“True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view) consists of its attitude toward those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.”
— Milan Kundera in The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Chicken-human behavioral similarities
Excerpt: “ … [Chickens empathize] with individuals that are in danger.”
Comment: Or sick: On beautiful days, when my chickens would otherwise be eager to go out hunting for bugs, they'd instead sit inside next to one dying of cancer, also shunning food just to be with her hour after hour.
Think chicken: Think intelligent, caring and complex: Review looks at studies on chicken intelligence, social development and emotions
Excerpt: “Chickens are not as clueless or 'bird-brained' as people believe them to be. They have distinct personalities and can outmaneuver one another. They know their place in the pecking order, and can reason by deduction, which is an ability that humans develop by the age of seven. Chicken intelligence is therefore unnecessarily underestimated and overshadowed by other avian groups.”
Can some birds be just as smart as apes?
One very brainy bird: Study finds pigeons uncommonly good at distinguishing cancerous from normal breast tissue
Excerpt: “Pigeons performed as well as humans in categorizing digitized slides and mammograms of benign and malignant human breast tissue [thus performing like pathologists or radiologists — doctors!].”
Are Dogs 'Kids?': Owner-Dog Relationships Share Striking Similarities to Parent-Child Relationships
Chimpanzees learn rock-paper-scissors: New study shows that chimps' ability to learn simple circular relationships is on a par with that of 4-year-old children
When chimps outsmart humans
Reciprocity and parrots: Griffin the grey parrot appears to understand benefits of sharing, study suggests
New evidence of tool use discovered in parrots
Crows understand water displacement at the level of a small child: Show causal understanding of a 5- to 7-year-old child
Smarter than a first-grader? Crows can perform as well as 7- to 10-year-olds on cause-and-effect water displacement tasks
Crows Solve Puzzles Inspired by Aesop's Fables
Pigeons share our ability to place everyday things in categories
Pigeon power: Study suggests similarity between how pigeons learn the equivalent of words and the way children do
Pigeons can discriminate both space and time: Finding underscores that animals beyond humans and primates show abstract intelligence
Political ravens? Ravens notice the relationships among others, study shows
Ravens can plan ahead, similar to humans and great apes
Goats are far more clever than previously thought, and have an excellent memory
Chimpanzees Show Similar Personality Traits to Humans
Chimpanzees may know when they are right and move to prove it
Chimps can vary their smiles like humans
Fruit flies show mark of intelligence in thinking before they act, study suggests
I shouldn't have eaten there: Rats show behavior of 'regret' in choosing the wrong 'restaurant'
Mice not only experience regret, but also learn to avoid it in the future: Mice make and change their decisions in order to avoid future regret
Mice individuality is influenced by their relations
Monkeys also believe in winning streaks, study shows
The Social Genius of Animals (Scientific American Mind, Nov/Dec 2012)
Crows are smarter than you think: Crows join humans, apes and monkeys in exhibiting advanced rational thinking
Monkeys are seen making stone flakes so humans are 'not unique' after all: Wild-bearded capuchin monkeys in Brazil deliberately break stones, unintentionally creating flakes that share many of the characteristics of those produced by early Stone Age hominins
Chickens and humans possess many similarities in behavior and social hierarchy. Although chickens are often disparaged as being dumb animals, observant chicken owners know otherwise.
Like many people, before I got chickens, I assumed they were stupid animals devoid of personalities—basically egg-laying machines. However, after I brought them home, I quickly fell in love with them; I call them my “kids” or my “babies.” Now it's not about the eggs, but a chance to give a wonderful life to animals that can indeed enjoy life, as I learned. Chickens exhibit surprising intelligence and marked individuality. I've noticed many parallels between chicken and human behavior. Here are some of them:
People obviously love tasty food. So do chickens. When my chickens were young, they would squeal with delight when given one of their treats, such as currants, but also simple pleasures such as fresh water, which they would instantly devour with zest. As adults, they slowly peck at crumble, their primary food they eat only if nothing else is available, but they peck like animated jackhammers when given something yummy, such as raisins, watermelon, other melons, black olives, flax, green and especially purple cabbage, oatmeal, corn on the cob (a favorite!), sweet potatoes, cheese, scrambled eggs, and egg shells. They also love blackberries, but what I can pick in 15 minutes, they can eat in seconds. But just as humans become accustomed to pleasures and eventually derive less thrill from them, so do chickens. The breakfast I served this morning once would have elicited prolonged Happy Baby sounds but instead evoked bored disappointment and rejection analogous to turning up one's nose—what I call turning up their beaks. Also as with humans, the best antidote is to withdraw the pleasure and later reintroduce it.
Just as humans often fiercely compete for the most desirable possessions and partners, chickens compete for the tastiest food but not the commonplace stuff. While chickens can be competitive (as evidenced by eating yummy food as rapidly as possible to get as much as possible when other chickens are near), they can also be remarkably altruistic by emitting a sound to call other chickens, essentially saying, “I found something really tasty. Come and get it!”
Taste matters to chickens, but so does color. They prefer brightly colored food: red, blue, purple, yellow, and green. Picking foods with such natural colors is a smart way to obtain powerful antioxidants and essential nutrients. A ScienceDaily article, Colorful Plates Boost a Picky Eater's Appetite, said:
“Parents of picky eaters can encourage their children to eat more nutritionally diverse diets by introducing more color to their meals, according to a new Cornell University study. The study finds that colorful food fare is more appealing to children than adults.”
It's more appealing to chickens, too. :-)
Article: July 9, 2021: Songbird ancestors evolved a new way to taste sugar
Chickens love sugar. I recently gave my chickens oatmeal as a treat, placing it on a paper plate I'd used to eat gluten-free pumpkin bread with a light sugar glaze, some of which stuck to the plate and dried. Chickens like oatmeal, but enjoy sugar even more; they seem to have radar for it. It took precisely one peck for the chicken to find the small nuggets of dried frosting adhering to the plate. She used that as a handle to pick the plate up, which dumped the oatmeal on the ground. She then walked around for a few minutes holding the now-vertical plate in her beak, as other chickens pecked at other sugar blobs on the plate. The amount of sugar totaled less than 1% of the oatmeal, which the chickens ignored even though it was in a surprisingly neat pile. Sugar is more yummy.
Chickens want what others have. Put a plate full of treats on the ground and the first chicken to reach it will often run off holding a treat in her beak while other hens run after her, trying to steal the food away, evidently thinking her treat is more valuable than the ones remaining on the plate: treats they could have all to themselves instead of chasing after a bird determined to keep what she has. Similarly, humans sometimes assume that what others have (such as a particular partner) is automatically more desirable than what they have. Cognizant of this, some women increase their appeal by inviting a male friend to accompany them.
Chickens are inquisitive and love to explore, even things that obviously contain no sources of food. For example, my chickens often hop onto my tractor or bulldozer while I work on their engines. They'll peer inside, tilt their heads, look at me, and keep doing that.
Chickens get bored eating and doing the same things. They crave variety. If they are free, they frequently move from one spot to another, such as hunting for bugs in the forest leaves, then in the grass, then in another grassy spot, and another. Then it might be time for a dust bath, or just basking in the sun, followed by more hunting in various places. Then they might hang out around me to see what I am doing or beg for treats, after which they might spend an hour or two in one of their favorite shady hang-out spots. Then more hunting for bugs as they slowly meander back to their coop in the evening. Once there, it's always time for a bedtime snack.
