tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-373656662024-02-07T05:00:16.174-08:00Nonhuman Communications"for the rest of us" | edited by Morris Armstrong, Jr. proudly a.k.a. "Little Mo", author of The Concrete Jungle BookAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07862983697040911126noreply@blogger.comBlogger1198125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37365666.post-12448692082087579312014-11-06T09:46:00.000-08:002014-11-06T09:46:53.664-08:00"Mozart's Starling" by Meridith J. West & Andrew P. King<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.indiana.edu/~aviary/Research/Mozart's%20Starling.pdf">http://www.indiana.edu/~aviary/Research/Mozart's%20Starling.pdf</a><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com
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"for the rest of us"</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07862983697040911126noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37365666.post-80452415564632572012011-02-28T16:47:00.000-08:002011-02-28T17:03:52.394-08:00"The dogs who listen to children reading" by Patrick Barkham<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2011/2/28/1298919404252/Dogs-listening-to-childre-007.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2011/2/28/1298919404252/Dogs-listening-to-childre-007.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>When children read to him, Danny does not criticise or correct their pronunciation. He just nods and pricks up an ear, although sometimes he closes his eyes and appears not to be listening.<br />
<div id="article-body-blocks"><br />
Danny is a greyhound and a novel way of encouraging pupils at Oakhill primary school in Tamworth, Staffordshire, to read aloud. A "listening dog", he is part of a scheme that originated in the US called <a href="http://www.therapyanimals.org/" title="Reading Education Assistance Dogs (READ)">Reading Education Assistance Dogs (Read)</a>.<br />
<br />
"It helps with their self-esteem in reading out loud because he is non-judgmental," says the dog's owner, Tony Nevett, who has a degree in animal-assisted therapy. "He doesn't judge them and he doesn't laugh at them. He's just a tool – the children don't realise they are reading, which they might not have the confidence to do in class." Some children even show Danny the pictures as they read.<br />
<br />
Danny received five months of training to become a Read dog. Greyhounds are particularly well-suited because they do not bark and their short coat is less likely to trigger allergies.<br />
Nevett hopes that the scheme, piloted in Kent, will spread. "We've had some success stories, including a girl with Down's Syndrome who really took to the dog and improved her reading," he says. "When Danny goes to sleep I tell the children that he's dreaming about their story."</div><div id="article-body-blocks"><br />
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/feb/28/dogs-listen-to-children-reading">http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/feb/28/dogs-listen-to-children-reading</a></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com
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"for the rest of us"</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07862983697040911126noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37365666.post-75702106513422075602011-02-24T10:18:00.000-08:002011-02-24T10:18:47.299-08:00Migrating sea turtles have magnetic sense for longitude<blockquote><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">From the very first moments of life, hatchling loggerhead sea turtles have an arduous task. They must embark on a transoceanic migration, swimming from the Florida coast eastward to the North Atlantic and then gradually migrating over the course of several years before returning again to North American shores. Now, researchers reporting online on February 24 in <i>Current Biology</i>, a Cell Press publication, have figured out how the young turtles find their way. </div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">"One of the great mysteries of animal behavior is how migratory animals can navigate in the open ocean, where there are no visual landmarks," said Kenneth Lohmann of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">"The most difficult part of open-sea navigation is determining longitude or east-west position. It took human navigators centuries to figure out how to determine longitude on their long-distance voyages," added Nathan Putman, a graduate student in Lohmann's lab and lead author of the study. "This study shows, for the first time, how an animal does this."</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">It appears that the turtles pick up on magnetic signatures that vary across the Earth's surface in order to determine their position in space—both east-west and north-south—and steer themselves in the right direction. Although several species, including sea turtles, were known to rely on magnetic cues as a surrogate for latitude, the findings come as a surprise because those signals had been considered unpromising for determining east-west position.</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">The loggerheads' secret is that they rely not on a single feature of the magnetic field, but on a combination of two: the angle at which the magnetic field lines intersect the Earth (a parameter known as inclination) and the strength of the magnetic field. </div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Near the Equator, the field lines are approximately parallel to the Earth's surface, Putman and Lohmann explained. As one travels north from the Equator, the field lines grow progressively steeper until they reach the poles, where they are directed straight down into the Earth. The magnetic field also varies in intensity, being generally strongest near the poles and weakest near the equator. Both parameters appear to vary more reliably from north to south than east to west, which had led many researchers to conclude that the magnetic field is useful only for latitudinal information.</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">"Although it is true that an animal capable of detecting only inclination or only intensity would have a hard time determining longitude, loggerhead sea turtles detect both magnetic parameters," Putman said. "This means that they can extract more information from the Earth's field than is initially apparent."</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">What had been overlooked before is that inclination and intensity vary in slightly different directions across the Earth's surface, Putman added. As a result of that difference, particular oceanic regions have distinct magnetic signatures consisting of a unique combination of inclination and intensity. </div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">The researchers made the discovery by subjecting hatchlings to magnetic fields replicating those found at two locations, both along the migratory route but at opposite ends of the Atlantic Ocean. Each location had the same latitude but different longitude. The turtles were placed in a circular water-filled arena surrounded by a computerized coil system used to control the magnetic field and tethered to an electronic tracking unit that relayed their swimming direction.