Animal minds

From ScienceDaily: New research from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University has found that pairs of rabbitfishes will cooperate and support each other while feeding. While such behaviour has been documented for highly social birds and mammals, it has previously been believed to be impossible for fishes. “We found that rabbitfish pairs coordinate their vigilance activity quite strictly, thereby providing safety for their foraging partner,” says Dr Simon Brandl from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. More. … “By showing that fishes, which are commonly considered to be cold, unsocial, and unintelligent, are capable of negotiating reciprocal cooperative systems, we provide evidence that cooperation may not be as exclusive as Read More ›

From Real Clear Science: Not only are bonobos liberal in their lovemaking, they also aren’t shy about requesting it. Researchers report in the journal Scientific Reports that wild female bonobos will make blatant gestures asking for genital-on-genital rubbing. Subtlety is not their specialty. The two moves the scientists observed were foot-pointing, in which the female used her foot to point at her genitals, and the “hip shimmy,” in which she wiggled her genitals to mimic rubbing. Some 83% of the time, another female responded, giving the signaller exactly what she wanted. More. Everything would be simpler if we were bonobos. But try suing a bonobo for chimp support. No wonder they are an endangered species. See also: Why the human Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: “We don’t know whether the crows have cumulative technological culture, and one of the reasons is that we don’t know how they learn,” said Logan. “There’s a hypothesis that says in order for cumulative technological culture to occur you need to copy the actions of another individual. And we don’t know whether the crows are paying attention to the actions of others when they learn from someone else.” … Logan and colleagues found that the crows don’t imitate or copy actions at all. “So there goes that theory,” she said. “Assuming how they learn in a non-tool context carries over to a tool context, they wouldn’t copy the actions of individuals they see cutting up Pandanus leaves to Read More ›

Further to BBC announces: Chimps have entered the Stone Age (Nonsense. Apes smash things with stones the way birds do. They will go on doing that indefinitely. If their cognition permitted more, they would be further along today), over at Evolution News & Views, Ann Gauger has provides a reality-based perspective on chimp intelligence: Chimps as Incipient Humans? Darwinists Debate Some of the reports of stone use appear valid. Capuchins and chimpanzees are all known to use stones to crack open food, and the technique appears to go back thousands of years. But then, no one is disputing that some animals use simple tools. Even otters use stones to break open clam shells. It’s a question worth asking: Does the Read More ›

Further to Psychiatry: The trouble with being mad in North America… is that, at times, you’re saner than many pundits: We learn from the BBC Chimpanzees and monkeys have entered the Stone Age We think of the Stone Age as something that early humans lived through. But we are not the only species that has invented it In the rainforests of west Africa, the woodlands of Brazil and the beaches of Thailand, archaeologists have unearthed some truly remarkable stone tools. It’s not the workmanship that makes them special. If anything, a casual observer might struggle to even identify them as ancient tools. It’s not their antiquity that’s exceptional either: they’re only about the same age as the Egyptian pyramids. What Read More ›

As in National Geographic: Bonobo peeps point to human language origin (The pop science mind tends to lack practical intelligence. No one even thinks of asking why, if baby bonobo peeping tells us about the roots of human language, it never did anything for the bonobos) and Apes close to speaking? No. (In the middle ages, it was implausible miracle stories but today, it is implausible ape achievement stories. ) And further to Bonobos prefigure language?: Agenda so obvious, it stinks like the garbage on a hot summer night before the pickup. (if bonobos “peep,” that shows they are on the verge of speaking. But if Neanderthals did speak (of course they did), that shows it isn’t a big achievement.) In response Read More ›

Further to National Geographic: Bonobo peeps point to human language origin ( No one even thinks of asking why, if baby bonobo peeping tells us about the roots of human language, it never did anything for the bonobos). and Apes close to speaking? No. (In the middle ages, it was implausible miracle stories that attracted attention, but today, it is implausible ape achievement stories. ) The agenda is so obvious, it stinks like the garbage on a hot summer night before the pickup. For example, this just rolled out of the files: Neanderthals could talk? Warning: Concept now used to claim that language was no big leap after all. Note that if bonobos “peep,” that shows they are on the verge Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Apes may be closer to speaking than many scientists think In 2010, Marcus Perlman started research work at The Gorilla Foundation, where Koko has spent more than 40 years living immersed with humans — interacting for many hours each day with psychologist Penny Patterson and biologist Ron Cohn. … “She doesn’t produce a pretty, periodic sound when she performs these behaviors, like we do when we speak,” Perlman says. “But she can control her larynx enough to produce a controlled grunting sound.” In other words, Koko does not speak. “Decades ago, in the 1930s and ’40s, a couple of husband-and-wife teams of psychologists tried to raise chimpanzees as much as possible like human children and teach them to Read More ›