Unfortunately, most chickens in developed countries are either slaughtered for meat when they are very young or confined in cages so crowded they're like sardines in a can. Once chickens are given a taste of freedom, they—like humans—relish it, valuing it even more than safety and security.
As proof of that, consider my chickens, who know they are safe in the large pen attached to their coop that gives them considerably more square feet per bird than average. While in that pen, I've never seen them display the defensive behaviors they exhibit when they are free and exposed, such as frequently looking in the sky for predatory birds or listening and responding to potentially threatening sounds. In that pen, they have everything they need: water, food, and even a variety of tasty treats they attack like starved teenagers gobbling a pizza.
While chickens crave freedom once they experience it, chickens who don't know what it is like to be free are more tolerant of restrictions. My chickens rarely return to the safety of their pen or coop during the day unless they are terrified by a predator. Even when they are on high alert and are constantly looking and listening for sounds that signal danger, they would rather be free and in peril than safe and secure. Thus, chickens want freedom even if they have everything they need in captivity. Too bad most Americans don't.
My chickens are content in their pen only for a few minutes in the morning after exiting their coop. After a quick breakfast, they are eager to be freed so they can hunt for worms and assorted bugs on land that is strangely devoid of them. It doesn't matter. They often prefer hunting and striking out to eating crumble (their usual “chicken food” fare) or even platefuls of treats I know they love. If I don't free them to run around, they quickly get bored. Some will mope around as if they are depressed while the more vociferous ones make pitiful loud squawking sounds analogous to human crying, voicing their displeasure at being deprived of an accustomed pleasure.
Seconds after letting them loose, they make happy chicken sounds, analogous to happy baby sounds, and they are infused with energy as they scratch the ground and overturn leaves looking for something to eat. Hours of that activity yields less food than what they can wolf down in less than a minute while eating treats they clearly prefer to crumble. Thus, hunting for food is often more fun than eating it. Even when chickens have an endless supply of tasty food, they usually prefer to hunt for bugs, even if the search is fruitless.
The dumbest and smartest cause most of the problems.
The chicken at the top of the pecking order often isn't the smartest, just the most willing to ruthlessly attack others to put them in their place.
Those at the top of the pecking order get more resources (food in the case of chickens) that enables them to become larger and more powerful: the rich get richer.
Those at the top of the pecking order don't give a hoot about fairness or helping others even when there are more than enough resources for everyone. They hog resources and intimidate or attack others to deter them from getting their fair share.
Those at or near the bottom of the pecking order behave in a submissive manner and may appear stupid or unfriendly, but can come out of their shells and blossom if given a chance. This marked change in chickens can also happen in people, but few know how to catalyze such positive metamorphoses. Instead, people often enjoy bashing the imperfections and mistakes of others instead of helping them improve.
Interesting observation: After the alpha-chicken (the one at the top of the pecking order) died, the remaining chickens didn't fight to see who'd be #1; they all just got along in peace and harmony. With humans, the presumption is that we need leaders and government and would be lost without them. I have my doubts about that, and I wonder if they do us more harm than good. If the government collapsed, as it likely will, would you rob your neighbor? I wouldn't. If anything, I'd reach out more to others to see if they needed any help. Government enacts countless laws to force us to do what most of us would do on our own without any arm-twisting: treat others fairly and with respect, as we'd wish to be treated (the Golden Rule).
The most basic principle of civilization is cooperation. If chickens, often disparaged as bird-brains, can figure out how to share a plate of tasty food they all eagerly want, why can't humans cooperate and get along with one another without government? We could.
Cooperation is adaptive: that is, it enhances your probability of survival. If humans didn't innately realize the adaptive benefit of cooperation, they never would have survived long enough to form governments—governments of kings and dictators motivated not by the Golden Rule, but by usurping the lion's share for the rulers and their supporters. It is still the same way today, even in the United States, with politicians stealing our money to reward their special interests.
Arguably our most precious asset—our money—is controlled by the Federal Reserve System, not a part of the federal government as many people think, but a private corporation that acts in cahoots with our leaders to steal our money by diluting its value. They do that by literally creating money out of thin air. If you create money, you're a counterfeiter. That's a crime because it dilutes the value of existing money. The laws of economics are as immutable as the laws of physics; money cannot be created out of thin air and put into circulation without it lessening the value of existing money, such as the money in your bank account and 401(k) plan.
“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”
— Henry Ford
Chickens have favorite buddies to hang out with, but their friendships may change over time. Relevant research: Birds choose their neighbors based on personality.
Chickens have favorite hang-out spots, which may also change in time.
Chickens love to be comfortable. I discussed this with a chicken-loving expert who said that nature gives chickens and other animals the insulation and metabolism they need to stay warm in winter. Wrong; nature enables them to survive (usually), not be comfortable! Here's proof: My chickens hate to be in their coop, except during the winter when it is heated. At other times, as soon as I open the door to let them out in the morning, they almost climb over one another to exit first. However, when I open their door during winter, they will often whimper and refuse to come out during a 40° day even when tempted by a treat, such as scrambled eggs, they would otherwise rush to get (they're often so eager to get it they'll hop up before I have a chance to set the plates on the ground).
Wild animals are often miserable during winter, which is why I make shelters for them and created a site about that topic. One of the shelters I made is about 200 feet long and home to lots of animals who clearly prefer the coziness of this Hilton for Critters that blocks wind and provides insulation.
Chickens are more likely to behave if they had their fill of fun that day. If they had only a couple hours of freedom that day, it is often difficult to coax them back into their pen and then coop. If they didn't obtain their MDR (minimum daily requirement) of fun, they will stay out past the time when darkness—and its associated dangers—otherwise compels them to head in for the night. However, if they were free most of the day, getting them into the pen and coop is much easier.
As much as chickens love eating, foraging for food, and dust baths, I saw evidence of the depth of chicken emotion when two of the three birds in the flock spent days sitting with a dying one who couldn't walk.
Chickens have a long-term memory of danger, which I discussed in another article after showing a picture of Mark Zuckerberg holding a dead chicken he likely killed. “Birds, reptiles and mammals are all descended from a common ancestor,” so by slitting the throats of chickens, Zuckerberg is slitting the throats of relatives—very distant ones, of course, but still relatives.
One more thing: I've learned much more from chickens than they've learned from me. That valuable lesson should be extrapolated by educators who think imparting knowledge is a one-way street with students the inevitable receivers and teachers or professors always the transmitters. That attitude spills over to others, such as LinkedIn influencers who never engage with readers, as if they always know more even though some of them possess amateurish levels of knowledge.
Notes:
- March 17, 2022: Assume that animals have feelings too, say cognitive biologists
- June 27, 2023: Chimp spent 28 years looking through bars. Now watch her marvel at open sky in Florida
- April 19, 2023: Animal consciousness: Why it's time to rethink our human-centered approach
- Empathy, Morality, Community, Culture—Apes Have It All: Primatologist Frans de Waal takes exception with human exceptionalism.
- January 9, 2023: Speciesism, like racism, imperils humanity and the planet
- Animal magic: why intelligence isn't just for humans
- Dogs notice when computer animations violate Newton’s laws of physics: Dogs seem to understand the basic way objects should behave, and stare for longer if animated balls violate expectations by rolling away for no obvious reason
- NOVA: Bird Brain
- “Birdbrain” Turns from Insult to Praise: Some avian species use tools and can recognize themselves in the mirror. How do tiny brains pull off such big feats?
