mammals
jgoldman | August 16, 2010I will be reposting some dog-related posts from the archives in the coming few weeks as I prepare for the course I'm teaching this semester on dog cognition. Please let me know if you find something inaccurate or unclear.
Domesticated dogs seem to have an uncanny ability to understand human communicative gestures (see here). If you point to something the dog zeroes in on the object or location you're pointing to (whether it's a toy, or food, or to get his in-need-of-a-bath butt off your damn bed and back onto his damn bed). Put another way, if your attention is on something, or if your…
jgoldman | August 15, 2010
Apparently when something interests you, the best way to figure it out is to smack it really hard, and repeatedly. If you're a cat, at least.
h/t @ferrisjabr
jgoldman | August 12, 2010In most zoos and animal parks, polar bears (ursus maritimus) attract such a disproportionate amount of attention that they are referred to in the industry as "charismatic megafauna," or in other words, "really cool animals." Perhaps it is because it is especially rare for the average zoo-goer to happen upon a polar bear in the wild, or because they live in such an inhospitable environment. Perhaps it's just because polar bears are so damn cute.
Maybe we should just blame Coca-Cola.
Whatever the reason, psychologists Michael J. Renner and and Aislinn L. Kelly of West Chester University in…
jgoldman | August 11, 2010"The problem is that most bears don't like to get their ears wet." That is the problem, isn't it?
Another awesome video courtesy of the folks at BBC Earth "Life Is". Narrated by (who else?) David Attenborough.
gregladen | August 11, 2010The newly reported Saadanius hijazensis may or may not be a "missing link" but in order for this monkey to climb onto the primate family tree, a new branch had to be sprouted. So, not only is Saadanius hijazensis a new species, but it is a member of a new taxonomic Family, Saadaniidae, which in turn is a member of a new Superfamily, Saadanioidea. Why is this important? It's complicated. But not too complicated.
The fossil was found while University of Michigan paleontologist Iyad Zalmout was busy looking for dinosaur fossils in western Saudi Arabia. He found the monkey, from a much…
gregladen | August 10, 2010In Robert Gardner's documentary film Dead Birds, the men of a highland New Guinea village guard the perimeter of the territory, watchful for men of the neighboring group who may be intent on sneaking into the gardens to capture and kill an unwitting child or woman in order to avenge a prior death. But they don't see the men sneaking through the dense riparian forest. They don't even look for them. Rather, they see the birds fly from their preferred habitat where they are foraging or resting, startled into the open by ... something. The birds belie the predator.
Today, in construction…
jgoldman | August 9, 2010
Different dog growls mean different things, right? Probably. But can you tell the difference?
Here's a dog growling when someone is trying to steal its food: link to mp3.
Here's a dog growling at a stranger: link to mp3.
You probably can't tell the difference. Neither could I. Dogs can. Surprised? Probably not. But, this is the first experimental evidence that dogs use different communicative vocalizations during social encounters with other dogs and with humans, depending on the situation.
The researchers recorded dog growls in three contexts: food guarding from another unfamiliar dog (…
jgoldman | August 5, 2010
Late last week you might have seen headlines that went something like this:
"Pampered pigs 'feel optimistic'"
or, this: "Can you ask a pig if his glass is half full?"
or, "Pigs have feelings, too (and they prefer a bit of luxury)"
The headlines came, respectively, from BBC News, EurekAlert, and the Daily Mail.
This sounded pretty fishy to me. Optimism or pessimism requires a certain amount of introspection and future awareness. Without a meaningful sense of the future, optimism doesn't mean very much. I don't know much about cognition in pigs (and, for that matter, there hasn't been a ton of…
jgoldman | August 4, 2010Several weeks ago, BBC Earth contacted me to let me know about this awesome new website they were building: Life Is.
The website, created by Firefly Interactive and The Brooklyn Brothers, will showcase some of the best images, videos and stories that the BBC Earth Natural History Unit has accrued in over 50 years of expeditions.
From the recent Life to the ground-breaking Life on Earth, BBC Earth has been at the forefront of our desire to discover more about our planet. The site, Life Is, fully compliments this back catalogue of programming enabling the viewer to see the content as it was…
jgoldman | August 2, 2010"But wait," you say. "Anteaters aren't pets!" Well, I didn't think so either. But Salvador Dali had a pet anteater. And that's good enough for me.
Figure 1: Salvador Dali taking his pet anteater for a stroll. (Source)
The Giant Anteater, Myrmecophaga tridactyla, only eats ants and termites, making it a myrmecophage. (Hey, Alex Wild, now I get what Myrmecos means!) In 1984, a researcher named Kent Redford was interested in the foraging behaviors of the giant anteater, and the relationship between these anteaters and their prey, colonies of highly social insects. So Redford went to Brazil to…
jgoldman | July 29, 2010I'm not going to create a new category for this creature, because I never expect to blog about these critters again. At least it's clear that she's a mammal.
