes the dog was trying to perform the Heimlich maneuver and saved her life.
Debbie Parkhurst, 45, [...]

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Nicole sent a story from the San Diego zoo that highlights bonobo intelligence, as well as just how far we have to go before we can communicate with them:

In an incident that is both heart-stopping and heartwarming, a pregnant bonobo at the San Diego Zoo bit off the tip of her keeper’s index finger Tuesday. [...]

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Will forward a video story about “the most amazing dog in the world”. This dog was born without forelegs — it has learned to walk erect in a bipedal fashion, just like you and me. Here’s some footage from The Montel Williams Show:

And here’s some footage from a local news station:

Thanks for sending this in, [...]

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I believe that animals are intelligent. I believe that they have rich emotional lives and complex relationships with other animals (and with humans). I believe that many (most?) animal species possess some form of communication.
Those who espouse this sort of belief are often told, “Don’t make the mistake of anthropomorphizing animal behavior.” That is, [...]

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Here, via frykitty, is a romantic tale for Valentine’s Day. It’s the tale of two birds — two cockatoos — who fell madly in love.
About eight years ago a wild Australian Sulphur Crested Cockatoo flew into a car and broke its wing. The motorist took it to the Vet in Nerang, Queensland, who had to [...]

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Here’s an interesting story from from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (originally from the LA Times).

Dead drug lord’s hippos on the loose in Colombia
Sunday, December 24, 2006
By Chris Kraul, Los Angeles Times
PUERTO TRIUNFO, Colombia — Hacienda Napoles was Pablo Escobar’s pleasure palace, a 5,500-acre estate where the notorious drug lord held court over million-dollar cocaine deals, parties [...]

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OLYMPIA, Washington — A fierce group of raccoons has killed 10 cats, attacked a small dog and bitten at least one pet owner who had to get rabies shots, residents of Olympia say.
Some have taken to carrying pepper spray to ward off the masked marauders and the woman who was bitten now carries an iron [...]

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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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