- Birds use massive magnetic maps to migrate—some could cover the whole world
- Bird brains' cortex-like structure may be behind complex cognition, and even consciousness
- Bird Brains Are Far More Humanlike Than Once Thought: The avian cortex had been hiding in plain sight all along. Humans were just too birdbrained to see it
- Birds from different species recognize each other and cooperate
- Penguins have rare ability to recognise each other's faces and voices
- Vocal accommodation found in African penguins
- January 5, 2022: Goldfish taught to drive little land vehicle to desired targets
- A Journey Into the Animal Mind: What science can tell us about how other creatures experience the world
- Consider the octopus: Octopuses are smart in ways humans are only beginning to understand – just as companies are about to farm them for food on a much larger scale
Comment: Playful, too! - May 18, 2023: Octopuses may have nightmares about predators attacking them: An octopus in an aquarium has been filmed going from deep sleep to thrashing and releasing ink – an anti-predator response that suggests it was dreaming about being attacked
- July 29, 2021: NFTs by chimpanzees, like 1950s primate art, raise questions about the nature of creativity
- Researchers “Translate” Bat Talk. Turns Out, They Argue—A Lot: A machine learning algorithm helped decode the squeaks Egyptian fruit bats make in their roost, revealing that they “speak” to one another as individuals
- Bats have different song cultures and chatter about food, sleep, sex and other bats
- Baby bats babble like human infants
- Young infant's laughter found to share features with ape laughter
- Dairy Cows Have Individual Temperaments
- Dairy calves are natural optimists or pessimists, just like us
- Personal Touch In Farming: Giving A Cow A Name Boosts Her Milk Production
- Finding signs of happiness in chickens could help us understand their lives in captivity
- Slower growing chickens experience higher welfare, commercial scale study finds
Excerpt: “Slower growing broiler chickens are healthier and have more fun …” - These birds communicate by fluttering their feathers—and they have different accents
Related: Fluttering Feathers Could Spawn New Species - If the birds can expect a larger profit in the future, they forego their desire for immediate reward
Comment: Something many humans cannot do very well.
Related: Discounting the future (1, 2). - July 21, 2021: Plants Feel Pain and Might Even See: It's time to retire the hierarchical classification of living things.
- Causal knowledge and imitation/emulation switching in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and children (Homo sapiens)
Comment: Chimpanzees performed superior to humans (more corroboration of this). - June 21, 2023: Chimpanzees can prepare for alternative futures
- June 6, 2023: Development of communication in chimpanzees echoes that of human infants
- Neuroscientist Lori Marino: Eating someone: Farmed animals have personalities, smarts, even a sense of agency. Why then do we saddle them with lives of utter despair?
- Quick-learning cuttlefish pass 'the marshmallow test'
Comment: Performing better than many humans. - Unlike humans, cuttlefish retain sharp memory of specific events in old age, study finds
- Five ways fish are more like humans than you realize
Excerpt: “… like the same drugs as humans … remember their friends … feel pain … can be impatient …” - March 1, 2023: Flamingos found to form cliques with like-minded pals
Comment: Just like people! - Study shows experimental evidence of an altruistic nature in small convict cichlid fish
- February 6, 2023: Fish can recognize themselves in photos, further evidence they may be self-aware: Self-awareness may be more widespread among animals than we once thought
- April 26, 2023: Fish Are Not Insentient Dullards: More stimulating environments for captive fish could improve scientific research.
- You probably score worse than monkeys on questions about the world
- Monkeys outperform humans when it comes to cognitive flexibility, study finds
- Monkeys may share a key grammar-related skill with humans: A capacity for recursion evolved early in primate evolution, a contested study suggests
- Dogs Can Feel Rejected and Fall in Love Like Humans: According to researchers, the romantic lives of dogs include as much sex and misery as ours.
- Dogs tell the difference between intentional and unintentional action
- Exceptional learning capacities revealed in some gifted dogs
- 11 Most Common Dog Facial Expressions and What They Mean
- Can dogs rapidly learn words? Dogs can learn new words after hearing them only four times
- Dogs can tell when people are lying to them, study finds
- New dog, old tricks? Stray dogs can understand human cues: A new study shows that untrained stray dogs respond to gestures from people, suggesting that understanding between humans and dogs transcends training
- Humans not smarter than animals, just different, experts say
- Economic Decision-Making in Parrots
- Parrots get probability, use stats to make choices: study
- Prosocial and tolerant parrots help others to obtain food
Related: Parrots give each other gifts without promise of reward: African grey parrots show a type of insightful generosity recorded in only humans, orangutans and a few other species. - No hands, no problem: clever parrots craft and wield tools: The Goffin's cockatoo joins chimpanzees and others in the small club of animals that can make implements.
- February 10, 2023: Cockatoos know to bring along multiple tools when they fish for cashews
- Embryonic education: How learning begins long before birth
- Chickens 'cleverer than toddlers': Chickens may be brighter than young children in numeracy and basic skills, according to a new study.
Comment: Thanks to Sue for telling me about that article. I commented on it at the end of another article. - Primate mothers may carry infants after death as a way of grieving, study finds
- Baboons can reproduce social conventions to problem solve: study
- Optimism remains in chickens in enriched environments despite exposure to stress
- Seals have been trained to sing the Star Wars theme - have a listen
- World's smallest bears' facial expressions throw doubt on human superiority: First time exact facial mimicry has been seen outside of humans and gorillas
- Animals laugh too, analysis of vocalization data suggests
- Vocal communication recorded in 53 animals we thought were silent: New recordings of sounds made by reptiles, amphibians and fish suggest that vocal communication has a common evolutionary origin in vertebrates
- Seals have a sense of rhythm
- Gorillas found to live in 'complex' societies, suggesting deep roots of human social evolution
- Gorillas gather around and groom their dead (+ video)
Comment: Very touching! - Gorillas can tell human voices apart
- Wild mountain gorillas enjoy playing in water just like we do
- March 10, 2023: Fairy wrens are more likely to help their closest friends but not strangers, just like humans
- November 1, 2022: Wild chimpanzees and gorillas can form long friendly associations that last decades
- July 19, 2021: Meet the puzzle-solving gorillas shedding light on how speech evolved
- August 11, 2022: Hear it for yourself: Zoo gorillas invent new call to communicate with human handlers
- Neuroscientists find first evidence animals can mentally replay past events
- Despite their small brains, ravens and crows may be just as clever as chimps, research suggests
- Crows Are Self-Aware and 'Know What They Know,' Just Like Humans
- December 10, 2020: Cognitive performance of four-months-old ravens may parallel adult apes
- December 22, 2020: Ravens Measure Up to Great Apes on Intelligence
- Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates: Crows have long been considered cunning. But their intelligence may be far more advanced than we ever thought possible.
- November 2, 2022: Crows Perform Yet Another Skill Once Thought Distinctively Human: Scientists demonstrate that crows are capable of recursion—a key feature in grammar. Not everyone is convinced
- To lift a crow’s mood, give it a toolkit: Clever crows are more cheerful after wielding simple instruments
- December 20, 2021: Here are 7 incredible things we learned this year that animals can do: From powerlifting to growing an entirely new body, these are the capabilities that most impressed us
Excerpt: “Polar bears that wield weapons …” - Some birds observed stealing hair from living mammals
- New Caledonian Crows Are Even Smarter and Scarier Than We Thought: They seem to be able to learn from each others’ tools.
