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Posts Tagged ‘understanding’

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Nov
21
2011

Parrot comes to puppies’ rescue

Sam, an 18-year old African Grey parrot, has helped save the lives of five premature puppies. It is reported that in the middle of the night, Sam flew upstairs to his owner’s bedroom calling “Come on, come on!”, mimicking his owner’s frequent command to her dog, Sally.

In the eight years he had lived at the house, Sam had never before been in the bedroom.

Going downstairs with Sam, the owner looked in the kitchen and found Sally and her newly born premature puppies in distress on the floor.

The story of Sam is remarkable for many reasons! He was aware of the distress of the dogs – animals of a species different to himself. This ‘interspecies awareness’ can be used by animal scientists as an indicator of animal sentience.

The words “come one, come on!” are used to encourage action or a bit more speed from another, and often they imply some urgency. We don’t know in which context Sally’s owner uses these words to her, but the signs are that Sam the parrot chose these words deliberately to get the urgent response needed.

African Grey parrots are well known for their intelligence and quick wit, and here is yet another example of their abilities.

Dr Irene Pepperberg has carried out extensive studies of parrots’ abilities to understand. Reporting on her findings, she notes: “Given the evolutionary distance between birds and mammals, these results have intriguing implications for the evolution of intelligence, the study of comparative intelligence, and the care and maintenance of birds held in captivity in zoos and as companion animals.”

 This  short film featuring Irene with famous parrots Alex and Griffin gives a very interesting and though-provoking snapshot about these amazing birds.

Sources
Lancashire Telegraph, 8 November 2011. Darwen hero parrot helps saves premature pups’ lives
Pepperberg, I. (2006) Cognitive and communicative abilities of Grey parrots. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 100: 77-86

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Dec
20
2010

Bees’ brains are better than computers!

A new study by scientists at Royal Holloway, University of London, has found that bees can solve complex mathematical problems which can take a computer many days to work out.

Once a bee has discovered flowers, they will often revisit them.  However they do not return to them in a random order, or even the order in which they were found but they can actually work out the shortest route to visit every flower. The bees have effectively solved the “travelling salesman problem” which involves finding the shortest route that allows a travelling salesman to call at all the locations they have to visit.  A computer will work this out by comparing the length of all the possible routes between the different locations and calculating which is shortest.

Dr Nigel Raine, from Royal Holloway’s school of biological sciences, said: “Foraging bees solve travelling salesman problems every day. They visit flowers at multiple locations and, because bees use lots of energy to fly, they find a route which keeps flying to a minimum.”

Scientists discovered this remarkable talent by using computer controlled artificial flowers to test bee behaviour. After investigating the flowers, the bees quickly determined the shortest route to fly between them to save them time and energy.  “Despite their tiny brains bees are capable of extraordinary feats of behaviour,” said Raine.

Source:
Guardian.co.uk. Bees’ tiny brains beat computers, study finds. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/24/bees-route-finding-problems. Sunday 24 October 2010 [Accessed 2 November 2010].

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Nov
02
2010

Monkey co-operation and fairness

The 2007 BBC documentary: “Capuchins: The Monkey Puzzle”, captures a pair of capuchin monkeys showing very compelling signs of cooperation and a sense of fairness. 

In the first experiment the monkeys work together to solve a problem using tools.  On one side of a see-through divide is a box of hazelnuts and on the other is the flint which is needed to open the lid of the box. One monkey has the rock but cannot reach the nuts; the other monkey has the box of nuts, but has no way of getting them out without a rock. In an act of teamwork, one monkey offers the rock to the other, who uses it to open the box and get out the nuts. He then fairly shares the nuts equally, three for himself and three for his teammate. They worked together to successfully solve a puzzle that they could never have done alone.

The second experiment also suggests that capuchin monkeys understand fairness. Two monkeys were first trained to hand over a white chip to receive a food reward. When the two monkeys were given unequal rewards, the monkey receiving the less desirable treat would rather refuse the reward and go hungry on principal than accept anything less than an equal reward.

Check out this amazing video clip:

Source:
BBC Two documentary “Capuchins: The Monkey Puzzle”, 22 September 2007, 18:30.

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Oct
27
2010

Horses can count!

You may have read the earlier blog about ‘Clever Hans’, the horse who was able to answer difficult mathematical questions, not however by working them out himself, but by reading the subtle signals given off his human handlers. Although being able to respond to human signals was an impressive feat in itself, people were disappointed to learn he was not working out the answers himself as they had initially thought.  However, new research suggests that although horses may not be able to answer mathematical questions, they can count!

