Interesting Animal Facts: Self-Awareness and Intelligence

[Magpie images is from here.]

From Scientific American:

When you look in the mirror, you know you are seeing yourself. Your dog, on the other hand, thinks its reflection is a fellow canine (if anything). So far scientists thought this lack of self-recognition was ubiquitous in the animal kingdom-with the exception of apes, elephants and dolphins. But a new study presents evidence that self-recognition has also evolved in a bird species.

Helmut Prior of Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, and his team tagged magpies with a brightly colored mark below their beaks, where the birds could not see it directly. When the magpies looked in the mirror, some of them tried to reach the mark with their beak or touch it with their foot, which shows that they recognized their own mirror image, the researchers say.

The evolutionary lines of birds and mammals split apart about 300 million years ago from our common ancestors, which were small-brained reptiles. Such a long separation suggests that self-recognition emerged independently at least two times, Prior says. The findings also provide a challenge for scientists trying to identify regions of the brain associated with consciousness and self-recognition by looking at brain structures that are unique to higher mammals, he explains: "Obviously, self-recognition is possible with completely different brains."

[Crow image is from here.]

Crows as Clever as Great Apes, Study Says

Anyone who has watched crows, jays, ravens and other members of the corvid family will know they're anything but "birdbrained."

For instance, jays will sit on ant nests, allowing the angry insects to douse them with formic acid, a natural pesticide which helps rid the birds of parasites. Urban-living carrion crows have learned to use road traffic for cracking tough nuts. They do this at traffic light crossings, waiting patiently with human pedestrians for a red light before retrieving their prize.

Yet corvids may be even cleverer than we think. A new study suggests their cognitive abilities are a match for primates such as chimpanzees and gorillas. Furthermore, crows may provide clues to understanding human intelligence.

Published tomorrow in the journal Science, the study is co-authored by Nathan Emery and Nicola Clayton, from the departments of animal behavior and experimental psychology at Cambridge University, England.

They say that, while having very different brain structures, both crows and primates use a combination of mental tools, including imagination and the anticipation of possible future events, to solve similar problems. They base their argument on existing studies.

Emery and Clayton write, "These studies have found that some corvids are not only superior in intelligence to birds of other avian species (perhaps with the exception of some parrots), but also rival many nonhuman primates."

Increasingly, scientists agree that it isn't physical need that makes animal smart, but social necessity. Group living tends to be a complicated business, so for individuals to prosper they need to understand exactly what's going on. So highly social creatures like dolphins, chimps, and humans tend to be large-brained and intelligent.

Large Brains

The study notes that crows are also social and have unusually large brains for their size. "It is relatively the same size as the chimpanzee brain," the authors said.

They say that crows and apes both think about their social and physical surroundings in complex ways, using tool use as an example.

Like apes, many birds employ tools to gather food, but it isn't clear whether chimps or crows appreciate how these tools work. It may be that they simply discover their usefulness by accident. However, studies of New Caledonian crows, from the South Pacific, suggest otherwise.

New Caledonian crows manufacture two very different types of tool for finding prey. Hooks crafted from twigs are used to poke grubs from holes in trees, while they also cut up stiff leaves with their beaks, carefully sculpting them into sharp instruments for probing leaf detritus for insects and other invertebrates.

A New Caledonian crow in captivity learned how to bend a piece of straight wire into a hook to probe for food.

Such sophisticated tool manufacture and use is unique in non-human wild animals, according to Jackie Chappell, a UK-based zoologist who has studied the birds.

Emery and Clayton compare the crow's handiwork to minor human technological innovations. And because different New Caledonian crow populations make these tools to slightly different designs, some scientists take this as evidence of some form of culture, as has been suggested in chimpanzees.

Other corvids may use memories of past experiences to plan ahead.

In the case of Western scrub jays, a previous study by Emery and Clayton suggests jays with past experience of pilfering food caches collected by other jays can then use this knowledge to protect their own caches.

Lab experiments showed that if a habitual thief was observed while burying its own cache, it would later go back and move it when no other bird was looking. Meanwhile, "innocent" jays did not exhibit the same cunning.

Imagination?

The researchers also argue that such behavior suggests Western scrub jays are able to second guess another's intentions, or, to put it another way, get into another bird's mind. In which case, this could be evidence for imagination.

Emery and Clayton write, "Western scrub jays may present a case for imagination because the jays needed to have remembered the previous relevant social context, used their own experience of having been a thief to predict the behavior of a pilferer, and determined the safest course of action to protect the caches from pilferage."

Studies to assess similar cognitive abilities in apes have been inconclusive, according to John Pearce, professor of psychology at Cardiff University in Wales.

"[The Western scrub jay study] is some of the best evidence going that one animal can understand what another is thinking," he added.

Pearce believes we can gain insights into the basic mechanisms of human intelligence through the study of animals. He says language is generally considered to be one of the major divisions between human and animal intelligence, which makes Western scrub jays especially noteworthy.

He said, "What's so interesting is that while Western scrub jays may not have language, the research shows they've got many of the intellectual abilities that humans have. This suggests that many of our intellectual abilities which we think we need language for perhaps we don't in fact need language for. That then makes us try to understand these abilities in a different way."