- The Crow Whisperer: What happens when we talk to animals?
- After using tools, crows behave more optimistically, study suggests
- Confirmed: A duck named Ripper learned how to say “You bloody fool!”: "At first I thought, 'It's a hoax, it can't be true.' But it turned out to be true."
- Death of mother prompts adolescent chimps to look after their siblings
- We may have a basic form of sign language in common with chimpanzees
- What it means when animals have beliefs: Chimpanzees, some dog species and even scrub jay and crows have beliefs. Philosophers from Bochum have been debating how to define the term.
- Tropical crow species is highly skilled tool user
- Capuchin monkeys produce sharp stone flakes similar to tools
- Monkeys can use basic logic to decipher the order of items in a list
- Do hens have friends?
Comment: That research “found no evidence to suggest that modern hens reared in commercial conditions form … friendships,” but having raised chickens in better conditions, I know they obviously DO form friendships when treated properly. - October 13, 2022: Animal friendships are surprisingly like our own
- July 29, 2021: New study shows rats can make friends
- A primate's response to death: Researchers review 200 years of non-human primate 'comparative thanatology'
- Birds and primates share brain cell types linked to intelligence
- Bird Brain? Birds and Humans Have Similar Brain Wiring based on Large-scale network organization in the avian forebrain: a connectivity matrix and theoretical analysis
- Jackdaws learn from each other about 'dangerous' humans
- The Brains of the Animal Kingdom: New research shows that we have grossly underestimated both the scope and the scale of animal intelligence. Primatologist Frans de Waal on memory-champ chimps, tool-using elephants and rats capable of empathy.
- Animal Magic: Why Intelligence Isn't Just for Humans: Meet the footballing bees, optimistic pigs and alien-like octopuses that are shaking up how we think about minds
- Researchers study elephants' unique interactions with their dead
- Asian elephants are capable of using water as a tool
- Researchers and rats play 'hide and seek,' illuminating playful behavior in animals
- Rats taught to drive tiny cars to lower their stress levels
- November 11, 2022: Rats bopping to the beat in video demonstrate innate beat synchronization in animals for the first time
- Ants appear to feel more optimistic after a sugary treat: A sweet reward influences ants’ decision-making when they encounter ambiguous situations, hinting that they might have internal states like our emotions
- Ayumu (chimpanzee)
Excerpt: “His performance in the tasks was superior to that of comparably trained university students, leading to a conclusion that young chimpanzees have better working memory than adult humans.” - Chimpanzees consider intent when judging wrongdoing in others
- Connected-up-brains: Bat friends, monkeys sharing, and humans holding hands: the brains of social animals synchronise and expand one another
- Asian elephants have different personality traits just like humans
- Asian elephants could be the math kings of the jungle: Experimental evidence shows that Asian elephants possess numerical skills similar to those in humans based on Unique numerical competence of Asian elephants on the relative numerosity judgment task
- Elephants solve problems with personality
Excerpt: “Just as humans have their own individual personalities, new research … shows that elephants have personalities, too. Moreover, an elephant's personality may play an important role in how well that elephant can solve novel problems.” - May 23, 2023: Elephants particularly enjoy presence of zoo visitors, study shows
- October 31, 2022: Just like humans, more intelligent jays have greater self-control
- Giraffes are as socially complex as elephants, study finds
- Animals that can do math understand more language than we think
- Dog brains can distinguish between languages
- January 6, 2022: Dogs Can Distinguish Speech from Gibberish—and Tell Spanish from Hungarian: A new study's authors say their investigation represents the first time that a nonhuman brain has been shown to detect language
- Animals Can Count and Use Zero. How Far Does Their Number Sense Go? Crows recently demonstrated an understanding of the concept of zero. It's only the latest evidence of animals' talents for numerical abstraction — which may still differ from our own grasp of numbers.
- Empathy more common in animals than thought
- March 23, 2023: Feel your pain? Even fish can show they care
- 80 percent of Burmese long-tailed macaques use stone-tools to hammer food
- Experiments suggest macaques are capable of making decisions based on inference
- Chimps that mash potatoes challenge our understanding of tool use
- Chimpanzees' working memory similar to ours: Contrary to humans, chimpanzees did not use search strategies to facilitate their task
- May 4, 2023: Chimpanzees combine calls to communicate new meaning
- Limited brain capacity in humans and birds
Excerpt: “Birds and humans have very different networks of neurons in their brains. Nevertheless, their working memory is limited by similar mechanisms.” - Chimps caught crabbing
Excerpt: “At some point eons ago, our primarily fruit-eating ancestors put their hands in the water to catch and eat aquatic life, inadvertently supplementing their diet with nutrients that initiated a brain development process that eventually led to us. But how did this begin?” - Chimpanzees Show Altruism While Gathering Around the Juice Fountain
- Chimpanzees Are Rational, Not Conformists, Researchers Find based on Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) Flexibly Adjust Their Behaviour in Order to Maximize Payoffs, Not to Conform to Majorities
- Chimpanzees and Orangutans Remember Distant Past Events based on Memory for Distant Past Events in Chimpanzees and Orangutans
- Cherry or rhubarb? Orangutan mixes tasty cocktails in its mind
- Orangutans can play the kazoo – here's what this tells us about the evolution of speech
- Orangutans instinctively use hammers to strike and sharp stones to cut
- Insights from orangutans into the evolution of tool use: Gaining the ability to make stone tools was a useful development for early human ancestors in the hominin branch of the evolutionary tree. Could studying orangutans provide clues to how this behaviour arose?
- Chimpanzees shown spontaneously 'taking turns' to solve number puzzle
- Majority-Biased Learning: In Humans and Chimpanzees Knowledge Is Transmitted Within a Group by Means of a Majority Principle based on Majority-Biased Transmission in Chimpanzees and Human Children, but Not Orangutans
- Cooking up cognition: Study suggests chimps have cognitive capacity for cooking
- Maybe Our Species Should Become Rather More Humble
- Homolog of Mammalian Neocortex Found in Bird Brain based on Cell-type homologies and the origins of the neocortex
- Our Brains Are More Like Birds' Than We Thought based on Laminar and columnar auditory cortex in avian brain
- Do Animals Have Reflective Minds Able to Self-Regulate Perception, Reasoning, Memory?
- Chimps: Ability to 'Think About Thinking' Not Limited to Humans
Comment: Metacognition—amazing! - Dogs can do more than just tricks, they can even be asked to ponder their past
- November 14, 2022: Do Chimps Share Cool Stuff Just for Fun? Uganda Forest Study Provides a Hint That They Might
- Chimps Play Like Humans: Playful Behavior of Young Chimps Develops Like That of Children
- Show us how you play and it may tell us who you are
- Bolivian river dolphins observed playing with an anaconda
- Watch dolphins line up to self-medicate skin ailments at coral 'clinics'
- Scientists taught a cockatoo named Figaro to combine tools and “golf” for reward
- Animals that play with objects learn how to use them as tools
- Humans and monkeys show similar thinking patterns
- Apes may be closer to speaking than many scientists think
- Modern apes smarter than pre-humans
- Great apes pass a false-belief test, hinting at a theory of mind: Apes may anticipate when a person will wind up believing something in error.
