stones
edyong | August 6, 2009Aesop's fable "The Crow and the Pitcher" has been confirmed in a wonderful experiment. In the classic tale, a thirsty crow uses stones to raise the level of water in a pitcher until it rises within reach of its beak. This is no mere fiction - rooks, close relatives of crows, have the brains to actually do this.
The aptly named Chris Bird, along with Nathan Emery, gave four captive rooks (Cook, Fry, Connelly and Monroe) a chance to reach a small worm floating in a cylinder of water, with nothing but a small pile of stones sitting on the side. All of them solved the task, and Cook and Fry…
edyong | March 9, 2009
In 1997, Swedish inspectors found several stockpiles of missiles hidden in a local zoo. Apparently, the arsenal had been gathered together for the express purpose of being used against civilians. And who was the mastermind behind this collection? A 19-year-old chimpanzee called Santino.
Santino was born in a German zoo in 1978 and transferred to Furuvik Zoo at the age of 5. To this day, he lives in the zoo's chimpanzee island - a large outdoor enclosure surrounded by a moat. Throughout his residence, he was mostly docile towards the eager visitors, but all of that changed in 1997 when he…