If we're as smart as we think we are, perhaps we need to keep an even closer eye on those clever old crows.

[Elephants image is from here.]

Elephant Intelligence: Why Elephants Might Be as Smart as Humans

With increased loss of habitat, destruction of migration paths, and poaching by humans, it's no wonder elephant attacks are on the rise. Scientists studying why groups of elephants have become hostile and perhaps depressed have also discovered quite a
bit about elephant intelligence. The notion that elephants might be as smart as humans is a relatively new one, putting elephants on par with other sophisticated animals like dolphins.

Here are some of the reasons elephants may be even smarter than we thought:

Elephants use tools.

Like primates, elephant calves will play with objects found in their natural environment. Elephants' use of objects goes beyond playfulness and curiosity, though. Elephants use sticks to scratch themselves, shoo away flies, and intimidate enemies. In captivity, elephants have used large rocks to short circuit electric fences.

Elephants mourn their dead.

When a member of an elephant herd dies, the other elephants will gather around and touch the body with their trunks. They will watch over the body and make mournful-sounding noises for several days, only leaving the deceased for food. Strangely, elephants perform the same act of ritual mourning for humans as well.

When people joke that an elephant never forgets, they probably don't realize the extent of an elephant's memory. Elephants are migratory animals, walking hundred of miles of grassland every year. When an elephant herd walks over a spot in which a family member died, they will collectively pause and exhibit signs of mourning. When there are bones left, they will also touch the bones with their trunks.

Elephants communicate on many levels.

One way to gauge animal intelligence is by the complexity of their communication. Elephants communicate like other animals both verbally and with body language. But elephants can hear at a much lower frequency than humans, and also sense vibrations with their hyper-sensitive feet from miles away.

Because of this adaptation, elephants vocalize in two ways. They vocalize the way we understand vocalization, by creating sound waves that travel through the air. The low-frequency noises that elephants make also make seismic "noise" that travels as a vibration in the ground. So elephants
are capable of "hearing" over great distances by picking up on the rumbling under their feet.

Elephants retain cultural memory.

One of the strongest cases for elephant intelligence comes from the idea of elephants sharing a taught, collective culture. Scientists have studied and compared the behavior of wild elephants that have been hunted by humans and wild elephants that have not been hunted. The elephant herds that had never historically been hunted display no fear of humans, and react to human presence in a friendly and curious manner. Elephant herds that had been hunted displayed fear of humans.

One particularly interesting study deals with an elephant herd that had been almost poached to death by a hired hunter. The few remaining elephants retreated to the forest, adopted a nocturnal lifestyle, and shied away from all human contact. They have not been hunted since. Three generations of elephants later and with none of the original herd remaining, the descendants of this particular herd exhibit the same fearful, nocturnal behavior. Researchers believe the mother elephants are teaching survival tactics to their calves that don't align with any other elephant herd's behavioral patterns based on the herd's shared history.

Elephants are self-aware.

Have you ever tried to get your cat to look at itself in the mirror or watched a pet parakeet try to feed its reflected image? Animals tend to be pretty dense about recognizing themselves, or even understanding that they project an image into the world.

The strongest case for elephant intelligence is that elephants recognize themselves in mirrors, indicating they have a high sense of self-awareness. An elephant with a smudge on its face will try to rub it off when it sees the smudge in the mirror.

Conclusion:

Elephants are large, mysterious animals humans are only just now beginning to understand. Attempts to gauge elephant intelligence by human criteria might seem strange to an elephant, although we share a few key cultural practices.

While examining behavior can give us a way to measure intelligence, we have to look at biology as well. Elephant brains are born at 35% their adult weight, compared to 28% for humans. Scientists estimate that the elephant brain grows for about ten
years, giving elephants an enormous amount of time to acquire knowledge. Like humans, elephants might depend more on learned behaviors than instinctual behaviors for survival. And that makes elephants and humans unique in the animal kingdom.

[Orangutan image is from here.]

Chimpanzee Communication: Insight Into the Origin of Language

Chimpanzees can indeed communicate in this deliberate fashion (McCrone 146). Chimps employ a rich variety of gestures and facial expressions to keep in touch with each other, and more importantly, there is intelligence behind the exchanges that makes for a level of understanding unseen elsewhere in the animal world. This sort of communication ability is what makes chimps appear far more socially advanced than any other animal. They may have a simple repertoire of noises and body language, but the intelligence with which these signals are used and interpreted makes a big difference.

Only recently has it been realized how well chimpanzees can communicate. Most of the observations have come from a troop of wild chimps at the Gombe Stream Reserve on the shores of Lake Tanganyika and from a captive group in Holland's Arnhem Zoo (McCrone 147). Chimps make use of simple gestures, waving their hand in the direction they want another chimp to look or holding out a begging hand for support then relying on the intelligence of the other animal to sum up the situation and react (McCrone 149). Some chimps even develop their own special signals. These observations indicate that chimps are the most intelligent communicators in the animal world, even compared to other highly social species such as lions, wolves and monkeys. This level of communication comes from chimps' deep understanding of the social world around them, which means that each chimp must be able mentally to model the impact of its own actions on the group as well as being able to guess the intentions of others (McCrone 150).

