Animal minds

In the pop science media. From Evolution News & Views: As we saw with tool use, many claims [about ape behaviour] are phrased essentially as predictions that the primates are in the process of developing a culture like that of humans, rather than behaving as they have, largely unnoticed, for tens of millennia. For example, we were told earlier this year that “Apes may be closer to speaking than many scientists think. Koko, the gorilla who has lived with humans for forty years can “control her larynx enough to produce a controlled grunting sound.” While Koko is a very accomplished gorilla, she doesn’t seem to be progressing toward human speech, and it is unclear why she would need to. Similarly, Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: For these tiny organisms it is often advantageous to divide the labor of certain metabolic processes rather than performing all biochemical functions autonomously. Bacteria that engage in this cooperative exchange of nutrients can save a significant amount of energy. Indeed, in a previous study, the researchers could already demonstrate that this division-of-metabolic-labor can positively affect bacterial growth. In the new study, they addressed the question how such cooperative interactions can persist if non-cooperating bacteria consume amino acids without providing nutrients in return. The evolutionary disadvantage that results for cooperative cells could lead to a collapse of the cross-feeding interaction. To experimentally verify this possibility, the scientists have monitored co-cultures of cooperating and non-cooperating bacteria. For this, they genetically Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Among other findings, a bonobo was observed for the first time making and using spears in a social setting for the purpose of attack and defense. “I believe that the current study will break down our cultural hang-up as humans concerning the inherent capabilities and potential of bonobos and chimpanzees,” says Itai Roffman of the Institute of Evolution at the University of Haifa, who undertook the study … Interestingly, the bonobos are considered less sophisticated than their chimpanzee siblings. Chimpanzees have been observed in nature using branches to dig for tubers in the ground and to break into termite nests and beehives. As part of their cultural diversity, they have also been documented breaking nuts with hammer and Read More ›

From Evolution News & Views: What can we hope to learn about animal minds? Consciousness (a mind) perceives and acts on information. But there are at least two — more basic and probably unconscious qualities — that distinguish life from non-life, and seem to act by processing information: self-preservation and adaptability. Life forms constantly try to preserve themselves in a living state — that is, they try to survive. They adapt their methods as needed, whenever possible. A rock falls from a high cliff and breaks; a cat has somehow learned to relax, turn in mid-air, and land on his feet. Or consider Slijper’s goat and Faith the dog, both of whom, born without forelegs, adapted to a lifestyle that Read More ›

The best book I have read about ethology is “Nature’s I.Q. — Extraordinary animal behaviors that defy evolution”, by Balazs Hornyanszky and Istvan Tasi, Torchlight Publishing Inc. 2009. I suggest reading it. The authors provide a rich summary of almost all animal behaviors about predation, defense, construction of complex structures (webs, nets, traps…), disguise, deception, feeding, partnership, language and communication, navigation, coupling and mating, etc. The most animal skills are innate and hereditary. They ask: How do the animals know when and how they should do what they do? Where does nature’s I.Q. come from? […] Different animal species are also equipped with specific problem-solving abilities; however most of these work not in a conscious, but in an automatic hereditary Read More ›

Mantis shrimps use it to avoid already occupied hiding places. From ScienceDaily: Researchers from the Queensland Brain Institute at The University of Queensland have uncovered a new form of secret light communication used by marine animals. … Dr Yakir Gagnon, Professor Justin Marshall and colleagues previously showed that mantis shrimp (Gonodactylaceus falcatus) can reflect and detect circular polarising light, an ability extremely rare in nature. Until now, no-one has known what they use it for. The new study shows the shrimp use circular polarisation as a means to covertly advertise their presence to aggressive competitors. “In birds, colour is what we’re familiar with; in the ocean, reef fish display with colour. This is a form of communication we understand. What Read More ›

From Natural History Magazine: Pigs possess complex ethological traits similar to dogs and chimpanzees. … Pigs’ ability to differentiate each other, part of what is termed social cognition, provides evidence that pigs are as socially complex as other intelligent mammals, including primates. This capacity forms the basis for all pig social relationships, including the establishment of dominance hierarchies. Dogs can discriminate between barks recorded in different contexts from the same individual, and also from different individuals in the same context. Elephants are well known for their sophisticated recognition of other individual elephants even over long distances. Pigs have the ability to discriminate between individuals, even closely-related individuals, by smell and by auditory cues, a finding that suggests pigs vocalize in Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Monkey. Scanning the brains of humans and monkeys, the research team has identified the area at the front of the brain which in both humans and monkeys recognizes when sequences of sounds occur in a legal order or in an unexpected, illegal order. Scanning the brains of humans and macaque monkeys, the research team has identified the area at the front of the brain which in both humans and monkeys recognises when sequences of sounds occur in a legal order or in an unexpected, illegal order. Professor Petkov said: “Young children learn the rules of language as they develop, even before they are able to produce language. So, we used a ‘made up’ language first developed to study Read More ›

