Animal minds

… than what you might expect to find in nature. From “Aquarium Fishes Are More Aggressive in Reduced Environments, New Study Finds” ( ScienceDaily (Sep. 22, 2011)”, we learn something that won’t surprise many: Oldfield quantified aggressive behavior as a series of displays and attacks separated by at least a second. Displays are body signals such as flaring fins. An attack could be a nip, chase, or charge at another fish. In aquariums, these behaviors can lead to injury and in extreme cases to death. Aggressive behavior was not correlated with small-scale changes in either group size or habitat size alone. However, a significant difference was observed in environments sufficiently large and complex: fish spent less time exhibiting aggressive behavior. Read More ›

In this article in the Daily Telegraph (UK), we see some typical philosophical and cultural applications of Darwinism: People are unfaithful to their marriages Therefore, it is natural Therefore, it is right i.e. What is, is what is right. Since we are no more than nature, all that we do is thus natural – and who can object to that? Take away the Darwinian assumptions, and what is the basis of this article? There are none. But does the author ever examine those assumptions? Nope.

In relentless pursuit of evidence that animals think like people, Science publishes “Do Tayras Plan for the Future?” by Helen Fields (5 August 2011):

Humans buy unripe bananas, then leave them on the kitchen counter. The tayra, a relative of the weasel native to Central and South America, appears to do much the same thing, picking unripe plantains and hiding them until they ripen, according to a new study. The authors speculate that tayras are showing a human-like capacity to plan for the future, which has previously been shown only in primates and birds.

The problem is, Read More ›