Animal minds

From ScienceDaily: Although traditionally viewed as a predator of insects, researchers have become increasingly aware that spiders are not exclusively insectivorous. Some spiders have been shown to enrich their diets by occasionally feasting on fish, frogs or even bats. A new study by Zoologists from the University of Basel, Brandeis University (US) and Cardiff University (UK) now shows evidence of spiders eating plant food as well. “The ability of spiders to derive nutrients from plants is broadening the food base of these animals; this might be a survival mechanism helping spiders to stay alive during periods when insects are scarce”, says lead author Martin Nyffeler from the University of Basel in Switzerland. “In addition, diversifying their diet with plant is Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: “This study shows that the unique bill contributes to the birds’ ability to use and probably make tools,” he said. “We argue that the beak became specialized for tool manipulation once the birds began using tools, and that this enhanced tool manipulation ability may have allowed the crows to make more complex tools.” Probably. It works that way with appendages too. In fact, some differences in apparent animal intelligence may come down to whether the animal can carry out an action for its own benefit. Shellfish are closer anatomically to octopuses than birds are but both octopuses and birds can use body parts to do something. Shellfish can’t. Can we quantify intelligence apart from the ability to demonstrate Read More ›

The cottage industry attempting to show that great apes are just fuzzy people has a new one for us: From ScienceDaily: In one of the twelve tasks, children needed to use a stick as a lever to retrieve pom poms from a small box. Similarly, great apes use twigs to remove kernels from nuts or seeds from stingy fruits. The tasks could only be solved by using a tool, but children were not told that. Dr Claudio Tennie, Birmingham Fellow, explained, “The idea was to provide children with the raw material necessary to solve the task. We told children the goal of the task, for example to get the pom poms out of the box, but we never mentioned using Read More ›

If so, ethologist Patrick Bateson is onto something. But how would we know? From ScienceDaily: Most fossils preserve the physical remains of organisms and their structure; however, geologists and paleobiologists recently found fossils that show the behaviors of predators preserved as traces in ancient sediments. Thus, fossils from southeast Missouri are helping scientists unlock clues about the behaviors of these predators and their interactions with their prey. Evidence shows that these ancient organisms were behaviorally sophisticated, tailoring their attacks for effectiveness. Tracks from the site showed that the predators attacked from above, moving alongside to use their many legs for more effective grappling of their prey. Further, predators preferentially selected smaller prey, indicating that they attacked their food rather than Read More ›

By now we know the lyrics. From the Washington Post: These birds use a linguistic rule thought to be unique to humans But sometimes we use syntax to impart complex combinations of ideas. “Careful, it’s dangerous” is a phrase that has meaning, and so is “come toward me.” When those two phrases are combined, they have a different meaning than they do on their own: They’re directing the receiver to act in a different way than either phrase would independently. Until now, only humans seemed to use syntax this way. But a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications suggests that the Japanese great tit — a bird closely related to the North American chickadee — uses grammatical rules like these Read More ›

Bonobo society is female-run and bonobos have a lot of sex. And there is supposed to be a message for humans in that: “And considering that both bonobos and chimpanzees are humans’ closest living relatives, each sharing roughly 99% of their DNA with us, it is a question whose answer could also reveal a lot about ourselves.” From RealClearScience: Bonobos are highly-intelligent primates that reside in a 190,000-square-mile area of the Congo Basin in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Their peaceful nature is even more remarkable when compared to that of chimpanzees. Though the two species share the same genus and are almost physically identical to each other when viewed with an untrained eye, their behavior couldn’t be any Read More ›

Just as chimpanzees are claimed to have sacred rituals, we now hear from New Scientist that Ravens’ fear of unseen snoopers hints they have theory of mind … The results [of the experiment] suggest ravens can generalise from their own perceptual experience to infer the possibility of being seen by others who are not visibly present. “This proves they have a basic understanding of seeing, which is a basic form of a theory of mind,” says Bugnyar. “This basically means that some non-human animals can indeed evolve this particular ability of attributing a mental state to another one, which has always been considered to be one of the unique human abilities.” More. If the experiment, which showed that ravens are aware Read More ›

From Neuroscience News: Monkeys Drive Wheelchairs Using Only Their Thoughts Neuroscientists at Duke Health have developed a brain-machine interface (BMI) that allows primates to use only their thoughts to navigate a robotic wheelchair. The BMI uses signals from hundreds of neurons recorded simultaneously in two regions of the monkeys’ brains that are involved in movement and sensation. As the animals think about moving toward their goal — in this case, a bowl containing fresh grapes — computers translate their brain activity into real-time operation of the wheelchair. The interface, described in the March 3 issue of the online journal Scientific Reports, demonstrates the future potential for people with disabilities who have lost most muscle control and mobility due to quadriplegia Read More ›