</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Turtles exposed to a field like one existing on the west side of the Atlantic near Puerto Rico swam to the northeast. Those exposed to a field like that on the east side of the Atlantic near the Cape Verde Islands swam to the southwest.</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">The findings may have important implications for the turtles, the researchers say. "This work not only solves a long-standing mystery of animal behavior but may also be useful in sea turtle conservation," Lohmann said. "Understanding the sensory cues that turtles rely on to guide their migrations is an important part of safeguarding their environment."</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">The discovery may also lead to new approaches in the development of navigational technologies, the researchers added.</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><a href="http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-02/cp-mst021611.php">http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-02/cp-mst021611.php </a></div></blockquote><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com
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"for the rest of us"</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07862983697040911126noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37365666.post-84667590695317577552011-02-21T10:47:00.000-08:002011-02-21T10:47:14.155-08:00Hibernating bears teach scientists tricks for human hibernation<div id="main-article-info" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> <h1>Hibernating bears teach scientists tricks for human hibernation</h1><div class="stand-first-alone" id="stand-first">A study of hibernating black bears paves the way for using hibernation-like states in humans for treating the critically ill and helping astronauts survive journeys through deep space.</div><div class="stand-first-alone" id="stand-first"><br />
</div></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Read it all: <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/feb/17/hibernating-bears-human-hibernation">http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/feb/17/hibernating-bears-human-hibernation</a></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com
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"for the rest of us"</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07862983697040911126noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37365666.post-69789417346133203392011-02-19T21:26:00.000-08:002011-02-19T21:26:35.895-08:00Headline of the day: "Bird kills man at cockfight: Man dies after being stabbed by knife attached to rooster's limb at illegal cockfight in California"<blockquote>A man who was at an illegal cockfight in central California died after being stabbed in the leg by a bird which had a knife attached to its leg, officials said.<br />
<br />
José Luis Ochoa, 35, of Lamont, California, was declared dead at a hospital about two hours after he was injured in nearby Tulare County on 30 January, the Kern County coroner said.<br />
<br />
A postmortem concluded Ochoa died of an accidental "sharp force injury" to his right calf. Sheriff's spokesman Ray Pruitt said it was unclear if a delay in seeking medical attention contributed to his death.<br />
<br />
"I have never seen this type of incident," Sgt Martin King, a 24-year veter<br />
<blockquote></blockquote>an of the sheriff's department, told the Bakersfield Californian newspaper.<br />
<br />
Ochoa and the other spectators fled when police arrived at the fight, King told the newspaper. Deputies found five dead roosters and other evidence of cockfighting, he said. No arrests were made.<br />
<br />
Cockfighting is illegal in the United States. Specially bred roosters are put into a ring and encouraged to fight until one is incapacitated or killed, while spectators gamble on the outcome.<br />
<br />
According to court records, Ochoa paid $370 (£230) in fines last year after pleading no contest to one count of owning or training an animal for fighting, according to the newspaper.<br />
<br />
Attending or organising a cockfight, or training an animal to participate in one, are all misdemeanours under Californian law, although a second offence is a felony.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/08/cock-kills-man-california-cockfight">http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/08/cock-kills-man-california-cockfight</a></blockquote><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com
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"for the rest of us"</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07862983697040911126noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37365666.post-46671956557105586902011-02-14T10:09:00.000-08:002011-02-14T10:09:26.218-08:00Kids & animals: What are they thankful for and what are their dreams? Kids & animals: What are they thankful for and what are their dreams?<br />
<div class="page-title"> </div><div class="article-abstract"> Kid's can tell us all how we should treat other animals </div><div class="article-meta"> <span class="submitted">Published on January 26, 2011</span></div><div class="article-meta"><span class="submitted"> </span> </div><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 15px;">…It is our goal that <em>Kids & animals</em> will inspire other young people to draw and write about their feelings for animals and to put their own id<span style="color: #333333;">eas into action to care for animals, protect their habitats, and promote compassion, empathy, coexistence, and peace. It is perfect for classes, discussions, and activities focusing on humane <a class="pt-basics-link" href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/education" title="Psychology Today looks at Education">education</a> and conservation education so that we can all expand our<a class="ext" href="http://www.amazon.com/Animal-Manifesto-Expanding-Compassion-Footprint/dp/1577316495/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1296101186&sr=8-1" target="_blank"> compassion footprint</a><span class="ext"></span> (<a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/200906/expanding-our-compassion-footprint-minding-animals-we-redecorate-nature" target="_blank">see also</a>). </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">The bottom line is pretty simple: teach the children well, treat the teachers well, and treasure all. It's a win-win situation for everyone. Nurture and provide the seeds of compassion, empathy, and love with all the nutrients children need to develop deep respect for, and kinship with, the universe. All people, other animals, human communities, and environments now and in the future, will benefit greatly by developing and maintaining heart-felt compassion that is as reflexive as breathing. Compassion begets compassion -- there's no doubt about it.…</span><br />
<a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/201101/kids-animals-what-are-they-thankful-and-what-are-their-dreams">http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/201101/kids-animals-what-are-they-thankful-and-what-are-their-dreams</a><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com