- Young Apes Manage Emotions Like Humans Do based on Development of socio-emotional competence in bonobos
- Bonobos help strangers without being asked: Humans aren't the only species eager to make a good first impression
- Bonobos receive consolation from bystanders when producing 'baby-like' signals to express their emotional distress
- Bonobos, unlike humans, are more interested in the emotions of strangers than individuals they know
- Apes understand that some things are all in your head: Humans aren't the only ones who can tell when someone's beliefs don't match reality
- Young Female Chimpanzees Treat Sticks as Dolls: Growing Evidence of Biological Basis for Gender-Specific Play in Humans
- Wild Chimpanzees Exchange Meat For Sex, Researchers Find
Comment: Are humans really very different? - Chimps Have Better Short-term Memory Than Humans
- Can't find your keys? You need a chickadee brain: Scientists identify a link between spatial memory and genes in a bird
Excerpt: “These … birds hide thousands of food items every fall and rely on these hidden stores to get through harsh winters …” - The Ultimate Chimp Challenge: Chimps Do Challenging Puzzles for the Fun of It (based on Effect of a Cognitive Challenge Device Containing Food and Non-Food Rewards on Chimpanzee Well-Being)
Comment: How many humans do that? - Unlike people, monkeys aren't fooled by expensive brands
- Do Animals Think Like Autistic Savants?
- Do animals think rationally?: Researcher suggests rational decision-making doesn't require language
- This is Dan. Dan is a Baboon. Read, Dan, Read
Excerpt: “No one is exactly using the words "reading" and "baboons" in the same sentence, but a study published Thursday comes close.” - Baboons And Pigeons Are Capable Of Higher-Level Cognition, Behavioral Studies Show
- Pigeons better at multitasking than humans
- Can pigeons match wits with artificial intelligence?
Comment: Yes. - Homing Pigeons Remember Routes for Years
- Bird brain? Pigeons have quite a way with words
- Listening to Chickens Could Improve Poultry Production
- Birds Can Recognize People's Faces and Know Their Voices based on (1) Have we met before? Pigeons recognize familiar human faces (2) You sound familiar: carrion crows can differentiate between the calls of known and unknown heterospecifics
Comment: My chickens know my voice and respond to it, even when they cannot see me. - Something to crow about: New Caledonian crows show strong evidence of social learning
- New Caledonian crows can create compound tools
- Crows Are No Bird-Brains: Neurobiologists Investigate Neuronal Basis of Crows' Intelligence based on Abstract rule neurons in the endbrain support intelligent behaviour in corvid songbirds
- Crows React to Threats in Human-Like Way based on Brain imaging reveals neuronal circuitry underlying the crow’s perception of human faces
- Wild Crows Reveal Tool Skills based on Tool use by wild New Caledonian crows Corvus moneduloides at natural foraging sites
- Foraging for Fat: Crafty Crows Use Tools to Fish for Nutritious Morsels based on The Ecological Significance of Tool Use in New Caledonian Crows
- Crows Can Use 'Up To Three Tools' In Correct Sequence Without Training
- Crows Using Automobiles as Nutcrackers: The Evidence
- Crows 'hooked' on fast food: New Caledonian crows extract prey faster with complex hooked tools
- Tiny Crow Camera Spies On Clever Birds
- Crows count on 'number neurons'
- Crows Smart Enough to Hold a Grudge
Comment: Animalintelligence.org has many similar stories. - Tool-Making Birds: Necessity Is The Mother Of Invention For Clever Rooks
- From Fable To Fact: Rooks Use Stones And Water To Catch A Worm based on Rooks Use Stones to Raise the Water Level to Reach a Floating Worm
- Cockatoo 'Can Make Its Own Tools' and Clever Cockatoo With Skilled Craftmanship, both based on Spontaneous innovation in tool manufacture and use in a Goffin's cockatoo
- Skilful cockatoos able to shape same tool from different materials
- Goffin's cockatoos can create and manipulate novel tools
- Clever cockatoos bend hooks into straight wire to fish for food
Excerpt: “Bending of a hook into wire to fish for the handle of a basket by crow Betty 15 years ago stunned the scientific world. … The birds manufactured hook tools out of straight wire without ever having seen or used a hook tool before.” - Cockatoo select the right key to insert into a 'keyhole'
- Cockatoos keep their tools safe
- Even cockatoos draw conclusions
- Clever cockatoos learn through social interaction
- Pigs observed using tools for the first time
- September 4, 2021: A family of wild boars organized a cage breakout of 2 piglets, demonstrating high levels of intelligence and empathy
- Family pigs prefer their owner's company as dogs do, but they might not like strangers: Both dogs and pigs stay close to their owner if no other person is present; but if a stranger is also there, only dogs stay near humans, pigs prefer to stay away
- These huntsman spiders do something weird: live together as a big, happy family
- Pigs show potential for 'remarkable' level of behavioral, mental flexibility in new study
- Birds help each other partly for selfish reasons
- Chimp See, Chimp Learn: First Evidence for Chimps Improving Tool Use Techniques by Watching Others
- Chimpanzees Learn a More Efficient Tool Technique by Watching Others
- Chimpanzees Develop 'Specialized Tool Kits' To Catch Army Ants
- First Evidence Of Planned Animal Action? Chimp's Stone Throwing At Zoo Visitors Was 'Premeditated'
- Chimpanzee Uses Innovative Foresighted Methods to Fool Humans
- Whales Are Able to Learn from Others: Humpbacks Pass On Hunting Tips
- Puzzled otters learn from each other
- Otters learn from each other—but solve some puzzles alone
- The secret call of the wild: how animals teach each other to survive: Cultural knowledge, passed from animal to animal, is key to how species adapt to change in the world around them
- Time management skills keep animals primed for survival
- Birds, Young Children Show Similar Solving Abilities for 'Aesop's Fable' Riddle: At About 8 Years Old, Children's Performance Changes and Aesop's Fable Unlocks How Crows and Kids Think (both based on How Do Children Solve Aesop's Fable?)
- New study shows birds can learn from others to be more daring
- Pigeons Never Forget a Face
- Pigeons Show Superior Self-Recognition Abilities To Three Year Old Humans
- Pigeons As Art Critics? Pigeons, Like Humans, Use Color And Pattern Cues To Evaluate Paintings
- Mockingbirds Are Better Musicians Than We Thought: Their complex songs have striking similarities to Beethoven; Tuvan throat-singing; a Disney musical; and Kendrick Lamar
- Can animals use iridescent colours to communicate?
- Ravens Remember Relationships They Had With Others based on Long-Term Memory for Affiliates in Ravens
- Ravens Remember When They've Been Wronged
- Ravens cooperate, but not with just anyone: Ravens detect cheaters in cooperation
- A sad raven bums out its friends: Experiment shows how emotions can spread between birds.
- Scrub Jays React to Their Dead, Bird Study Shows: 'Funerals' Can Last for Up to Half an Hour based on Western scrub-jay funerals: cacophonous aggregations in response to dead conspecifics
- Pigeons Peck for Computerized Treat
- Birds 'weigh' peanuts and choose heavier ones
- Grey squirrels are quick learners, study shows
- Squirrels have long memory for problem solving
- Squirrels use 'chunking' to organize their favorite nuts: First study to show squirrels using sophisticated memorizing strategy to sort their bounty
Excerpt: “Like trick-or-treaters sorting their Halloween candy haul, fox squirrels apparently organize their stashes of nuts by variety, quality and possibly even preference …” - December 1, 2022: Flying squirrels carve nuts to store them securely in tree branches
- Squirrels listen in to birds' conversations as signal of safety
- Squirrels have personality traits similar to humans, new study shows
- Crabs Not Only Suffer Pain, But Retain Memory Of It based on Pain experience in hermit crabs?