(c) Compassion/Ed Posposil

(c) Compassion/Ed Posposil

As reported in the Daily Telegraph, the story of Clever Hans inspired Dr Claudia Uller, of the University of Essex, to investigate whether horses can count. 

Dr Claudia Uller and Jennifer Lewis carried out experiments using 57 untrained horses belonging to local private owners and a local riding school.  Before the tests, the horses were allowed to nibble a small piece of real apple in to get them interested in the activity. In the experiments, real apples were replaced with fake apples so that the horses would not be influenced by their sense of smell.

In each test, the horses watched plastic apples being dropped out of sight into buckets.  In the first test, two plastic apples were placed in one bucket and three in another.  The buckets were held up at head level so that horses could choose one. Eleven out of thirteen horses selected the bucket containing three apples, which suggests that the horses understood which bucket had the larger number of apples in it.

The second experiment followed the same pattern, but this time one bucket contained two small apples and the other contained a single large apple with double the surface area. Again the horses chose the bucket with the greater the number of apples – ten out of the twelve horses tested chose the bucket holding the two apples.

The horses were able to keep a tally of how many apples were going into each bucket, and hold this information in their heads before deciding which bucket to investigate.  This tendency to opt for containers holding larger numbers of food items has also been seen in non-human primates such as rhesus macaques and lemurs.  Baby chicks of only 3 or 4 days old can add and subtract too. Human babies develop this ability at about ten months of age.

Although horses may not be able to count in the same way that humans do, this study demonstrates that they do understand the concept of ‘greater or fewer’, and that horses are certainly more intelligent than people may have previously thought.

More about horses’ abilities, behaviour and welfare
See our blog article on the fascinating report about horses written specially for Compassion by animal welfare consultant Heather Pickett.

Sources
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3338537/Horses-can-count-new-study-says.html
http://www.breakingnews.ie/world/mhojgbaucwid/

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Oct
18
2010

The language of dance

Honey bees are social insects that have been shown to co-operate with other individuals in their colony. Worker bees (sterile females) have many duties in the colony. One job of a worker bee is to forage for food. They leave the hive to search for nectar (their source of energy and from which they make honey) and pollen (their source of protein) from flowering plants.

Honey_bee copyright free Once a forager has found pollen or nectar they will return to the hive and perform an elaborate dance on the vertical surface of a honey comb. Karl von Frisch discovered that bees use this dance to communicate the location of food to others in their hive. If the food is relatively far from the hive (as it generally is) the bee will perform a “waggle dance” to communicate two items of information – the distance to and the direction of the food source.

A bee that performs a waggle dance moves in a figure of eight. She waggles her body from side to side and emits a buzzing sound as she moves forward in a straight line, then circles to the right, back to her starting point, waggles ahead again, and then circles to the left and waggles again. This pattern is repeated a number of times.

The duration of the straight run, or “waggle,” tells the other bees how far the nectar or pollen is from the hive. As the distance to the food source increases, the duration of the waggle also increases.

The direction in which the dancing bee faces during the straight portion of her waggle dance indicates the location of the food source in relation to the sun. For example, if the flowers are located 30 degrees to the right of the sun, the dance will be oriented 30 degrees to the right of vertical.

The waggle dance acts as a form of language – the other foragers watch the dancing bee’s movements and receive information about how to get to the food source. They also receive information about what is to be found at the food source through their sense of smell.

How a worker bee communicates the location of food source to other bees in the hive may be one of the most complex forms of social behaviour seen outside of the human race.

Here’s a great video about these amazing bees.

Sources:
Frisch, K.V., (1967). The Dance Language and Orientation of Bees. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press

Gould, J.L., and Gould, C.G., (1988). The Honey Bee. New York: Scientific American Library, W.H. Freeman

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Mar
25
2010

Cultural Transmission and Tool-use in Orangutans

Photo courtesy of Tasikoki Wildlife Rescue

Photo courtesy of Tasikoki Wildlife Rescue

We are finding out more and more about animals who use ‘tools’ in their daily lives. Animals in a group may also learn from each other and pass this information on to each other. Scientists call this ‘cultural transmission’.

The first documented case of wild orangutans making and using tools was reported from a population of orangutans in Indonesia in 1996. They used tools which they had crafted either for extracting insects or seeds to eat.