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"for the rest of us"</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07862983697040911126noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37365666.post-18650292377386675952010-12-24T09:04:00.000-08:002010-12-24T09:06:15.515-08:00Reindeer eat 'shrooms for the buzz, scientists sayTurns out the myth of flying reindeer might not be that far from the truth: According to a <a href="http://www.pjonline.com/christmas/pj2010_723" target="_hplink">piece</a> in <i>Pharmaceutical Journal</i> by scientist Andrew Haynes, they (along with other animals) sometimes deliberately eat hallucinogenic fungi in order to amuse themselves during long winters. The <i>Sun</i> <a href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3313331/Reindeers-like-Rudolph-and-Blitzen-get-high-on-magic-mushrooms.html" target="_hplink">reports</a>: "Haynes believes reindeer deliberately seek out the mushrooms to escape the monotony of dreary long winters. Writing in the respected Pharmaceutical Journal, Mr Haynes said "They have a desire to experience altered states of consciousness. For humans a common side-effect of mushrooms is the feeling of flying, so it's interesting the legend about Santa's reindeer is they can fly."<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/23/reindeer-magic-mushrooms_n_801006.html">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/23/reindeer-magic-mushrooms_n_801006.html</a><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com
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"for the rest of us"</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07862983697040911126noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37365666.post-46975452725488759262010-12-16T21:07:00.000-08:002010-12-16T21:08:34.727-08:00Nonhumans exercise free will, too<blockquote>"The free will that humans enjoy is similar to that exercised by animals as simple as flies, a scientist has said." </blockquote><blockquote>…read it all at:<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11998687"> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11998687</a></blockquote><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com
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"for the rest of us"</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07862983697040911126noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37365666.post-72159967730177141052010-12-16T20:58:00.000-08:002010-12-16T20:58:41.223-08:00As humans do, bereaved animals grieve – if their lifestyle allows it<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/mg20827913.900/mg20827913.900-1_300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="152" src="http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/mg20827913.900/mg20827913.900-1_300.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20827913.900-bereaved-animals-grieve--if-their-lifestyle-allows-it.html">http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20827913.900-bereaved-animals-grieve--if-their-lifestyle-allows-it.html</a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com
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"for the rest of us"</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07862983697040911126noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37365666.post-36435055790877507042010-11-29T11:08:00.000-08:002010-11-29T11:08:32.829-08:00People seem always to have understood that humans are just another kind of animal and not necessarily better than the rest.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/aug/06/animalwelfare">Richard Ryder</a> argues that early Christian views created a sense of human-nonhuman separation within the assertion that men and women could not be animals since humans were created in the image of "God" who had given only "their kind" an immortal soul. Such views explain why a good deal of recent animal rights discourse has sought to challenge this absolute separation and remind human beings that "we" too <i>are</i> animals.</span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3758208853038217206" name="_ftnref4"></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> However, even long before Darwin, it appears that there was recognition and acknowledgement that humans were indeed "animals," although "developed" ones. Ryder, in <i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Animal-Revolution-Changing-Attitudes-Speciesism/dp/1859733301">Animal Revolution</a></i>, states that "classical literature, Epicureans and writers such as Lucretius, Cicero, Diodorus Siculus and Horace had suggested that humankind had only slowly developed from the animal condition." Aristotle, despite his insistence that humans, animals and nature were held in a “natural hierarchy of value,” never claimed that a human being should not be regarded as an animal.…</span><br />
<br />
Read it all: <a href="http://human-nonhuman.blogspot.com/2010/11/start-with-god.html">http://human-nonhuman.blogspot.com/2010/11/start-with-god.html</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com
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"for the rest of us"</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07862983697040911126noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37365666.post-14865364837451589202010-10-21T21:27:00.000-07:002010-10-21T21:38:47.726-07:00The work of integrating living cells into electrical systems has begun. To Do: Redefine "human"<span style="font-size: large;">Berkeley Lab scientists open electrical link to living cells</span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/pub/web/26629_web.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="248" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An engineered <i>Escherichia coli</i> strain (yellow) attaches to solid iron oxide (black). Scientists at the Molecular Foundry took the first step toward electronically interfacing microbes with inorganic materials, without disrupting cell viability. <b>Credit:</b> Image courtesy of Heather Jensen</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/pub/web/26629_web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div><br />
The Terminator. The Borg. The Six Million Dollar Man. Science fiction is ripe with biological beings armed with artificial capabilities. In reality, however, the clunky connections between living and non-living worlds often lack a clear channel for communication. Now, scientists with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have designed an electrical link to living cells engineered to shuttle electrons across a cell's membrane to an external acceptor along a well-defined path. This direct channel could yield cells that can read and respond to electronic signals, electronics capable of self-replication and repair, or efficiently transfer sunlight into electricity.<br />
<br />
<div style="background-color: #b6d7a8;">"Melding the living and non-living worlds is a canonical image in science fiction," said Caroline Ajo-Franklin, a staff scientist in the Biological Nanostructures Facility at Berkeley Lab's Molecular Foundry. "However, in most attempts to interface living and non-living systems, you poke cells with a sharp hard object, and the cells respond in a predictable way – they die. Yet, in Nature many organisms have evolved to interact with the rocks and minerals that are part of their environment. Here, we took inspiration from Nature's approach and actually grew the connections out of the cell."</div><br />