- 'Shell-Shocked' Crabs Can Feel Pain based on Shock avoidance by discrimination learning in the shore crab (Carcinus maenas) is consistent with a key criterion for pain
Comment: Human mistreatment of countless animals is simply unconscionable. Part of this stems from ignorance, part from callous indifference, and part from religious beliefs that God put all these animals on Earth for us to slaughter any frigging way we see fit, even if it inflicts terrible pain. Yup, God cares more about us eating more than we should and inflating our fat cells more than He cares about us doing the right thing. This is clearly an example of might makes right: killing in inhumane ways because we can, and because we can get away with it. This is a moral abomination, not something to tolerate. If you believe in God, do you really believe He gave many animals the ability to experience emotions and pain that permits people to intensify their misery? Isn't that needlessly cruel? What's the point in that? Some kind of sick joke? If you believe in religion, and you believe that God is good, you may wish to consider the possibility that He looks favorably upon people who treat animals with as much kindness and respect as possible. - Guppies use ugly friends to seem more attractive
- Rats! Humans and Rodents Process Their Mistakes
- Rats can track the passage of time and judge their accuracy: Rats trained to leave 3.2 seconds between presses of a lever or to hold it down for this length of time seem able to judge whether they were accurate enough to have earned a reward
- Bee brains challenge view that larger brains are superior at understanding conceptual relationships
- Bees can learn higher numbers than we thought – if we train them the right way
- Bees and the thought of naught
Excerpt: “Since bees can count to five at least, the researchers taught them the inequality relations "greater than" and "less than." … Bees … can grasp zero.” - Bees can do basic arithmetic
- Honeybees Can Put Two and Two Together
- October 30, 2022: Bees shown to 'count' from left to right for first time
- Honeybees join humans as the only known animals that can tell the difference between odd and even numbers
- Honeybees are able to calculate probability and use it to find food
- Bees are better at counting if they are penalised for their mistakes
- Bees can link symbols to numbers: Study
- May 17, 2023: Bees can learn, remember, think and make decisions—here's a look at how they navigate the world
- May 19, 2023: Bees can do so much more than you think—from dancing to being little art critics
- March 7, 2023: Bumblebees learn new 'trends' in their behavior by watching and learning
Comment: Like some humans. - May 7, 2019: Paper wasps capable of behavior that resembles logical reasoning
- June 27, 2023: Bees Are Astonishingly Good at Making Decisions: Computer modeling explains a key facet of bees’ decision-making skills—something only seen previously in humans and other primates
- October 27, 2022: First-ever study shows bumble bees 'play'
- July 20, 2022: Wasps can grasp abstract concepts such as 'same' and 'different': Paper wasps can be trained to choose between pairs of stimuli that are either alike or different, suggesting the propensity for abstract thought may be more widespread than we thought
- Unexpected similarity between honey bee and human social life
- July 1, 2023: Do Insects Feel Joy and Pain? Insects have surprisingly rich inner lives—a revelation that has wide-ranging ethical implications
Comment: Do they? Yes. - I Asked Leading Entomologists: ‘What’s The Smartest Bug In The World?’: Some insects can count, recognize human faces, even invent languages.
- December 15, 2022: Insects may feel pain, says growing evidence: Here's what this means for animal welfare laws
- Gulls pay attention to human eyes
- New Questions About Animal Empathy
- Rare Neurons Linked to Empathy and Self-Awareness Discovered in Monkey Brains based on Von Economo Neurons in the Anterior Insula of the Macaque Monkey
- Monkeys Enjoy Giving To Others, Study Finds based on Giving is self-rewarding for monkeys
- Do Monkeys Know What Others Need? based on Food-related tolerance in capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) varies with knowledge of the partner's previous food-consumption
- Marmoset monkeys eavesdrop and understand conversations between other marmosets
- Monkeys Choose Variety for Variety's Sake based on How to spend a token? Trade-offs between food variety and food preference in tufted capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella)
- Nut-Cracking Monkeys Use Shapes to Strategize Their Use of Tools based on Wild Bearded Capuchin Monkeys (Sapajus libidinosus) Strategically Place Nuts in a Stable Position during Nut-Cracking
- March 10, 2023: Surprising similarities in stone tools of early humans and monkeys
- The Symbolic Monkey? Animals Can Comprehend And Use Symbols, Study Of Tufted Capuchins Suggests based on Preference Transitivity and Symbolic Representation in Capuchin Monkeys (Cebus apella)
- Black howler monkeys adapt mental maps like humans
- Female monkeys use males as 'hired guns' for defense against predators, study says
- Monkeys 'Understand' Rules Underlying Language Musicality
- October 25, 2021: Giant Lemurs Are the First Mammals (Besides Us) Found To Use Rhythm
- Neurons In Primate Cortex Associate Numerical Meaning With Visual Signs
- Orangutans Smarter Than Previously Thought: Orangutan Nest Building Highly Sophisticated based on Nest-building orangutans demonstrate engineering know-how to produce safe, comfortable beds
- Orangutans spontaneously bend straight wires into hooks to fish for food
- Researchers show that orangutans do not need to be taught how to use a hammer
- Clever orangutans invent nutcrackers from scratch: Chimpanzees are not the only great apes to develop tools without tutoring.
- Orangutans Communicate As If They Were Playing Charades
- December 15, 2022: Orangutans and gorillas are able to make economically rational decisions, find researchers
Comment: Many humans cannot. - Great Apes Make Sophisticated Decisions: Research Suggests That Great Apes Are Capable of Calculating the Odds Before Taking Risks based on Great Apes' Risk-Taking Strategies in a Decision Making Task
- Great apes have you on their mind: Apes are shown to rely on self-experience to anticipate others' actions
- Great Apes Know They Could Be Wrong, Research Suggests based on Do apes know that they could be wrong?
- Apes Unwilling to Gamble When Odds Are Uncertain based on Chimpanzees and bonobos distinguish between risk and ambiguity
- Apes Get Emotional Over Games of Chance
- Like humans, apes communicate to start and end social interactions
- What was he thinking? Study turns to [impressive] ape intellect
- A chimpanzee who outperforms college students on a memory test
- Video of chimpanzee food sharing
- May 3, 2023: Apes have the same willingness to share food as small children: In lab experiments, chimpanzees and bonobos share peanuts and grapes with other apes who shared food first, doing so at about the same rate as 4-year-old children
- May 14, 2023: Young children value the lives of animals more than adults do: Children aged 6 to 9 are more likely than adults to save the life of a dog, pig or chimpanzee over a person in a hypothetical “trolley problem” scenario
- Chimpanzees Successfully Play the Ultimatum Game: Apes' Sense of Fairness Confirmed
- Chimpanzees' Contagious Yawning Evidence of Empathy, Not Just Sleepiness, Study Shows based on Ingroup-Outgroup Bias in Contagious Yawning by Chimpanzees Supports Link to Empathy
- Why Do You Care About Fairness? Ask A Chimp
- March 2, 2023: Insights into the evolution of the sense of fairness: Long-tailed macaques react with disappointment when their expectations are not met
- Chimps are sensitive to what is right and wrong: 'Bystander effect' seen in chimps that only react when one of their own group is harmed
- Chimps learn 'handshakes' according to social group: study
- Chimpanzees show ability to plan route in computer mazes
- Chimpanzees can learn how to use tools without observing others
- Chimpanzees unite against a common enemy
- Sensitivity to inequity is in wolves' and dogs' blood
- Wolves understand cause and effect better than dogs
- Wolves show signs of self-cognition with innovative sniff test
- Dogs have a better ear for language than we thought
- Children Under Four and Children With Autism Don't Yawn Contagiously based on Contagious Yawning in Autistic and Typical Development
- Birds, bees and other critters have scruples, and for good reason
- Human encouragement might influence how dogs solve problems
- Birds Sing to Their Eggs, and This Song Might Help Their Babies Survive Climate Change: Embryonic learning—things birds pick up from their parents while still in the egg—may play a bigger role than imagined.