Researchers then went on to look at how tool-use varied between orangutans living in different regions. They compared the tool-use of orangutans at six different areas. It was found that the different orangutan populations behaved differently and these differences were greatest between groups living furthest apart. Orangutans who lived in larger groups and who were socially tolerant used tools more than those who were isolated.

Orangutan close up

Photo courtesy of Tasikoki Wildlife Rescue

The evidence suggested that the differences in behavior were cultural: firstly, because the extent of the differences increased with distance, and secondly, because the extent of the orangutans’ tool-use increased according the amount of social contact in their group. Social contact increases the amount of cultural transmission.

This video clip shows orangutans at a sanctuary copying behaviours they learned through observing their human counterparts. They learned how to manoeuvre a canoe, paint, wash with soap and even use a saw!

Orangutans are fascinating animals but their future is under threat. Their rainforest habitat is being cut down at an alarming rate for logging and agriculture, including plantations of palm oil, a vegetable oil widely used in food and everyday products. You may wish to choose products which do not contain palm oil. Some companies claim to use sustainably-produced palm oil.

Sources:

van Schaik C.P., Fox,E.A., Sitompul AF. (1996). Manufacture and use of tools in wild Sumatran orangutans – implications or human evolution. Naturwissenschaften 83: 186-188.

van Schaik C.P., Knott C.D., (2001) Geographic variation in tool use on Neesia fruits in orangutans. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 114:331-342

van Schaik C.P., van Noordwijk M.A., Wich, S.A. (2006) Innovation in wild Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii). Behaviour 143: 839-876

van Schaik C.P., Ancrenaz M., Borgen G., Galdikas B., Knott C.D., Singleton I., Suzuki A., Utami S.S., Merrill M. (2003). Orangutan cultures and the evolution of material culture. Science 299: 102-105

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Dec
17
2009

Understanding you

This is the incredible story of a whale rescue and the response of the whale to her rescuers.

The humpback whale was on the migratory route around the California coast when she became terribly entangled in crab trap lines. Her life was at great risk.
She was tangled up in weighted ropes up to 240 feet long around her tail, her flipper and even in her mouth. The ropes were so tight they cut into her blubber and caused visible wounds. She was completely helpless  and the weight of the traps was causing her to struggle to keep her blow hole out of the sea.

A rescue team of divers went out to her but she was in such a state  they were  unsure that they stood any chance of saving her. They were at risk themselves, as the flick of a humpback’s tail can kill a human.

But they reported that as they worked to free the unfortunate creature, she did not struggle at all and they were aware of her eyes simply following them around as they worked.

Thankfully, the rescuers were successful but must have been astonished by the whale’s heartwarming response. When she felt herself come free, she began to swim around in circles and then went up to each diver one by one and nudged them. One of the rescuers is reported as saying: “It seemed kind of affectionate, like a dog that’s happy to see you … I never felt threatened. It was an amazing, unbelievable experience.”

Her response makes us think about the common ground that humans can have with animals who might appear so very different from us. A whale-watching expert who helped co-ordinate the rescue is quoted as saying: “You hate to anthropomorphize too much  but the whale was doing little dives and the guys were rubbing shoulders with it … I don’t know for sure what it was thinking, but it’s something that I will always remember. It was just too cool.”

An interesting point about our understanding of these large sea mammals was made by Gould and Gould in their book ‘The Animal Mind’. They suggest that perhaps we have been quicker to appreciate the intelligence and sentience of primates as they are so much more similar to us in their gestures and experiences, and therefore easier for us to read. We may have been slower to understand the complexity and richness of underwater creatures simply because they appear to be so very different to us.

Humpback Whale

Humpback Whale

Sources:
San Francisco Chronice (14/12/05). Daring rescue of whale off Farallones. Accessed 17/12/09.

Gould, J. L. and Gould, C. G. (1994) The Animal Mind. Scientific American Library, New York.

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Dec
16
2009

Tropical tactics

Credit: Roger Steene

Credit: Roger Steene

The veined octopus is a truly amazing underwater character. Researchers in Melbourne have discovered that they get up to some surprising antics – using coconut shells.

These octopi collect coconut shells discarded by their human neighbours, gather them under their body and then carry them and walk, rather awkwardly, for up to 20m at a time. The scientists dubbed this as ‘stilt-walking’ due to the unusual way the octopus has to use its legs whilst carrying the shells.

The octopus goes to this considerable effort so he or she has portable ‘armour’. If suddenly under threat the octopus could create instant camouflage and protection by climbing in between two coconut halves.