<br />
<div style="background-color: #b6d7a8;">"We were interested in finding a pathway that wouldn't kill the living systems we were studying," said Heather Jensen, a graduate student at University of California, Berkeley whose thesis work is part of this publication. "By using a living system in electronics, we can one day create biotechnologies that can repair and self-replicate."</div><br />
…"This recent breakthrough is part of a larger Department of Energy project on domesticating life at the cellular and molecular level.<span style="background-color: #b6d7a8;"> By directly interfacing synthetic devices with living organisms, we can harness the vast capabilities of life in photo- and chemical energy conversion, chemical synthesis, and self-assembly and repair</span>," said Jay Groves, a faculty scientist at Berkeley Labs and professor of chemistry at University of California, Berkeley. <br />
<br />
The researchers plan to implement this genetic cassette in photosynthetic bacteria, as cellular electrons from these bacteria can be produced from sunlight—providing cheap, self-replicating solar batteries. These metal-reducing bacteria could also assist in producing pharmaceutical drugs, Ajo-Franklin adds, as the fermentation step in drug manufacturing requires energy-intensive pumping of oxygen. In contrast, these engineered bacteria breathe using rust, rather than oxygen, saving energy.<div class="blogger-post-footer">http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com
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"for the rest of us"</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07862983697040911126noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37365666.post-40257437587590135112010-10-20T09:40:00.000-07:002010-10-20T09:40:52.430-07:00Kipling was right about why the leopard got its spots<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="132" src="http://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/pub/rel/26536_rel.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="200" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="imagecaption">Patterns like the leopard's rosettes evolve in cats which use forest habitats.</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="background-color: #b6d7a8; font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Why do leopards have rosette shaped markings but tigers have stripes? Rudyard Kipling suggested that it was because the leopard moved to an environment "full of trees and bushes and stripy, speckly, patchy-blatchy shadows" but is there any truth in this just-so story?</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Researchers at the University of Bristol investigated the flank markings of 35 species of wild cats to understand what drives the evolution of such beautiful and intriguing variation. They captured detailed differences in the visual appearance of the cats by linking them to a mathematical model of pattern development.</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">They found that cats living in dense habitats, in the trees, and active at low light levels, are the most likely to be patterned, especially with particularly irregular or complex patterns. This suggests that detailed aspects of patterning evolve for camouflage. Analysis of the evolutionary history of the patterns shows they can evolve and disappear relatively quickly.</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: #b6d7a8; font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">The research also explains why, for example, black leopards are common but black cheetahs unknown. Unlike cheetahs, leopards live in a wide range of habitats and have varied behavioural patterns. Having several environmental niches that different individuals of the species can exploit allows atypical colours and patterns to become stable within a population.</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Although a clear link between environment and patterning was established, the study also highlighted some anomalies. For example, cheetahs have evolved or retained spotted patterns despite a strong preference for open habitats, while a number of cats, such as the bay cat and the flat-headed cat, have plain coats despite a preference for closed environments. Why this should be remains unclear.</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">The study also highlighted just how few species of cats have vertical stripes. Of the 35 species examined, only tigers always had vertically elongated patterns and these patterns were not associated with a grassland habitat, as might be expected. However, tigers seem to be very well camouflaged so this raises the question why vertical stripes are not more common in cats and other mammals. </div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Will Allen of Bristol's School of Experimental Psychology, who led the research, said: "The method we have developed offers insights into cat patterning at many levels of explanation and we are now applying it to other groups of animals."</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-10/uob-wtl101810.php </div><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com
http://NonhumanCommunications.com
"for the rest of us"</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07862983697040911126noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37365666.post-75471715584796254322010-10-19T20:57:00.000-07:002010-10-19T22:11:29.317-07:00The closer you look, the more there is to see: Bacteria are talking to each other and they may be thinking, too. Inside our bodies.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/Myxococcus_xanthus.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Some 100,000 <i><a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Myxococcus_xanthus" title="Myxococcus xanthus">Myxococcus xanthus</a></i> cells amassed into a fruiting body with spores, above. Experimental competitions showed that some strains of this social bacterium exploited others</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/Myxococcus_xanthus.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div><br />