- 'Experienced' mouse mothers tutor other females to parent, helped by hormone oxytocin
- Dogs hear our words and how we say them
- Dogs understand both vocabulary and intonation of human speech
- Songbirds and humans share some common speech patterns: For both songbirds and humans, the longer the phrase the shorter the sounds
- Scientists chase mystery of how dogs process words: New study focuses on the brain mechanisms dogs use to differentiate between words
- Dogs mouth-lick to communicate with angry humans
- Dogs may have body-awareness and understand consequences of own actions
- What's up, Skip? Kangaroos really can 'talk' to us, study finds: Kangaroos can intentionally communicate with humans, research reveals
- Dogs May Understand Human Point of View
- Science shows that dogs feel things like us. Legislation must catch up: Research supports what Darwin said in 1872 – dogs express emotions in a way recognisable to humans. Governments must do more to protect them, says Jules Howard
- Dogs are more expressive when someone is looking
- Dogs Feel Envy, Austrian Study Finds
- Dogs respond to goal-directed behavior at similar level to infants
- Dogs know when they don't know: When they don't have enough information to make an accurate decision, dogs will search for more -- similarly to chimpanzees and humans
- Dogs give friends food
- Dog and human cognition similar, study finds
- Domestication of Dogs May Have Elaborated On a Pre-Existing Capacity of Wolves to Learn from Humans
- Too Dog Tired to Avoid Danger: Like Humans, Dogs Engage in Riskier Behaviors When Their Self-Control Is Depleted
Comment: People are also more likely to say or do things they really don't mean, or later regret, when they are exhausted, such as some of my blog postings during my years of extreme sleep deprivation. Toward the end of a few long night shifts in the ER (especially if I began the 12 – 15-hour shift exhausted), I said some things I ordinarily wouldn't say. Nothing shocking, just a bit too much relaxation of the normal self-censoring most of us (except Vice President Biden) routinely do. I give him a pass because of his prior brain surgery, but dog-tired people deserve a bit of understanding that what comes out when they're drained is not them. If everyone were judged by their worst behavior, we'd all be in trouble. Or prison. - Dogs' Intelligence On Par With Two-Year-Old Human, Canine Researcher Says
- Your dog remembers what you did
- Dogs May Mourn as Deeply as Humans Do
- Fido the dog: one of the most poignant stories ever told.
- Canine Comfort: Do Dogs Know When You're Sad? (Yes!)
- Human Yawns Unleash Dog Yawns
- A common underlying genetic basis for social behavior in dogs and humans
- Flockmate or loner? Identifying the genes behind sociality in chickens
- The sniff test of self-recognition confirmed: Dogs have self-awareness
- Older and wiser: Female elk can learn to avoid hunters with age
- Captive Animals Show Signs of Boredom, Study Finds and Bored Mink Snack Between Meals, Lie Awake in Bed; Enriching Surroundings Reduces Signs of Boredom in Caged Mink; both based on Environmental Enrichment Reduces Signs of Boredom in Caged Mink
- Self-Medication in Animals Much More Widespread Than Believed
- Brain maps show how empathetic mice feel each other's pain: A mouse sharing a companion's fear has different neural patterns to one sharing another animal’s pain.
- Mice may ‘catch’ each other's pain — and pain relief: After an hour of mingling, healthy mice mirror a companion's pain or morphine-induced relief
- Female mice that lose a male partner are wary of taking a new one
- Mice living with humans the longest found to be the best at problem-solving
- June 3, 2022: New research shows long-term personality traits influence problem-solving in zebra finches
- April 21, 2021: Simplifying our world: Mice master complex thinking with a remarkable capacity for abstraction
- Animal smarts: What do dolphins and dogs know?
- Dolphin Caught in Fishing Line Approaches Divers for Help
- Dolphins Keep Lifelong Social Memories, Longest in a Non-Human Species
- Dolphins form friendships through shared interests just like us, study finds
- Dolphins can learn from peers how to use shells as tools
- Animals learn survival tricks from others, even if they live alone, finds researcher
- Researchers find dolphin attempting to communicate with porpoises
- These manta rays form ‘friendships’ that last longer than a summer fling
- Know your ally: Cooperative male dolphins can tell who's on their team
- Dolphin Cognitive Abilities Raise Ethical Questions, Says Emory Neuroscientist
- Mysterious river dolphin helps crack the code of marine mammal communication
- Whales and dolphins have rich 'human-like' cultures and societies
- Animal culture is so common that even fish and flies have it
- Fish just want to have fun, according to a new study that finds even fish 'play'
- Could fish have consciousness? 'Emotional fever' experiment suggests they might
- Fish have surprisingly complex personalities: Tiny fish called Trinidadian guppies have individual 'personalities,' new research shows
- Emotional states discovered in fish
- Squid brains approach those of dogs
- Female fish judge males on DIY skills, study shows
- Do fish feel pain? Research team says it's likely
- Fish Appear to Recognize Themselves in the Mirror
- Archerfish recognize that insects they have never seen before are animals
- Porpoises seem to cooperate in surprisingly sophisticated group hunting
- May 18, 2023: Orcas have sunk 3 boats in Europe and appear to be teaching others to do the same. But why?
- Hidden away: An enigmatic mammalian brain area revealed in reptiles
- Rats will try to save other rats from drowning
- April 4, 2023: Rats! Rodents seem to make the same logical errors humans do: Both tend to judge the co-occurrence of two events as more probable than one event alone. Could mental shortcuts be to blame?
- Baboons prefer to spend time with others of the same age, status and even personality
Comment: Just like people! - February 13, 2023: Mandrills teach their daughters good hygiene practices
Comment: Just like some people! - March 10, 2023: Migratory birds take breaks to boost their immune systems, shows study
Comment: Just like people should do. - Chimpanzees apply insects to wounds, a potential case of medication use?