Highly social animals also need to be able to mentally model the social world of their group, remembering such things as who is dominant, who is bad-tempered, and what actions are likely to follow a particular grunt or screech. Because these sorts of things are less predictable and obvious than the events of the natural world, social animals like chimps and humans need bigger brains to cope with the complexity of their social lives (McCrone 150). A chimpanzee may have a deep understanding of the world and the brain power to model both physical and social relationships, but that knowledge stays locked away in the gray background of the memory banks until roused by events actually happening in the chimp's presence. Either another chimp draws its attention to the event, like the nervous mother nudging mama to tell her about the squabbling kids, or a chimp gives vent to its emotions and the others correctly guess the reason for its display, like the dominant chimp hooting at the young male for getting too friendly with the female (McCrone 156).

Perhaps chimps also invent their own personal noises, maybe using particular grunts to mean certain things. But such personal noises are not as obvious as gestures to human observers. The point is that it is quite possible for chimps- or early man- to make symbolic use of noises, even if these "protowords" have a fixed meaning only for the individuals uttering them. This use of personal noises would at least be the first step toward language. The next would be for the symbolic noise to be picked up and used by all the members of a troop. Learned behaviors can spread through a troop, but they tend to spread most easily from mother to child. youngsters are attentive and playful enough to imitate their mother's actions, whereas other adults rarely take the necessary interest to learn from each other (McCrone 157).

The modern chimp may be making the first steps toward language. Countless generations of chimpanzees have probably made similar first steps toward speech without their leading to anything, for young chimps do not repeat the close relationship they have with their mothers when they grow up and mix with other adult chimps. They do not pair off with a partner and thus have a chance to develop a more mature two-way form of conversation. Any private language that emerged would almost inevitably be lost with each generation, getting trampled underfoot in the rough-and-tumble world of the adult (McCrone 158).

Evidence of this progression toward more fluid communication skills is demonstrated in recent primate research. In the 1960's and 1970's, the discovery that apes could use hand gestures and symbols to communicate resulted in many primate language research facilities. For example, Koko, a gorilla, was trained to use American Sign Language to express her feelings and desires. Since that time, many great apes have been taught to sign or use symbol communication such as using colored plastic shapes or computer keyboard lexigrams to represent lexical concepts.

Also in the early 1970's, a chimpanzee named Washoe was taught to communicate in American Sign Language (ASL) by Beatrix and Allen Gardner at the University of Nevada in Reno. She was immersed in an environment where she learned to use ASL in daily interactions with her human companions. Washoe learned 132 different words in her time with the Gardners. In time since, four other chimps have also been taught to sign and they, along with Washoe, are the subject of study by Roger and Deborah Fouts. These five chimps, who consider themselves a family, now use many more signs than they were ever expected to learn (Washoe herself can use up to 240 reliable signs) ,and sign not only to the humans, but also to each other to communicate. Washoe even taught her own adopted son to sign without human intervention (Fouts).

Many linguists still believe that apes have no real grasp of human language, but are merely imitating their human companions. They insist that while apes may understand individual symbols or words, they do not understand the concepts of syntax, or how words are put together to form a complete idea. However, evidence is continually proving that the nonhuman primate mind is capable of advanced thought (Rayl 89).

Chimpanzees have shown the ability to communicate using ASL to human observers and other chimpanzees about the normal course of surrounding events. They use signs to create natural language categories; for example, they will sign "dog" when shown many different species of dogs and "shoe" whether it be a slipper or a cowboy boot. They can invent new signs and combine signs to metaphorically express something different, for example: calling a radish "cry hurt food" or referring to a watermelon as a "drink fruit" (Fouts). They can comprehend and produce novel prepositional phrases, understand vocal English, translate words into ASL and even transmit their signing skills to the next generation without human intervention.

Studying how chimps acquire and use sign and other symbolic language gives us a better understanding of how humans acquire language skills and provides another model with which we can study the role of language in communication. It also helps us to better understand the roots of our human language. In addition, chimp language research has been used to help non-communicating children to sign, and has aided autistic, cerebal palsied, and developmentally disabled children (Fouts).

Great Apes Think Ahead: Conclusive Evidence Of Advanced Planning Capacities

ScienceDaily (June 19, 2008) - Apes can plan for their future needs just as we humans can - by using self-control and imagining future events. Mathias and Helena Osvath's research, from Lunds University Cognitive Science in Sweden, is the first to provide conclusive evidence of advanced planning capacities in non-human species.

The complex skill of future planning is commonly believed to be exclusive to humans, and has not yet been convincingly established in any living primate species other than our own. In humans, planning for future needs relies heavily on two mental capacities: self-control or the suppression of immediate drives in favor of delayed rewards; and mental time travel or the detached mental experience of a past or future event.

In a series of four experiments, Mathias and Helena Osvath investigated whether chimpanzees and orangutans could override immediate drives in favor of future needs, and therefore demonstrate both self-control and the ability to plan ahead, rather than simply fulfill immediate needs through impulsive behavior.