Sign In
Register
Help
Add Reply
QUOTE
Crows win bird-brain battle
Avian intelligence
CROWS are the intellectual champions of the bird world, the first avian “IQ test” has found.
A novel index that rates birds’ intellectual capacities using observations of their behaviour in the wild has been developed by scientists at McGill University in Montreal. Birds from the crow family, which includes ravens and jays, top the list, followed by hawks, woodpeckers and herons, according to the research by Louis Lefebvre. At the bottom of the league are partridges, new world quails, emus and ostriches, while parrots score surprisingly badly despite their particularly large brains.
Professor Lefebvre’s “avian IQ index” draws on more than 2,000 reports of unusual and imaginative tactics to find food.
The index reflects the number of different kinds of original behaviour reported by birdwatchers for each species. More than 100 reports — about 5 per cent — involve members of the crow family. Crows on the Pacific island of New Caledonia fashion tools from leaves and twigs to fish for insects hidden inside trees or earthworks, in a similar fashion to chimpanzees. Experiments with scrub jays have shown that they learn to store foods such as peanuts that last a long time, ahead of more palatable but more perishable food such as crickets.
The reports also include evidence of particularly shrewd vultures in Zimbabwe. During the country’s civil war in the 1970s, vultures would sit patiently at the edge of minefields, waiting for gazelles to be blown up.
http://www.timesonli...1494749,00.html
Avian intelligence
CROWS are the intellectual champions of the bird world, the first avian “IQ test” has found.
A novel index that rates birds’ intellectual capacities using observations of their behaviour in the wild has been developed by scientists at McGill University in Montreal. Birds from the crow family, which includes ravens and jays, top the list, followed by hawks, woodpeckers and herons, according to the research by Louis Lefebvre. At the bottom of the league are partridges, new world quails, emus and ostriches, while parrots score surprisingly badly despite their particularly large brains.
Professor Lefebvre’s “avian IQ index” draws on more than 2,000 reports of unusual and imaginative tactics to find food.
The index reflects the number of different kinds of original behaviour reported by birdwatchers for each species. More than 100 reports — about 5 per cent — involve members of the crow family. Crows on the Pacific island of New Caledonia fashion tools from leaves and twigs to fish for insects hidden inside trees or earthworks, in a similar fashion to chimpanzees. Experiments with scrub jays have shown that they learn to store foods such as peanuts that last a long time, ahead of more palatable but more perishable food such as crickets.
The reports also include evidence of particularly shrewd vultures in Zimbabwe. During the country’s civil war in the 1970s, vultures would sit patiently at the edge of minefields, waiting for gazelles to be blown up.
http://www.timesonli...1494749,00.html
And also...
QUOTE
Science Bows To Dog Mind
Canine Behaviour
DOGS share four of the five main personality traits that psychologists use to understand human behaviour, says a British researcher based in the US.
The findings by Samuel Gosling of the University of Texas promise to settle a question that may strike pet owners as odd, but which is controversial among scientists: whether animals can be said to have a meaningful personality at all.
Dr Gosling said: “The evidence that dogs have personality is as strong as the evidence that humans have.
“There has been surprising resistance to the idea among scientists. There’s a strong view that animal personality is preposterous anthropomorphism: when I suggested applying measures of human personality to animals, I had people yelling that I was bringing the field into disrepute.”
Human personality is measured according to five variables: extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to new experience. Dr Gosling found that only conscientiousness — which measures trustworthiness, selfishness and dependability — was absent in dogs.
To investigate whether dog personalities were predictable, Dr Gosling interviewed owners about their pets’ temperaments, then tested whether the dogs would behave as predicted in particular circumstances.
Dogs’ “emotional stability”, for example, the equivalent of human neuroticism, was tested by asking an owner to leave her dog and walk away with another dog on the lead.
“If I’d known how much this would affect certain dogs, I might have found another way,” Dr Gosling said. “Some animals absolutely hated this, and this correlated well with the predictions.”
http://www.timesonli...1494744,00.html
Canine Behaviour
DOGS share four of the five main personality traits that psychologists use to understand human behaviour, says a British researcher based in the US.
The findings by Samuel Gosling of the University of Texas promise to settle a question that may strike pet owners as odd, but which is controversial among scientists: whether animals can be said to have a meaningful personality at all.
Dr Gosling said: “The evidence that dogs have personality is as strong as the evidence that humans have.
“There has been surprising resistance to the idea among scientists. There’s a strong view that animal personality is preposterous anthropomorphism: when I suggested applying measures of human personality to animals, I had people yelling that I was bringing the field into disrepute.”
Human personality is measured according to five variables: extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to new experience. Dr Gosling found that only conscientiousness — which measures trustworthiness, selfishness and dependability — was absent in dogs.
To investigate whether dog personalities were predictable, Dr Gosling interviewed owners about their pets’ temperaments, then tested whether the dogs would behave as predicted in particular circumstances.
Dogs’ “emotional stability”, for example, the equivalent of human neuroticism, was tested by asking an owner to leave her dog and walk away with another dog on the lead.
“If I’d known how much this would affect certain dogs, I might have found another way,” Dr Gosling said. “Some animals absolutely hated this, and this correlated well with the predictions.”
http://www.timesonli...1494744,00.html
I think they missed the "not crapping in the middle of footpaths" criteria, which most humans have and most dogs do not. Usually, this is associated with the "My dog did it, but damned if I'm even moving it" gene in many humans...
MultiQuote