This is really significant, as use of tools by animals is said to be a sign of higher mental functioning, as is planning for the future. Some people used to believe that only humans had such advanced abilities, but we increasingly find that other animals have so many unsuspected abilities – including a mind of their own. (see Rooks, Pigs).

Here is another shining example of amazing animals and a valuable reminder that animals can have many hidden abilities that we are yet to notice and appreciate.

Watch original video footage here.

ITN coverage:

Source: Finn, J. K., Treganza, T. and Norman, M. D. (2009) Defensive tool use in a coconut – carrying octopus, Current Biology, 19 (23): R1069-R1070.

Julian K. Finn1, 2, , Tom Tregenza3, and Mark D. Norman1

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Dec
11
2009

Horses: Their Behaviour, Mental Abilities and Welfare

Horses have played a huge part in our lives for hundreds of years. Yet how much do we actually know about them?

Animal welfare consultant Heather Pickett has written a special article for our animal sentience pages. It’s a fascinating  read  about  horses’ behaviour, cognitive abilities (such as ‘thinking’) and welfare needs.  Horses have remarkably complex social lives; with membership of a herd being of ultimate importance to them and sometimes roaming for up to 80km in one day. They are great diplomats, able to resolve many conflicts in order to keep the herd together.

Self reflection

Self reflection. Copyright Compassion/ Ed Posposil

Mares often form lifetime relationships, spending most of their time together. Their foals often become good friends too as a result. They have remarkable memory skills and have even been shown to understand that a 3-D image can be shown in a photograph. For example, horses had been trained to have a ‘favourite’ object (for example a soft toy or a frisbee), using treats as positive reinforcement. Then they were shown photos of a range of things, including their ‘favoured toy’, and more often than not they would choose the photo of that toy. In a similar experiment (Stone 2009), horses were found to be able to tell the difference between photos of people, even identical twins!

Domesticated horses are often kept stabled alone and fed on concentrated food that is eaten quickly, rather than grazing the whole day as they would do in more natural conditions. These factors sometimes lead to destructive behaviours such as weaving, biting the stable doors and pacing. The occurrence of these unnatural behaviours illustrates that horses, just like many other animals, need an environment that more closely fits their needs and fully takes into account their sentience and intelligence.

Download the full article Pickett, H. (2009) ‘Horses: Their Behaviour, Mental Abilities and Welfare’. animalsentience.com
Shorter version also available

Reference: Stone, S. M. (2009) Human facial discrimination in horses: can they tell us apart?  Animal Cognition, Online first.

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Dec
04
2009

Grandmother love

Following on from our post on the 6th November about Jasmine and Alfie,  here are two more stories about care of young animals by other animals. This time it’s the turn of the grandmothers to teach us a  thing or two about caring for animals. One of Compassion in World Farming’s supporters kindly supplied us with this story. Her neighbour gave a home to two generations of goats. When the youngest had her goat kid, she didn’t seem to know what to do. Even though the goat kid was repeatedly shown where to suckle, the two just didn’t seem to connect.

The grandmother saw what was happening and stepped in to help, even producing milk for the youngster. From then on she took it in turns with the mother to care for the kid, being there to support the mother goat and also ensure the kid had plenty of food.

Across the generations

Across the generations

Another example of grandmothers helping out was in the news last week. Researchers in Japan had been observing free-ranging macaque family groups when they noticed some interesting situations. A grandmother macaque took over the care of her grandchild when the mother disappeared; carrying, grooming and allowing her to suckle,  although the researchers believe she didn’t produce any milk. Perhaps letting the baby macaque suckle may have been an act of reassurance for the youngster.

When the mother returned after a period of time (believed to be 6-14 days) she resumed her duties in caring for the youngster.  Another grandmother was witnessed ‘sharing care’ with a struggling mother, and this time was believed to be producing milk as well.

A key feature in all of these stories is the fact that the grandmother was prepared to get involved quickly if needed, but was not overly possessive of the youngster. In both cases they seemed happy to share care with the mother, or hand the infant back when their job was done. This shows sensitivity to the needs of the situation, and more flexible thinking than if they were to simply ‘take over’ an abandoned youngster.

Sources:
BBC News – Grandmother Monkeys care for baby

Nakamichi, M., Onishi, K. and Yamada, K. (2009) Old grandmothers provide essential care to their young granddaughters in a free-ranging group of Japanese monkeys (Macaca fuscata)Primates, Online first. 10.1007/s10329-009-0177-7

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