<div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">…<span style="background-color: #b6d7a8;">Bacteria use chemicals to talk to each other and to nonbacterial cells as well. These exchanges work much as human language does</span>, says <a href="http://ctbp.ucsd.edu/affiliates/showperson.php?id=61" target="_blank">Herbert Levine</a> of the University of California, San Diego’s <a href="http://ctbp.ucsd.edu/" target="_blank">Center for Theoretical Biological Physics</a>. With colleagues from Tel Aviv University, Levine proposed in the August 2004 <a href="http://ctbp3.ucsd.edu:8080/pubpdf/427.pdf" target="_blank"><i>Trends in Microbiology</i></a> that <span style="background-color: #b6d7a8;">bacteria “maintain linguistic communication,” enabling them to engage in intentional behavior both singly and in groups. In other words, they have “social intelligence.”</span>…</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">…Researchers have found several reasons to believe that bacteria affect the mental health of humans. For one thing, bacteria produce some of the same types of neurotransmitters that regulate the function of the human brain. The human intestine contains a network of neurons, and the gut network routinely communicates with the brain. Gut bacteria affect that communication. “The bugs are talking to each other, and they’re talking to their host, and their host talks back,” Young says. The phrase “gut feeling” is probably, literally true.…</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">…Giovannoni stops short of claiming that bacteria are actually thinking. But the litany of bacterial talents does nibble at conventional assumptions about thinking: <span style="background-color: #b6d7a8;">Bacteria can distinguish “self” from “other,” and between their relatives and strangers; they can sense how big a space they’re in; they can move as a unit; they can produce a wide variety of signaling compounds, including at least one human neurotransmitter; they can also engage in numerous mutually beneficial relationships with their host’s cells. </span>Even more impressive, some bacteria, such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myxococcus_xanthus" target="_blank"><i>Myxococcus xanthus</i></a>, practice predation in packs, swarming as a group over prey microbes such as <i>E. coli</i> and dissolving their cell walls.…<br />
<br />
Read the whole article: <br />
<a href="http://www.miller-mccune.com/science-environment/bacteria-r-us-23628/" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">http://www.miller-mccune.com/science-environment/bacteria-r-us-23628/</a> </div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"></div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"></div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com
http://NonhumanCommunications.com
"for the rest of us"</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07862983697040911126noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37365666.post-57884903455909404042010-10-18T21:58:00.000-07:002010-10-19T22:08:24.528-07:00Financially-troubled Japanese railway pins turnaround hopes on uniformed monkeys<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.japanprobe.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/monkey-stationmasters.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://www.japanprobe.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/monkey-stationmasters.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <br />
<blockquote>"The monkeys, aged seven months and three months, were dressed in blue uniforms made from traditional local fabrics complete with mini hats before being formally appointed station masters and “special city residents” by the local mayor. <span style="background-color: #b6d7a8;">The pair will now go on duty at the station located on the Hojo-cho line, which currently operates Japan’s first biodiesel fuel train. The monkeys belong to a local resident who proposed the unusual arrangement in order to help revive the fortunes of the financially troubled railway line, according to the Mainichi newspaper. </span></blockquote><blockquote><a href="http://www.japanprobe.com/2010/10/19/monkey-stationmasters-in-japan/">http://www.japanprobe.com/2010/10/19/monkey-stationmasters-in-japan/</a></blockquote><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com
http://NonhumanCommunications.com
"for the rest of us"</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07862983697040911126noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37365666.post-39692237921170250382010-10-14T15:43:00.000-07:002010-10-14T15:43:15.834-07:00"Hungover Owls" tells us all we need to know about the human tendency to anthropomorphize nonhumans, don't you think?<a href="http://hungoverowls.tumblr.com/"><br />
</a><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="216" src="http://hungoverowls.tumblr.com/photo/1280/1157703446/1/tumblr_l92f3hUu3A1qclcx7" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">“Whoop-de-fucking-doo, Dave.”</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://hungoverowls.tumblr.com/photo/1280/1157703446/1/tumblr_l92f3hUu3A1qclcx7" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div><br />
<br />
More where that came from:<br />
<a href="http://hungoverowls.tumblr.com/">http://hungoverowls.tumblr.com/</a><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com
http://NonhumanCommunications.com
"for the rest of us"</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07862983697040911126noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37365666.post-92049770052376185162010-10-12T12:16:00.000-07:002010-10-12T12:30:45.441-07:00What are ants telling us?<div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51y3TXSxQNL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51y3TXSxQNL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>The anthill: model for utopia or dystopia?</b><br />
<br />
<b> </b><b>E.O. Wilson, who knows as much about ants as anybody, thinks we ought to worry, based on the way he sees ants dealing with resource shortages.</b><br />
<b> </b><b> Or maybe we ought not to worry about whether or not we act like ants and instead focus on our behavior. What do you think?</b><br />
<b> From a recent article about Wilson: </b></div><blockquote style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">…He has joked that Karl Marx had it right about socialism, he just got the wrong species. In his writings he is wont to emphasise the beneficence of ants, how an ant with a full stomach will regurgitate liquid food for those without, and how the old will venture into battle so that the young can survive. That may confirm some of the findings of “Mutual Aid”, the pioneering 1902 study of altruism in animals by the Russian anarchist Prince Pyotr Kropotkin. But is this really socialism? To the casual observer the ant colony looks more like a Nazi ideal, where the weak are shed and fed upon, and those who have the slightest scent of another colony are sprayed with a chemical marking them out for death. It makes one glad to be human. </blockquote><blockquote style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">When Wilson unveiled sociobiology in 1975, it met with an angry response. Feminists, Marxists and Christians were opposed; so was Stephen Jay Gould, another Harvard biologist. But Wilson’s belief in sociobiology has not wavered. He leans forward and folds his hands together. <span style="background-color: #cccccc;">“History is almost certainly colony against individual and colony against colony. If group selection is correct, what you would expect to find is an intense human desire to form groups that attack other groups; bands of brothers, teams.” Then comes the rider. “As shortages in oil and other energy sources increase, we will see insect traits. Group conflict is so deeply endemic that we will never diminish it until we confront it.”…</span></blockquote><blockquote style="background-color: #cccccc; font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">…We were not driven from Eden. Instead, we destroyed most of it.</blockquote><br />