From The Conversation: Mysterious chimpanzee behaviour may be evidence of ‘sacred’ rituals … What we saw on this camera was exhilarating – a large male chimp approaches our mystery tree and pauses for a second. He then quickly glances around, grabs a huge rock and flings it full force at the tree trunk. … But what we discovered during our now-published study wasn’t a random, one-off event, it was a repeated activity with no clear link to gaining food or status – it could be a ritual. We searched the area and found many more sites where trees had similar markings and in many places piles of rocks had accumulated inside hollow tree trunks – reminiscent of the piles of Read More ›

From Allen Greer at The Scientist: If inferences about animal emotions are fraught with anthropomorphism and language bias, surely evolutionary principles provide an unbiased way of thinking about animal emotions. But evolution can say only it is plausible that the precursors to human emotions did arise long before humans evolved. Just as certain bones can be identified all the way along the evolutionary tree from primitive fishes to humans so too can certain neuro-anatomical, chemical and physiological substrates associated with emotions in humans be traced well back in our ancestry. But while we can identify these “tangible” substrates in animals, the associated emotions they support, if any, remain a matter of irreconcilable opinion. If stimulation of a part of the Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: “That’s a trait of ants,” Barden said. “Many ant species do that all the time. They’re always warring with either other individuals of the same species from different colonies or with different species.” … The fighting ants and others trapped in ancient Burmese amber from Myanmar are among the earliest known ants. “These early ants belong to lineages distinct from modern ants,” he said. “That is, they aren’t necessarily the direct ancestors of modern ants. They’re kind of their own branch doing their own thing.” The study also provides strong evidence that ancient ants — like modern ants — were social, according to Barden, who began a two-year, National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in biology at Rutgers-Newark in Read More ›

Remember this? Bees and ants provide clue to human suicides? Those eusocial behaviors, understood as part of what is called inclusive fitness in evolutionary biology, are adaptive. “The idea is if you give up yourself, which would include your genes, it can be evolutionarily speaking ‘worth it’ if you spare or save multiple copies of your genes in your relatives,” Joiner said. “It’s a net benefit on the gene level.” However, when the researchers look at human suicide in a modern context, they surmise that suicide among humans represents a derangement of the self-sacrificial aspect of eusociality. More. Notice the huge assumption everyone is asked to accept up front, that humans and social insects think similarly. A thesis that bizarre Read More ›

From Science Daily: Could human suicide have evolutionary roots in self-sacrificial behaviors like those seen in species such as honeybees and ants? … In a paper recently published in the journal Psychological Review, the researchers theorize that humans exhibit the characteristics of eusocial species such as relying on multigenerational and cooperative care of young and utilizing division of labor for successful survival. “Humans are a species that is eusocial, and that’s an important starting point,” Joiner said. “That suggests a certain set of characteristics, including some really striking self-sacrifice behaviors.” Those eusocial behaviors, understood as part of what is called inclusive fitness in evolutionary biology, are adaptive. “The idea is if you give up yourself, which would include your genes, Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: A new study reveals that prairie voles console loved ones who are feeling stressed — and it appears that the infamous “love hormone,” oxytocin, is the underlying mechanism. Until now, consolation behavior has only been documented in a few nonhuman species with high levels of sociality and cognition, such as elephants, dolphins and dogs. More. One difficulty with discussing such issues is anthropomorphism, that is, ascribing states of mind to animals that are probably unique to humans. Animals doubtless have empathy; after all, tortoises can put upended tortoises back on their feet. But reason and moral sense are different from empathy, in that they require some level of abstraction. Moral sense, for example, may compel the view that Read More ›

A friend draws attention to this paywalled paper, noting that—however it tries to wallpaper issues—at least confronts a problem: The conventional claims about how natural selection can simply “gather” information are inadequate. It’s nice wallpaper; there’s probably no wall under it. But there doesn’t need to be. One can say anything one wants about evolution these days and attribute anything at all to it. From Trends and Ecology and Evolution: The theory of evolution links random variation and selection to incremental adaptation. In a different intellectual domain, learning theory links incremental adaptation (e.g., from positive and/or negative reinforcement) to intelligent behaviour. Specifically, learning theory explains how incremental adaptation can acquire knowledge from past experience and use it to direct future Read More ›