- Watch this mama chimp treat her son’s open wound by applying insect “poultice”
- Chimpanzees rub insects on open wounds: Treating others may not be uniquely human
- Animal Personalities Are More Like Humans Than First Thought
- Bird personalities influenced by age and experience, study shows
- Birds prefer to live in luxury than in poor areas, study finds
- Birds can change their traditions for the better, study shows
- Watching TV helps birds make better food choices
- Crocodiles Are Cleverer Than Previously Thought: Some Crocodiles Use Lures to Hunt Their Prey
- Crocodiles just wanna have fun, too
- Sharks have personalities, study shows
- Tiger sharks have social preferences for one another
- Underwater tests reveal sharks may be smarter than you think: Sharks may be smarter than they seem. Recent experiments reveal they have a grasp of quantity and can learn cognitive skills from other sharks
- Baboons Display 'Reading' Skills, Study Suggests; Monkeys Identify Specific Combinations of Letters in Words based on Orthographic Processing in Baboons (Papio papio)
- Linguistic methods uncover sophisticated meanings, monkey dialects
- Fruit flies and mosquitos are 'brainier' than most people suspect, say scientists: Findings provide baseline number of brain cells likely needed for complex behaviors
Excerpt: “‘Even though these brains are simple [in contrast to mammalian brains], they can do a lot of processing, even more than a supercomputer,’ says Christopher Potter, Ph.D., associate professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.” - Fruit flies possess more sophisticated cognitive abilities than previously known
- September 22, 2022: Docile raccoons are super learners and likely trashcan criminal masterminds
- Cats seem to grasp the laws of physics
- Hello, kitty: Cats recognize their own names, according to new Japanese research
- To tool or not to tool? Clever cockatoos make economic decisions about tool use
- Cockatoos Work to Outsmart Humans in Escalating Garbage Bin Wars: An innovation arms race may rage between birds and humans on the suburban streets of southeastern Australia
- Chicken Sails Around The World With Her … Dad
- Chicken Was So Depressed — Until She Found An Orphaned Turkey
- When horses are in trouble they ask humans for help
- Horses can read our body language even when they don't know us
- Study finds horses remember facial expressions of people they've seen before
- Does this ring a bell? Wild bats can remember sounds for years: Frog-eating bats could recognize ringtones indicating a food reward up to four years later
- Horses can read human emotions
Comment: Carol, my old friend from high school, loved horses, connecting with them in a way that once mystified me. No longer. - Horses may recognise themselves in a mirror, hinting at self-awareness
- Snorts indicate positive emotions in horses
- Dogs understand what's written all over your face
- Dogs act jealously even when they don't see their rival
- What would your dog do to help if you were upset? Quite a bit, study finds
- Could goats become our new best friend?
Excerpt: “The researchers hope the study will lead to a better understanding of how skilled livestock are in their aptitude to solve problems and interact with humans based on their cognitive abilities …” - Why Animals Don’t Get Lost: Birds do it. Bees do it. Learning about the astounding navigational feats of wild creatures can teach us a lot about where we’re going.
- Sick animals limit disease transmission by isolating themselves from their peers
Comment: If only all humans were that smart! - Fish lose their unique personality when they go to 'school'
Excerpt: “Despite individual animals having their own personality, this gets suppressed when they make decisions together in a group …”
Comment: Ditto for humans, and there's a name for this. - Uncovering hidden intelligence of collectives
Excerpt: “Scientists discover that information processing in animal groups occurs not only in the brains of animals but also in their social network.” - Behavior study shows piglets prefer new toys
- Great tit birds have as much impulse control as chimpanzees
- Chimpanzees show signs of recognition toward skulls of their own species
- Chimpanzee mothers may grieve loss of their young
- Animal magnetism: Why dogs do their business pointing north: Dogs align north-south when defecating, foxes pounce north-east, and that's just the start. Where does this magnetic sense come from – and do we have it too?
- A Look at the World's Most Intelligent Animals
- Don't worry, bee happy: Bees found to have emotions and moods
- The case for speaking politely to animals
Excerpt: “Horses, pigs and wild horses can distinguish between negative and positive sounds from their fellow species and near relatives, as well as from human speech …” - 9 Tales of Amazing Animal Behavior: Crazy-smart bees. Rogue wolves. A world-famous pig. Animals are more complex than we give them credit for.
- Dog intelligence 'not exceptional' based on In what sense are dogs special? Canine cognition in comparative context
- Ants: Jam-free traffic champions
- How fear of death affects human attitudes toward animal life
- A Journey Into the Animal Mind: What science can tell us about how other creatures experience the world.
- September 18, 2020: Psychologists suggest using magic tricks to learn more about how the minds of animals work
- The Mystery of Human Uniqueness: What, exactly, makes our biology special?
- The joy of being animal: Human exceptionalism is dead: for the sake of our own happiness and the planet we should embrace our true animal nature
Excerpt: “Having a humanlike mind has become a moral dividing line. In our courts, we determine what we can and can't do to other sentient beings on the basis of the absence of a mind with features like ours.” - April 29, 2021: Using AI to gauge the emotional state of cows and pigs
- Monkeys also learn to communicate: Behavioral study on common marmosets provides new insights into the evolution of language
- Monkeys Also Reason Through Analogy, Study Shows
- Math – In Animals?
Comment: Yes. - 'Math' genes used by fish to count may help us treat human neurodevelopmental diseases
- Stingrays and zebra mbuna fish know how to add and subtract: Stingrays and zebra mbuna fish shown fewer than five shapes can add or subtract "one" from the total to gain a reward
- In the Animal Kingdom, the Astonishing Power of the Number Instinct: A host of studies examining animals in their ecological environments suggest that they have evolved to use numbers in order to exploit food sources, avoid predators, and reproduce.
- Mathematical Ability in the Animal World
- Scientists discover dogs can do math, too: Dogs and humans appear to use the same brain area to compute basic numbers.
- Monkey Math: Baboons Show Brain's Ability to Understand Numbers
- What the simple mathematical abilities of animals can tell us about ourselves: Ars chats with UCL's Brian Butterworth about his new book Can Fish Count?.
- Asian Elephants May Have Maths Skills Closer to Humans Than Any Other Animal
- May 4, 2023: Giraffes, despite a relatively small brain, can handle statistics: This sort of behavior has previously only been seen in primates and parrots.
Video of monkey performing math better than many humans:
Addition & Subtraction from Brannon Lab on Vimeo.
Comment: These (and other) studies suggest that some animals are more intelligent than some humans.
Video of a crow using a jar lid to repeatedly slide down a snowy roof demonstrates intelligence and playfulness:
Related topics
May 22, 2021: Tucker Carlson Mocks CDC Chicken Kissing Rules With Bachelor's Tiara Soleim
Excerpt: “In a brief video before the interview, Soleim described her chickens as her "babies" …”
Comment: Chickens are considerably more intelligent and emotionally expressive than most people suspect (or admit), as I proved beyond a reasonable doubt in this article including hundreds of references indicating that many animals are surprisingly intelligent (in some aspects equaling or surpassing human intelligence) and equally capable of being depressed or elated. Acknowledging this reality raises thorny questions about the morality of what we do to various animals so most people, conveniently, comfort themselves by thinking that humans are vastly superior and other animals are so inferior they can be treated like animals — or dirt. Kudos to Tiara Soleim.
5 Things You Didn't Know About Buying Eggs
Chickens and turkeys 'closer to dinosaur ancestors' than other birds
The meat paradox: “When we eat [meat], we do it in denial. … by referring to what we eat as "beef" instead of "cow", we have created a distance between our food and an animal with abilities to think and feel. Philosophers and animal rights activists have long claimed that we avoid thinking about the animal we eat, and that this reduces the feeling of unease.”
Infants know what we like best, WashU study finds
Comment: Animals are smarter than we think. So are kids.
Moral motivations for wildlife conservation
“I dream of a better world—one where chickens can cross roads without having their motives questioned.”
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
Reference: Imagining dialogue can boost critical thinking: Excerpt: “Examining an issue as a debate or dialogue between two sides helps people apply deeper, more sophisticated reasoning …”
