A study recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides evidence that pigeons can learn to recognize words. That is after the birds were trained over a period of 8 months. According to the study authors “The pigeons’ performance is actually more comparable to that of literate humans than baboons’ performance.” To read, we must be about to decode letters and the sounds they make as […]
It must be Friday. I found myself perusing YouTube videos and I came across these showing pet tortoises that have figured out how to solve some interesting problems such as: Using the doggie door to enter a house… If that does not work, many have figured out how to just open the back door… Some have even figured out how to open the refrigerator… After watching these videos, I naturally went in […]
Birds get such a bad rap when it comes to intelligence. Sure they have relatively small brains, but scientists have known they are similar to primates with respect to their cognitive abilities. New research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences presents data showing how this apparent dichotomy is possible. They found that the brains of songbirds and parrots pack two times the number of neurons as a primate […]
Dr. Alex Taylor from The University of Auckland has demonstrated that New Caledonian crows have the ability to perform causal reasoning, which is the ability to infer that something you cannot see may be the cause of something. According to the article, this is the first study to experimentally demonstrate this ability in a species other than humans. Source Science Now
It seems that octopuses are even smarter, and more fearless, than previously thought. It has been known for some time that they can be trained to open jars to obtain treats as shown in the promotional video for “Aliens of the Deep Sea” shown below: There are even stories of them purposefully escaping their own tank to snack on fish in a tank nearby. More recently, the animals have been […]
Life Lines by Dr. Dolittle 