Remember anthropologist Jonathan Marks? Author of the recent Tales of the Ex-Apes, he took issue with evolutionary psychology in an op-ed recently, at some “Darwin the future” site, where he said “And finally, I can’t shake the feeling that the methodologies I have encountered in evolutionary psychology would not meet the standards of any other science.” No, of course not. Darwinism is only science when it produces results Darwin followers can use. Most of the time, it’s just the racket they enforce on Science Street. It’s becoming entertaining to watch who, helplessly, just pays up. Usually, the toffs with taxpayers’ money to waste. Anyway, anthropologist Barbara J. King opines, That term – ex-apes – get emphasized in the book a Read More ›

Michael Egnor, here, at Evolution News & Views: Regardless of the strengths and weaknesses of the evolutionary argument that humans are descended from apes, the differences between humans and apes are so profound as to render the view that humans are apes abject nonsense. It is important to understand the fundamental difference between humans and nonhuman animals. Nonhuman 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 Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Among social insects, why does it pay for workers to help the queen in some situations but then also pay to kill her in others? What explains why some queens get killed and not others, and why kill her at all? One expert explored these questions, and found that by eliminating the queen, a matricidal worker frees the way for workers to lay male eggs. “Workers are assessing the situation in their colony and deciding to revolt against the queen only when the genetic makeup of the colony makes it favorable to do so,” Loope said. “The main advantage is to allow your sister workers to lay male eggs, rather than the queen, who typically stops worker reproduction Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Chimpanzee language claims lost in translation, researchers conclude Unbelievably, some researchers tried examining one these claims instead of just accepting it and pontificating about it. The scholarship in question, published in the journal Current Biology in February, centered on the examination of two sets of chimpanzees in the Edinburgh Zoo: one that had been captive for several years in the facility and one that had recently arrived from the Beekse Bergen Safari Park in the Netherlands. Over a three-year period, the researchers claimed that the latter set had altered their sounds to those of the former set when communicating about a common object, apples, resulting in what they saw as a newly shared vocalization. … But a review Read More ›

Animal mind is a fascinating topic, and I’ll be starting a five-part series on it at Evolution News & Views later this month. Meanwhile, from the world of grumpy cat vids, we learn: A study carried out between the University of Edinburgh and Bronx Zoo compared our beloved domestic cat with its wilder relatives. Compared with the snow leopard, the Scottish wildcat and the African lion, researchers found these larger predators shared similar characteristics of aggression and neurotic behaviour to domestic cats. They needed to do a study to find that out? Dominance, impulsiveness and neurotic behaviour are the most common trait shared between the domestic cat and the wild cat. More. Well, a problem arises when we characterize cats’ Read More ›

While the warm-blooded vs. cold-blooded argument rages, from New Scientist: Robert Eagle of the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues estimated the body temperature of two types of dinosaur by analysing fossil eggshells. They found that Titanosaurus, a long-necked sauropod around 10 metres long and 13 tonnes in weight, had a body temperature around 38 ̊C, similar to modern mammals. On the other hand, Oviraptor, a theropod about 2 metres long and 35 kilograms in weight, had a body temperature around 32 ̊C. This is still warmer than crocodiles and their relatives, suggesting that oviraptors generated some heat internally to keep their bodies above the ambient temperature and allow them to be more active. But it also suggests their Read More ›

From BBC News, reporting on an interesting experiment: These results show that crows will avoid an area or thing that is deemed dangerous to their own species. In other words, they know what death is and know to fear it. No. Crows are smart birds and learn quickly to avoid danger. But they don’t “know what death is” because, as noted earlier, “death,” unlike danger, is an abstraction. Just like “irreversible.” “It tells us that crows view death, at least in part, as a ‘teachable moment’ to borrow an anthropomorphic phrase. It’s a signal of danger and danger is something to be avoided,” explains Swift. This work is another example of how crows have evolved to live so successfully with Read More ›