Barbara Clucas/UC Davis photo
…press release from University of California, Davis:
Squirrels Use Snake Scent
December 19, 2007
California ground squirrels and rock squirrels chew up rattlesnake skin and smear it on their fur to mask their scent from predators, according to a new study by researchers at UC Davis.
Barbara Clucas, a graduate student in animal behavior at UC Davis, observed ground squirrels (Spermophilus beecheyi) and rock squirrels (Spermophilus variegates) applying snake scent to themselves by picking up pieces of shed snakeskin, chewing it and then licking their fur. Adult female squirrels and juveniles apply snake scent more often than adult males, which are less vulnerable to predation by snakes, Clucas said.
The scent probably helps to mask the squirrel's own scent, especially when the animals are asleep in their burrows at night, or to persuade a snake that another snake is in the burrow. The squirrels are not limited to the use of shed snake skins, said Donald Owings, a professor of psychology at UC Davis who is Clucas' adviser and an author on the paper. They also pick up snake odor from soil and other surfaces on which snakes have been resting, and use that to apply scent. Other rodents have been observed using similar behavior.
Snake-scent application is one of a remarkable package of defenses that squirrels use against rattlesnakes, Owings said. In earlier work, Owings' lab has found that squirrels can: heat up their tails to send a warning signal to rattlesnakes, which can "see" in the infrared; assess how dangerous a particular snake is, based on the sound of its rattle; and display assertive behavior against snakes to deter attacks. In addition, work by Owings' colleague, psychology professor Richard Coss, has demonstrated that these squirrels have evolved resistance to snake venom.
"It's a nice example of the opportunism of animals," Owings said. "They're turning the tables on the snake."
The other authors on the paper, which was published Nov. 28 in the journal Animal Behavior, are Matthew Rowe, Sam Houston State University, Texas, and Patricia Arrowood at New Mexico State University. The work was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Animal Behavior Society.
…press release from Duke University:
Monkeys Can Perform Mental Addition
DURHAM, N.C.--Researchers at Duke University have demonstrated that monkeys have the ability to perform mental addition. In fact, monkeys performed about as well as college students given the same test.
The findings shed light on the shared evolutionary origins of arithmetic ability in humans and non-human animals, according to Assistant Professor Elizabeth Brannon, Ph.D. and Jessica Cantlon, Ph.D., of the Duke Center for Cognitive Neuroscience.
Current evidence has shown that both humans and animals have the ability to mentally represent and compare numbers. For instance, animals, infants and adults can discriminate between four objects and eight objects. However, until now it was unclear whether animals could perform mental arithmetic.
"We know that animals can recognize quantities, but there is less evidence for their ability to carry out explicit mathematical tasks, such as addition," said graduate student Jessica Cantlon. "Our study shows that they can."
Cantlon and Brannon set up an experiment in which macaque monkeys were placed in front of a computer touch screen displaying a variable number of dots. Those dots were then removed and a new screen appeared with a different number of dots. A third screen then appeared displaying two boxes; one containing the sum of the first two sets of dots and one containing a different number. The monkeys were rewarded for touching the box containing the correct sum of the sets.
The same test was presented to college students, who were asked to choose the correct sum without counting the individual dots. While the college students were correct 94 percent the time and the monkeys 76 percent, the average response time for both monkeys and humans was about one second.
Interestingly, both the monkeys' and the college students' performance worsened when the two choice boxes were close in number.
"If the correct sum was 11 and the box with the incorrect number held 12 dots, both monkeys and the college students took longer to answer and had more errors. We call this the ratio effect," explained Cantlon. "What's remarkable is that both species suffered from the ratio effect at virtually the same rate."
That monkeys and humans share the ability to add suggests that basic arithmetic may be part of our shared evolutionary past.
Humans have added language and writing to their repertoire, which undoubtedly changes the way we represent numbers. "Much of adult humans' mathematical capacity lies in their ability to represent numerical concepts using symbolic language. A monkey can't tell the difference between 2000 and 2001 objects, for instance. However, our work has shown that both humans and monkeys can mentally manipulate representations of number to generate approximate sums of individual objects," says Brannon.
The study was published in the December 2007 issue of the journal PLoS Biology.
[drawing by morris armstrong, jr.]
[collage by Morris Armstrong, Jr.]