<div class="print-site_name">from:</div><br />
ANTS AND US <br />
<div class="print-submitted">By <i>J.M. Ledgard</i></div>They work together, share food and send their elders into battle to protect the young. And the world authority on them thinks they have a lot to teach us. J.M. Ledgard goes to Harvard to discuss ants, and more, with E.O. Wilson ...<br />
From INTELLIGENT LIFE Magazine, Autumn 2010<br />
<i>More Intelligent Life</i> (<a href="http://moreintelligentlife.com/">http://moreintelligentlife.com</a>) <br />
<br />
<div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com
http://NonhumanCommunications.com
"for the rest of us"</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07862983697040911126noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37365666.post-63262570854636864892010-10-06T16:39:00.000-07:002010-10-06T17:03:16.598-07:00Surprisingly social lizards & ferocious robins<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Seems that every time they look a bit closer at nonhumans, researchers find our fellow Earthlings more complex, more "like us" than humans expected. Seems reasonable to assume that we continue to underestimate them. </div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The latest example: " Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have found that a species of lizard in the Mojave Desert lives in family groups and shows patterns of social behavior more commonly associated with mammals and birds. Their investigation of the formation and stability of family groups in desert night lizards (Xantusia vigilis) provides new insights into the evolution of cooperative behavior." </div><a href="http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-10/uoc--ftb100610.php">http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-10/uoc--ftb100610.php </a><br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaYNBAjR-fOBYzX7etik20kAzUNzv0Z2ir-WLrAXZiYfOZqcL5yjulav5pO-dot6jdj2Mzs7W2i0S7in5C2_qqP-HgIrtL0yL4vwY_CtpLGgPbs1Fp2buHRilwojY6IECOreQC/s1600/2elephants.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaYNBAjR-fOBYzX7etik20kAzUNzv0Z2ir-WLrAXZiYfOZqcL5yjulav5pO-dot6jdj2Mzs7W2i0S7in5C2_qqP-HgIrtL0yL4vwY_CtpLGgPbs1Fp2buHRilwojY6IECOreQC/s320/2elephants.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Robin song is suited to cooler air, to mornings and evenings in spring and summer and the shorter day length later. It has a sharp-edged clarity, with liquid runs and etched phrases enhanced by the sounding woods. Here there is some leaf cover surrounding still, open, well-lit spaces which act as studios for the singing birds. Robins have a reputation for ferocity with each other and a lack of fear with us. They also have a sweetness of song which reaches points where joy and melancholy merge. This is where the mood is shaped which, with the fragrance of leaf-rot and rain, fruits and earth, create what we feel as autumn.</span><br />
<a href="http://draft.blogger.com/" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2010/oct/06/country-diary-wenlock-edge </a><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com
http://NonhumanCommunications.com
"for the rest of us"</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07862983697040911126noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37365666.post-40683522699729466902010-08-14T11:10:00.000-07:002010-08-14T11:19:29.421-07:00Animal haiku!<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2010/8/12/1281606693245/Kawamura-Bunpo-Rabbits-de-002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="219" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2010/8/12/1281606693245/Kawamura-Bunpo-Rabbits-de-002.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> <span class="caption"><strong>Kawamura Bunpo: Rabbits (detail), from Handscroll of Japanese Subjects</strong><br />
Painting, ink and colours on paper, c.1807</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/gallery/2010/aug/12/haiku-animal-british-museum-gallery">Animal haiku</a><br />
<br />
"In a new book from the British Museum exploring the form's long tradition of focus on animals, haiku from some of the greatest exponents - Basho, Buson and Issa - sit alongside exquisite prints of the creatures they describe."<br />
<br />
<span class="caption">even the rabbit<br />
droops one of her ears -<br />
midsummer heat!<br />
<b>Akutagawa Ryunosuke</b></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com
http://NonhumanCommunications.com
"for the rest of us"</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07862983697040911126noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37365666.post-84045229319918891122010-03-30T08:19:00.000-07:002010-10-06T16:52:53.450-07:00Dogs can talk! "When I picked up my dog Ruby in Long Island nearly seven years ago, I was surprised to discover that she talks like a human."<div style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="2008-STILWELL-B-0053-half.jpg" height="132" src="http://www.boingboing.net/2008-STILWELL-B-0053-half.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0pt auto 20px; text-align: center;" width="200" /> When I picked up my dog Ruby in Long Island nearly seven years ago, I was surprised to discover that she talks like a human. When I ask her a question (Are you hungry? Do you want to eat dinner? Are you going to bed?), she looks me in the eye, nods her head, and opens her mouth in agreement. For years I tried to figure out the reason for her mysterious behavior — was it genetic? — by trying to track down her parents or siblings, but that search only resulted in some phone calls with sympathetic and sometimes suspicious miniature pinscher breeders who told me I should just give up. It finally dawned on me last week to ask an animal behavior expert. So I pinged <a href="http://positively.com/" target="_blank">Victoria Stilwell</a>, who hosts the hilariously informative dog training show <i><a href="http://animal.discovery.com/tv/its-me-or-dog/" target="_blank">It's Me or the Dog</a></i> on Animal Planet. Here, Stilwell explains why Ruby talks, why dogs aren't like humans, and how dog training techniques can be applied to tame unruly children.</div><br />
<h2 class="entry-title"><a class="entry-title-link" href="http://feeds.boingboing.net/%7Er/boingboing/iBag/%7E3/0JWyakwQTmA/qa-with-victoria-sti.html" target="_blank">Six random dog questions for It's Me or the Dog host Victoria Stilwell</a></h2><div class="entry-author"><span class="entry-source-title-parent">from <a class="entry-source-title" href="http://www.google.com/reader/view/feed/http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.boingboing.net%2Fboingboing%2FiBag" target="_blank">Boing Boing</a></span> <span class="entry-author-parent">by <span class="entry-author-name">Lisa Katayama</span></span></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com
http://NonhumanCommunications.com
"for the rest of us"</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07862983697040911126noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37365666.post-39993943389592470892010-03-28T12:22:00.000-07:002010-03-28T19:05:34.331-07:00Research indicates that great apes show a capability that in humans makes possible true wisdom: they know they could be wrong<h1 class="title">Great apes know they could be wrong</h1><h2 class="subtitle">Study suggests non-human animals also have metacognitive abilities -- they know about what they have seen</h2><table align="right" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="width: 218px;"><tbody>
