Animal minds

It used to be we read the Blue Fairy book for wondrous tales; now one can read New Scientist: From Alex Kasperak: Only a few decades ago scientists thought that humans were the only species to have worked out how to turn objects in their environment into useful tools. We now know all sorts of animals can do the same – but the tools of choice are usually perishable materials like leafs and twigs. It’s hard to know why anyone thought that “all sorts of animals”can’t use materials from their environments as tools. They do but they are limited by their inability to process abstractions. Burmese long-tailed macaques are a rare exception. They are renowned for their use of stone Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Enel et al at the INSERM in France investigate one of the most noteworthy properties of primate behavior, its diversity and adaptability. Human and non-human primates can learn an astonishing variety of novel behaviors that could not have been directly anticipated by evolution — we now understand that this ability to cope with new situations is due to the “pre-adapted” nature of the primate brain. … This breakthrough shows that we have taken big step towards understanding the local recurrent connectivity in the brain that prepares primates to face unlimited situations. This research shows that by allowing essentially unlimited combinations of internal representations in the network of the brain, one of them is always on hand for the Read More ›

From Bob Holmes at New Scientist on unfair animal intelligence tests: Elephants can’t recognise themselves in a mirror? Sure they can – if you give them a mirror big enough to show more than just a leg or two. As researchers learn to design more appropriate IQ tests that meet the animals on their own terms, more and more claims about things only humans can do are proving false. But Byrne’s concern is with one particular part of the intellectual landscape, a skill he calls “insight” – an animal’s ability to form and manipulate ideas in its head. Many apparently sophisticated behaviours need not imply any insight at all, he argues. When a band of chimps cuts off every escape route Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: A species of tropical fish has been shown to be able to distinguish between human faces. It is the first time fish have demonstrated this ability. First author Dr Cait Newport, Marie Curie Research Fellow in the Department of Zoology at Oxford University, said: ‘Being able to distinguish between a large number of human faces is a surprisingly difficult task, mainly due to the fact that all human faces share the same basic features. All faces have two eyes above a nose and mouth, therefore to tell people apart we must be able to identify subtle differences in their features. If you consider the similarities in appearance between some family members, this task can be very difficult indeed. Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Scientists have compared genetic data with existing archaeological evidence and show that man’s best friend may have emerged independently from two separate (possibly now extinct) wolf populations that lived on opposite sides of the Eurasian continent. This means that dogs may have been domesticated not once, as widely believed, but twice. … Combined, these new findings suggest that dogs were first domesticated from geographically separated wolf populations on opposite sides of the Eurasian continent. At some point after their domestication, the eastern dogs dispersed with migrating humans into Europe where they mixed with and mostly replaced the earliest European dogs. Most dogs today are a mixture of both Eastern and Western dogs — one reason why previous genetic Read More ›

At: This is a case study in Darwinism beyond ridiculous, I noted “Monogamy” and “sibling co-operation” among humans are terms that are meaningful only among humans. They depend on the recognition of abstractions like “marriage” and “family.” Humans often do things, in recognition of relationships, that are not in their survival interests. It is not the same as in beetles and birds. commenter goodusername writes in response: I don’t think they’re claiming that the terms “monogamy” and “sibling co-operation” has any meaning to beetles. And I think people would care for their partners, and siblings would care for each other, even without “recognition of abstractions like ‘marriage’ and ‘family.’” No. First, when people make inferences about human relationships by referencing Read More ›

Anyone who has ever lived with animals knows that they do. So what’s with all the pop science fluff about how monkeys grieve, as if it is supposed to prove something? A friend offers some vids: Penguin mourns the death of her chick Mourning doves care for deceased mates Chickens also. Birds make monkey mourning look average. One wishes the zeal did something for animals, instead of crackpots. But nope. There’s no money in that. See also: Claim: Monkeys understand irreversibility of death No. and Are apes entering the Stone Age?

