All posts in category Mammals

Charismatic Megafauna Day – Surfing Dolphins!

It’s Charismatic Megafauna Day here at AnimalWise!

As regular readers know, this blog is dedicated to animals of all stripes (and spots). Animal intelligence isn’t limited to the mammals; animal value does not require fur; animal awesomeness can arrive without an endoskeleton; and sometimes animal insight wears feathers. Rest assured that future posts will continue to introduce remarkable capabilities and amazing behaviors in all sorts of creatures, some well-known and considered attractive, others less familiar perhaps a bit frightening looking.

CMF Day, though, is an opportunity for us to shamelessly seek attention by featuring leading celebrities of the animal world. On CMF Day, pandas and elephants and whales reign supreme. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

I can't help smiling

So, on this inaugural Charismatic Megafauna Day, the spotlight is on the playful bottlenose dolphin. As the video below observes, dolphins are one of the very few species that continues to play into adulthood, and play can be an indication of an inventive brain and a restless mind. Play may also strengthen social bonds. Mostly, however, it’s just fun.

Surf’s up!

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by paulfnorris on July 9, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Mammals, Social Behavior
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Posted by paulfnorris on July 9, 2011

https://animalwise.org/2011/07/09/charismatic-megafauna-day-%e2%80%93-surfing-dolphins/

My Border Collie Is Smarter Than Your Honor Student

Or so the bumper sticker says.

On this Fourth of July, it seems appropriate to salute man’s best friend in a brief holiday post. Meet Chaser, a true canine linguistic champion.

Chaser understands more than 1,000 words, along with simple sentences. Her vocabulary includes the names of 1,022 objects, including 800 stuffed animals, 116 balls and 26 “Frisbees,” any of which she can fetch on command.

Chaser, resting after studying for the bar exam (photo credit: ABCNEWS.com)

In addition, if a new toy is placed among her playthings, she is able to retrieve it when given its unfamiliar name, inferring its identity by a process of exclusion. She also has been studying her verbs, demonstrating that she knows how to “find,” “nose” and “paw” each of her toys. I assume that next she will be working on her gerunds and finishing her mastery of the subjunctive mood.

Happy Fourth, Chaser!

You can read more about Chaser and see her in action in this ABC News1 story.

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1ABC News, “World’s Smartest Dog? Meet a Border Collie Whose Memory Astounds,” February 9, 2011.

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by paulfnorris on July 4, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Language, Mammals, Social Behavior
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Posted by paulfnorris on July 4, 2011

https://animalwise.org/2011/07/04/my-border-collie-is-smarter-than-your-honor-student/

Memory: Chimp is Champ!

It didn’t sound like a fair contest: the memory champion of the UK against a lowly chimpanzee. In one corner, Ben Pridmore, a man capable of memorizing all of the cards in a shuffled deck in less than half a minute; in the other corner, Ayumu, a seven year old hairy primate wearing no clothes.

No, it wasn’t fair at all.

As reported in the UK Daily Mail1, both chimp and man watched a computer screen on which five numbers flashed up at various positions before being obscured by white squares, and then had to touch the squares in order of the numbers they concealed, from lowest to highest.

Ayumu hard at work (photo credit: Primate Research Institute Kyoto University)

By the time the competition heated up and the numbers were shown for a mere fifth of a second, the results weren’t even close: while the winner was able to order the numbers correctly almost 90% of the time, the loser couldn’t even manage 33%.

Fortunately, NaturalNews.com2 notes that the loser was gracious in defeat: “It is extremely impressive for anybody,” Pridmore said when asked about Ayumu’s performance. “He is doing something which I think is a really great performance even by human standards, so I’m sort of forgetting he is not a human being. When I bring that into the equation, it makes it overwhelmingly impressive.”

(If you wish to try to avenge Mr. Pridmore’s loss, the good news is that there’s a website3 where you can watch a video of Ayumu in action and then take the memory test yourself. Good luck, our species is counting on you.)

You may be thinking that this is a meaningless fluke, a highly specific area where a chimpanzee just happens to excel, a parlor trick that is not at all indicative of true intelligence. Well, maybe so, but don’t we as humans like to point to these sorts of unique abilities as precisely what set us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom? Are we tilting the playing field by giving inordinate weight to the mental gifts that we enjoy, downplaying others and defining intelligence to suit ourselves and our abilities? Perhaps we should ask Ayumu what he thinks…

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1The Mail Online, “I’m the chimpion! Ape trounces the best of the human world in memory competition,” January 26, 2008.