A zedonk, an unusual cross between a donkey and a zebra, is attracting attention at Chestatee Wildlife Preserve in north Georgia after being born there about a week ago.
The animal, which has a zebra father and a donkey mother, has black stripes prominently displayed on her legs and face.
C.W. Wathen, the Dahlonega preserve's founder and general manager, says the foal has a zebra's instincts. Wathen says she sits up instead of lying on…
gregladen | July 29, 2010As you know, I have a long standing interest in dogs and bears and in the topic of animals eating people.
(SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST)
And now, from Montana, we have a case of a brown bear with cubs invading a camp ground, killing one person and mauling several over several minutes time. The rangers say it was a predatory attack, but the m.o. does not seem that way to me. Yet, it is also not a case of a bear going after badly stored food or being territorially threatened by humans in any direct way (but perhaps indirectly?).
When he heard the first scream in a campground outside…
jgoldman | July 26, 2010In general, the ability to attribute attention to others seems important: it allows an animal to notice the presence of other individuals (whether conspecifics, prey, or predators) as well as important locations or events by following the body orientation or eyegaze of others. We've spent a lot of time here at The Thoughtful Animal thinking about how domestication has allowed dogs to occupy a unique niche in the social lives of humans. They readily understand human communication cues such as eye-gaze and finger-pointing, and capitalize on the infant-caregiver attachment system to have their…
jgoldman | July 18, 2010From the archives...
Figure 1: Does Mickey feel empathy?
It probably depends on how you define empathy. Empathy, by any definition, implies emotional sensitivity to the affective state of another. Sometimes the empathy response is automatic or reflexive, like when babies start to cry upon hearing another baby crying. Sometimes a strong cognitive component is required, such as for compassion. A more specific understanding of empathy requires similarity between the affective states of the observer and the observed, with an understanding that the observer feels a certain way because he has…
jgoldman | July 16, 2010Only a few minutes today to get out a few interesting links, because I'm busy writing up an IACUC proposal.
First, a post on dogs from one of the Psychology Today blogs. I think he's mostly wrong. And will probably spend some time over the weekend writing a post about it.
Second, another post on dogs from Jesse Bering's blog at Scientific American, Bering in Mind. This one I can get behind.
Why do I have dogs on the mind so much this week? Because I'm prepping for a short "mini-course" I'm teaching to Intro Psych students this Fall, on dog cognition. Here's the summary I wrote up:
How do dogs…
jgoldman | July 14, 2010It's been a pretty long stressful week around here, and not just because of Pepsipocalypse and the resulting fallout. But, well, I'm back, and I have an awesome paper to tell you about. When I saw it I just KNEW it had to be blogged.
Mythbuster Adam Savage sets the yawning in motion in Mythbusters attempts to start a yawning epidemic across the globe
Did watching that video make you yawn? Chances are it did, and you can thank contagious yawning for it. What is contagious yawning? Contagious yawning is a very well-dcoumented phonemenon wherein yawning is triggered by the perception of others…
grrlscientist | July 14, 2010tags: The Oil Spill's Unseen Culprits, Victims, health, environment, ecology, pollution, oilspill, BP, acidification, Gulf of Mexico, dispersants, Carl Safina, TEDTalks, TED Talks, streaming video
The Gulf oil spill dwarfs comprehension, but we know this much: it's bad. Carl Safina scrapes out the facts in this blood-boiling cross-examination, arguing that the consequences will stretch far beyond the Gulf -- and many so-called solutions are making the situation worse.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading…
jgoldman | July 5, 2010"The males often prefer eating to mating."
Apparently, giant panda dudes (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) in captivity would rather sit around and munch on bamboo than get it on with the females. And this is a problem at the Chengdu Panda Breeding and Research Centre, where scientists are urging the pandas to breed, for conservation purposes.
What's the answer to this important problem? Panda porn, of course!
Pandas are known to be isolated creatures and poor breeders, and in captivity the problem may be exacerbated. Zhihe and his team have tried a number of measures to try to cure the male panda of…
laelaps | July 5, 2010
A collared brown lemur (Eulemur collaris) baby, photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
laelaps | July 1, 2010
The trailer for Shaun of the Dead.
Not all zombies are created equal. The most popular zombie archetype is a shambling, brain-eating member of the recently deceased, but, in recent films from 28 Days Later to Zombieland, the definition of what a zombie is or isn't has become more complicated. Does a zombie have to be a cannibal corpse, or can a zombie be someone infected with a virus which turns them into a blood-crazed, fast-running monster?
For my own part, I have always preferred the classic George Romero zombies from the original Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead films (as well as…