From New Scientist: It’s a tear-jerker worthy of Hollywood – and one of the first examples of compassionate care and grief in a wild monkey. The alpha male of a group of snub-nosed monkeys and his dying partner spent a final, tender hour together beneath the tree from which she had fallen minutes earlier, cracking her head on a rock. Before she succumbed, he gently touched and groomed her. And after she was dead he remained by her side for 5 minutes, touching her and pulling gently at her hand, as if to try and revive her (for a full account of what happened, see “A monkey tends to his dying mate – as it unfolded”, below). But why is Read More ›

From the BBC: It is clear the chimpanzees were aware something was wrong, and they gathered next to Thomas, lying on his back. What surprised the researchers most was the way the chimps sat quietly around their deceased friend for long periods. “Chimps never do that in other contexts,” says Dr van Leeuwen. “There is always something going on.” Usually, they will groom, play or eat with each other, vocalise, and, on occasion, be aggressive. But 22 of the chimps came up to look at Thomas, with nine gently touching him, with one, a female named Noel, then touching her own lips. The chimps didn’t inspect the body and then leave, which also surprised the primatologists, especially as the discovery Read More ›

From UK Independent: Insects have a form of consciousness, according to a new paper that might show us how our own began. Brain scans of insects appear to indicate that they have the capacity to be conscious and show egocentric behaviour, apparently indicating that they have such a thing as subjective experience. … Clearly, the specific make-up of the insect brain means that their experience of consciousness is going to be different from that of a human. “Their experience of the world is not as rich or as detailed as our experience – our big neocortex adds something to life!” the scientists wrote recently. “But it still feels like something to be a bee.” More. Modern evolutionary theory has reached Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: A new study suggests that ravens can be as clever as chimpanzees, despite having much smaller brains, indicating that rather than the size of the brain, the neuronal density and the structure of the birds’ brains play an important role in terms of their intelligence. … The large-scale study concluded that great apes performed the best, and that absolute brain size appeared to be key when it comes to intelligence. However, they didn’t conduct the cylinder test on corvid birds. (For some reason, humans were not tested for the ability to get food out of the end of a tube instead of striking at the middle… ) Can Kabadayi, together with researchers from the University of Oxford, UK Read More ›

Indoctrination provided painlessly through media and schools: From Salvo: Just as a fish doesn’t “notice” water unless the creek dries up, we often do not notice the catechism underlying the news stories, which forestalls our asking critical questions. Consider the story from late last summer that announced that chimpanzees and monkeys “have entered” the Stone Age (BBC News, August 18, 2015). The basis of the claim is that primates smash things with stones, even choosing the stones best suited to the task at hand. But then, so do some birds. More. No matter. Because we are the 98%-99% chimpanzee, there is a sure and certain hope that chimpanzees are entering the Stone Age. Evidence? No evidence would change anything anyway. Read More ›

From neurosurgeon Michael Egnor at Salvo: It is important to understand the fundamental difference between humans and nonhuman animals. Animals such as apes have material mental powers. By material, I mean powers that are instantiated in the brain and wholly depend upon matter for their operation. These powers include sensation, perception, imagination (the ability to form mental images), memory (of perceptions and images), and appetite. Nonhuman animals have a mental capacity to perceive and respond to particulars, which are specific material objects such as other animals, food, obstacles, and predators. Human beings have these powers, too, but they also have mental powers that entail a profoundly different kind of thinking. Unlike animals, humans think abstractly, and they have the power Read More ›

Well, almost. Maybe should be. From Digg: According to King, Echo was owned by a New Orleans crime boss and he’d been at the wrong place at the wrong time, seen something he wasn’t supposed to, and wouldn’t stop talking about it. All this chatter, King told Heck, meant he was making himself into a potential target. Because Echo isn’t a person, he couldn’t enter an actual witness protection program. At least not officially. At least not yet. … Occasionally parrots learn to mimic darker things. In South Carolina in 2010 a woman went to jail for abusing and neglecting her elderly mother. When local police entered the house they found a parrot that repeated “Help me, help me” — Read More ›

After reading about how AlphaGo managed to trounce Lee Se-Dol 4-1 in a series of five games of Go, I had a feeling of déjà vu: where have I read about this style of learning before? And then it came to me: pigeons. Both computers and pigeons are incremental learners, and both employ probabilistic algorithms (such as the various machine learning algorithms used in artificial intelligence, and the computation of relative frequencies of positive or negative reinforcements, which is what pigeons do when they undergo conditioning) in order to help them home in on their learning target. Of course, there are several differences as well: computers don’t need reinforcements such as food to motivate them; computers learn a lot faster Read More ›