2NaturalNews.com, “Chimpanzee Beats Human Memory Genius in Memorization Competition,” August 3, 2008.

3lumosity games website, visited June 28, 2011.

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by paulfnorris on June 28, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Mammals
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Posted by paulfnorris on June 28, 2011

https://animalwise.org/2011/06/28/memory-chimp-is-champ/

Udderly Intelligent

While you might be willing to acknowledge that a cow can be out standing in its field, I’m willing to bet that you don’t typically think of Bessie as leading a rich intellectual and emotional life.  You might want to think again.

According to The Sunday Times1, “cows have a secret mental life in which they bear grudges, nurture friendships and become excited over intellectual challenges.” Moreover, cows don’t have a monopoly on farm animal intelligence, as the article reports similar findings for sheep, pigs, goats, chickens and other livestock.

Notable feats of barnyard intellectual prowess include:

  • Cows form friendship groups and spend most of their most of their timing licking, grooming and generally hanging out with a few other like-minded bovines.  They can also form dislikes and hold grudges “for months or years.” (Note to self: don’t get on the wrong side of a cow.)
  • Cows have become so excited in solving intellectual challenges such as figuring out how to open a door to get some food that their “brainwaves showed their excitement; their heartbeat went up and some even jumped into the air.” (Ok, that alone made this post worthwhile – I would pay to see a cow jump into the air as it solved a puzzle!)
  • Sheep can recognize up to 50 other sheep simply by looking at their profiles, and can remember the other sheep even after a year apart.  (Admit it, you can’t do that.)
  • Sheep can form strong affections for particular humans, become depressed when separated from their human friends, and greet them enthusiastically … even after three years.

So, a little additional respect for livestock is definitely in order.  While it may suit our purposes to think of farm animals as dumb, unfeeling beasts who exist only to serve us, this simply is not the case.  They are complex emotional beings that lead active intellectual lives filled with strong memories, friendships, dislikes, fears and great achievements.  Next time a cow turns its large head towards you and looks at you with those big brown eyes, remember that it just may leap with excitement if you tell it that it’s your friend.

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1The Sunday Times (UK), “The secret life of moody cows,” February 27, 2005.

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by paulfnorris on June 25, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Mammals, Social Behavior
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Posted by paulfnorris on June 25, 2011

https://animalwise.org/2011/06/25/udderly-intelligent/

Elephant Negotiations

What better way to kick off a blog about animal wisdom than with a shout out to the ponderous and pulchritudinous pachyderm? Rest assured that there will be many more posts about these lovably large animals, but for now I wanted to call attention to a recent article in the UK Daily Mail1 that provides some fascinating color regarding elephants’ complex social systems.

African Elephants (photo credit: World Wildlife Federation)

The article, reporting on nearly 40 years of continuous study by Cynthia Moss and her team of researchers at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya, describes the many ways in which elephants engage in sophisticated communications through body language and sound. Read the article and check out the handy graphics for insight into how elephants flirt (hey, big guy…), greet each other by entwining trunks, invite others to play, show empathy by wincing at each other’s pain, and even squabble over directions:

Negotiations over directions often begin with a common signal known as the ‘let’s go’ rumble. The elephants then engage in lengthy exchanges until a consensus is reached and the herd moves off in the chosen direction. Phyllis Lee, of Stirling University, Scotland – co-editor of The Amboseli Elephants, a new book revealing the research – said elephants can take up to an hour discussing which way to go. ‘It’s wonderful to watch and a real process of negotiation,’ she said.

The one quibble I have with the article is its assertion that the elephants’ social system is “remarkably similar to that of humans.” As we sit here in California facing another budgetary impasse and look forward to similar fun to be had in Washington, D.C., this summer, it seems to me that we should invite in the elephants to show us humans a “real process of negotiation” that leads to a consensus in an hour. Of course, the politicians might then need to haul out their shovels and spend another hour or so cleaning up, but that’s another story.

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1The Mail Online, “Not such a Dumbo: How elephants flirt, argue and have feelings just like humans,” June 6, 2011.

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by paulfnorris on June 23, 2011  •  Permalink
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Posted by paulfnorris on June 23, 2011

https://animalwise.org/2011/06/23/elephant-negotiations/

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