Generally, people who know them know that octopus/some squid are smart, compared to many similar life forms, but the mechanics by which their intelligence is mediated was unknown. Now, from Nature: Octopus genome holds clues to uncanny intelligence: DNA sequence expanded in areas otherwise reserved for vertebrates. With its eight prehensile arms lined with suckers, camera-like eyes, elaborate repertoire of camouflage tricks and spooky intelligence, the octopus is like no other creature on Earth. Added to those distinctions is an unusually large genome, described in Nature1 on 12 August, that helps to explain how a mere mollusc evolved into an otherworldly being. … Surprisingly, the octopus genome turned out to be almost as large as a human’s and to contain Read More ›

Further to New Scientist asks What if we could talk to animals? No one with horse sense should be surprised by this: Horses share some surprisingly similar facial expressions to humans and chimps, according to new University of Sussex research. Mammal communication researchers have shown that, like humans, horses use muscles underlying various facial features – including their nostrils, lips and eyes – to alter their facial expressions in a variety of social situations. The findings, published in PLOS ONE today (05 August 2015), suggest evolutionary parallels in different species in how the face is used for communication. The study builds on previous research showing that cues from the face are important for horses to communicate, by developing an objective Read More ›

What if … We learn to talk to animals? That’s one of the big ideas that could, they say,  transform what it means to be human: Actually, we can talk to animals. We do. They don’t say anything back though. Probably never will. One needs to sign in/buy something to read the subsequent classic New Scientist piffle. But do note this (free): Steven Wise, a lawyer at the Florida-based Nonhuman Rights Project, which brought the lawsuit, argues that if chimps are declared legal persons, they should be granted rights to protect their fundamental interests. “That would certainly include bodily liberty and likely bodily integrity as well,” he says. We could no longer keep chimps in captivity, never mind subject them Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: For the first time, research has shown that, despite not having a nervous system, plants use signals normally associated with animals when they encounter stress. … “We’ve known for a long-time that the animal neurotransmitter GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) is produced by plants under stress, for example when they encounter drought, salinity, viruses, acidic soils or extreme temperatures,” says senior author Associate Professor Matthew Gilliham, ARC Future Fellow in the University’s School of Agriculture, Food and Wine. “But it was not known whether GABA was a signal in plants. We’ve discovered that plants bind GABA in a similar way to animals, resulting in electrical signals that ultimately regulate plant growth when a plant is exposed to a stressful environment.” Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: The idea that integrating abstract information drives many of the human brain’s unique abilities has been around for decades. But a paper published1 in Current Biology, which directly compares activity in human and macaque monkey brains as they listen to simple auditory patterns, provides the first physical evidence that a specific area for such integration may exist in humans. Other studies that compare monkeys and humans have revealed differences in the brain’s anatomy, for example, but not differences that could explain where humans’ abstract abilities come from, say neuroscientists. “This gives us a powerful clue about what is special about our minds,” says psychologist Gary Marcus at New York University. “Nothing is more important than understanding how we Read More ›

Well, get this: Far from being selfish organisms whose sole purpose is to maximize their own reproduction, bacteria in large communities work for the greater good by resolving a social conflict among individuals to enhance the survival of their entire community. This part is rubbish, of course: “It’s an example of what we call ’emergent phenomena’,” explained Gürol Süel, an associate professor of molecular biology at UC San Diego who headed the research effort. “Emergent phenomena” is an elegant of saying “We don’t know what we are talking about.” That’s fine, just admit it. Meanwhile: The conflict is essentially this: Bacteria at the outer edges of the biofilm are the most vulnerable within their community to chemical and antibiotic attacks. Read More ›

From Science: The human hand is a marvel of dexterity. It can thread a needle, coax intricate melodies from the keys of a piano, and create lasting works of art with a pen or a paintbrush. Many scientists have assumed that our hands evolved their distinctive proportions over millions of years of recent evolution. But a new study suggests a radically different conclusion: Some aspects of the human hand are actually anatomically primitive—more so even than that of many other apes, including our evolutionary cousin the chimpanzee. The findings have important implications for the origins of human toolmaking, as well as for what the ancestor of both humans and chimps might have looked like. More. Funny that. I remember meeting Read More ›