<tr> <td colspan="5"><img alt="" border="0" height="10" src="http://www.eurekalert.org/images/clear.gif" width="1" /></td> </tr>
<tr> <td><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.eurekalert.org/images/clear.gif" width="8" /></td> <td align="left" bgcolor="#f2f2f2" height="4" valign="top" width="4"><img alt="" border="0" height="4" src="http://www.eurekalert.org/images/corner_tl.jpg" width="4" /></td> <td bgcolor="#f2f2f2" height="4" width="210"><img alt="" border="0" height="10" src="http://www.eurekalert.org/images/clear.gif" width="1" /></td> <td align="right" bgcolor="#f2f2f2" height="4" valign="top" width="4"><img alt="" border="0" height="4" src="http://www.eurekalert.org/images/corner_tr.jpg" width="4" /></td> <td><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.eurekalert.org/images/clear.gif" width="8" /></td> </tr>
<tr> <td><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.eurekalert.org/images/clear.gif" width="8" /></td> <td bgcolor="#f2f2f2"><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.eurekalert.org/images/clear.gif" width="4" /></td> <td bgcolor="#f2f2f2"><br />
<br />
<br />
<center> <a href="http://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/pub/21117.php?from=156891" target="_self"><img border="0" src="http://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/pub/rel/21117_rel.jpg" /></a> </center> <a href="http://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/pub/21117.php?from=156891" target="_self"><img border="0" src="http://www.eurekalert.org/images/eutube/icon_image_tiny.gif" /> <span class="imagecaption" style="color: black;"><b>IMAGE:</b></span></a> <span class="imagecaption">Shown here is the basic setup of the "checking inside the tubes " task.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<center> <span class="imagecaption"><a href="http://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/pub/21117.php?from=156891" target="_self">Click here for more information.</a></span> </center> </td> <td bgcolor="#f2f2f2"><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.eurekalert.org/images/clear.gif" width="4" /></td> <td><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.eurekalert.org/images/clear.gif" width="8" /></td> </tr>
<tr> <td><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.eurekalert.org/images/clear.gif" width="8" /></td> <td align="left" bgcolor="#f2f2f2" height="4" valign="bottom" width="4"><img alt="" border="0" height="4" src="http://www.eurekalert.org/images/corner_bl.jpg" width="4" /></td> <td bgcolor="#f2f2f2" height="4" width="202"><img alt="" border="0" height="10" src="http://www.eurekalert.org/images/clear.gif" width="1" /></td> <td align="right" bgcolor="#f2f2f2" height="4" valign="bottom" width="4"><img alt="" border="0" height="4" src="http://www.eurekalert.org/images/corner_br.jpg" width="4" /></td> <td><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.eurekalert.org/images/clear.gif" width="8" /></td> </tr>
<tr> <td colspan="5"><img alt="" border="0" height="10" src="http://www.eurekalert.org/images/clear.gif" width="1" /></td> </tr>
</tbody></table>Great apes – orangutans, chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas – realize that they can be wrong when making choices, according to Dr. Josep Call from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Dr. Call's study was just published online in Springer's journal, <i>Animal Cognition</i>.<br />
<br />
In a series of three experiments, seven gorillas, eight chimpanzees, four bonobos and seven orangutans, from the Wolfgang Köhler Research Center at the Leipzig Zoo in Germany, were presented with two hollow tubes, one baited with a food reward, the other not. The apes were then observed as they tried to find the reward.<br />
<br />
In the first experiment, the apes were prevented from watching the baiting but the tubes were shaken to give them auditory information about the reward's location instead. Dr. Call wanted to see if when the apes were prevented from acquiring visual information, but offered auditory cues instead, they would be able to use the auditory information to reduce their reliance on visual searching.<br />
In the second experiment, the apes were shown the location where the food was hidden and then at variable time delays encouraged to retrieve it. The purpose of this experiment was to see if forgetting the location would lead to the apes looking harder for it.<br />
In the last experiment, the researcher compared the apes' response between visible and hidden baiting conditions, when the quality of the food reward varied. The author hypothesized that the apes would check more often when a high quality reward was at stake, irrespective of whether or not they had seen where it was placed.<br />
<br />
Although the apes retrieved the reward very accurately when they had watched the baiting, Dr. Call found that they were more likely to check inside the tube before choosing when high stakes were involved, or after a longer period of time had elapsed between the baiting and the retrieval of the reward. In contrast, when the apes were provided with auditory information about the food's location, they reduced the amount of checking before choosing. According to Dr. Call, taken together, these findings show that the apes were aware that they could be wrong when choosing.<br />
<br />
Dr. Call concludes: "The current results indicate that the looking response appears to be a function of at least three factors: the cost of looking inside the tube, the value of the reward and the state of the information. The combination of these three factors creates an information processing system that possesses complexity, flexibility and control, three of the features of metacognition*. These findings suggest that nonhuman animals may possess some metacognitive abilities, too."<br />
<div align="center">###</div>*Metacognition: cognition about cognition, or knowing about knowing.<br />
Reference <br />
1. Call J (2010). Do apes know that they could be wrong? <i>Animal Cognition</i> DOI 10.1007/s10071-010-0317-x<div class="blogger-post-footer">http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com
http://NonhumanCommunications.com
"for the rest of us"</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07862983697040911126noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37365666.post-48501963050008607852010-03-02T08:16:00.000-08:002010-03-02T08:16:48.723-08:00"Can animals talk to other animals?" Yes, obviously.<blockquote>"Can animals talk to other animals?" Asks Maggie Koerth-Baker on BoingBoing.net. "This question—from an Anon's 6-year-old cousin—is familiar to anyone who's ever been caught up in the poignant friendship of a cartoon fox and a cartoon hound. Obviously, their real-life equivalents aren't sitting down to chat, vocally, about Yeats over a nice cup of tea. But if you drop the human pretension, and start thinking of communication as a simple exchange of information, you'll see cross-species conversations happening, experts say.…We humans tend to think of communication as solely about formal language—preferably spoken. Instead, animals use things like movement, posture and even pee—as well as sounds—to share concepts like, "I want to play," or messages like, "There's food over here." As long it makes sense, communication has happened."<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.boingboing.net/2010/03/02/science-question-fro-6.html">http://www.boingboing.net/2010/03/02/science-question-fro-6.html </a><br />
<a href="http://acp.eugraph.com/">http://acp.eugraph.com/</a><br />
<a href="http://www.zoosemiotics.helsinki.fi/">http://www.zoosemiotics.helsinki.fi/</a></blockquote><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com
http://NonhumanCommunications.com
"for the rest of us"</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07862983697040911126noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37365666.post-81610086314134469552010-03-01T07:49:00.000-08:002010-03-01T07:49:02.698-08:00"Killer whales: What to do with captive orcas?" asks BBC. Let them swim free & don't trap any more.Can't we just stop locking up these amazing creatures to provide entertainment for humans? Let them swim free<br />
<br />
<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8536000/8536184.stm">BBC - Earth News - Killer whales: What to do with captive orcas?</a><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com
http://NonhumanCommunications.com
"for the rest of us"</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07862983697040911126noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37365666.post-67452064114306695272010-02-26T08:56:00.000-08:002010-02-26T08:56:01.310-08:00They're not just growling, these nonhumans are talking with each other, comparing notes: communicating intelligently.<blockquote>…New experimental work on domestic dogs, just published online by the journal <em>Animal Behaviour</em>, reports “the first evidence of context specificity of agonistic vocalizations in the dog.” Scientist Tamas Farago and his colleagues discovered, in other words, that when dogs growl, they communicate specific information—not just arousal—to other dogs.<br />
<br />
This group of researchers recorded growls of 20 adult dogs in versions of the three contexts noted above: when the dogs were mildly threatened by a person who slowly approached and stared at them (called the TS context), when engaged in tug-of-war play with a person (PL), and when guarding a large meaty bone from another dog (FG). The TS and FG contexts are termed “agonistic” because they involve behaviors related to aggression. The PL context is considered non-agonistic because it is playful.<br />
<br />
The most exciting data in the paper come from playback experiments made with 41 dogs (not the growl-recorded dogs). Playback is a technique that, when rigorously initiated in the 1970s, cracked wide open the study of animal communication. In this procedure, vocalizations of animals are recorded as some event (natural or experimental) unfolds and are then played back to different animals in the same species, in order to note their reaction.… </blockquote><blockquote><a href="http://www.scienceandreligiontoday.com/2010/02/26/dogs-share-information/">http://www.scienceandreligiontoday.com/2010/02/26/dogs-share-information/</a></blockquote><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com
http://NonhumanCommunications.com
"for the rest of us"</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07862983697040911126noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37365666.post-11193596936262746622010-02-24T09:23:00.000-08:002010-02-24T09:23:45.567-08:00Researchers can have empathy for their animal subjects, says Jane Goodall."Most recently there was a report of a Fongoli chimp performing a <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527426.000-chimps-dance-suggests-a-mental-grasp-of-fire.html">"fire dance"</a> in response to a bush fire, similar to the slow-motion display that Gombe chimps carry out during rainstorms. This kind of cultural variation may well give us an insight into how behaviours are transmitted socially, rather than through individual learning or genetic transmission, and has implications for our understanding of early hominid evolution. In a sense, if we lose chimps we lose a part of our own history."<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527481.100-jane-goodall-there-is-no-problem-in-having-empathy.html">http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527481.100-jane-goodall-there-is-no-problem-in-having-empathy.html</a><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com
http://NonhumanCommunications.com
"for the rest of us"</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07862983697040911126noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37365666.post-8423184481299927892010-02-23T06:56:00.000-08:002010-02-23T06:56:40.382-08:00"Animals are constantly asking us in their own ways to treat them better or leave them alone." (Marc Bekoff)<blockquote><span id="Global_Site"><div class="articleBody" id="articleBody"> …Animals are constantly asking us in their own ways to treat them better or leave them alone. What might their manifesto look like? Basically, animals want to be treated better or left alone, and they`re fully justified in making this request. We must stop ignoring their gaze and closing our hearts to their pleas. We can easily do what they ask -- to stop causing them unnecessary pain, suffering, loneliness, sadness, and death, even extinction. It`s a matter of making different choices: about how we conduct research, about how we entertain ourselves, about what we buy, where we live, who we eat, who we wear, and even family planning.…<br />
<br />
Here are six reasons for expanding our compassion footprint:<br />
<br />
<em>All animals share the earth and we must coexsist</em> <br />
<em>Animals think and feel</em> <br />
<em>Animals have and deserve compassion</em> <br />
<em>Connection breeds caring, alienation breeds disrespect</em> <br />
<em>Our world is not compassionate to animals</em> <br />
<em>Acting compassionately helps all beings and our world</em> <br />
<br />
<em>…Marc Bekoff is professor emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at CU, Boulder, and scholar-in-residence at the University of Denver`s Institute for Human-Animal Connection. He will be speaking at the Boulder Bookstore about his new book, "The Animal Manifesto: Six Reasons For Expanding Our Compassion Footprint," today at 7:30 p.m.</em></div></span><br />
<div id="TixyyLink" style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
Read more: <a href="http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_14449999#ixzz0gN43GAvY">Guest commentary: What do animals want from us? - Boulder Daily Camera</a> <a href="http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_14449999#ixzz0gN43GAvY">http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_14449999#ixzz0gN43GAvY</a></div></blockquote><div class="blogger-post-footer">http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com
http://NonhumanCommunications.com
"for the rest of us"</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07862983697040911126noreply@blogger.com0