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Miscellaneous See other Miscellaneous Articles Title: Animal smarts: What do dolphins and dogs know? In this July 13, 2004 photo, Natalie Homza is notified by her new hearing dog Arby that her oven timer is going off during a training exercise in her Shreveport, La., home. In recent years, researchers are finding that thought processes in animals aren't a matter of how closely related they are to humans. You don't have to be a primate to be smart. … In this Dec. 13, 2006 photo provided by the Primate Research Institute of Kyoto University, a 5 1/2-year-old chimpanzee named Ayumu performs a memory test with randomly-placed consecutive Arabic numerals, which are later masked, accurately duplicating the lineup on a touch screen computer in Kyoto, Japan. The young chimpanzees in the study titled "Working memory of numerals in chimpanzees" by Sana Inoue and Tetsuro Matsuzawa could memorize the nine numerals much faster and more accurately than human adults. The evidence that animals are more intelligent and more social than we thought seems to grow each year, especially when it comes to primates. It's an increasingly hot scientific field with the number of ape and monkey cognition studies doubling in recent years, often with better technology and neuroscience paving the way to unusual discoveries. (AP Photo/Primate Research Institute of Kyoto University) PART OF A SEVEN-PICTURE PACKAGE WITH "ANIMAL SCIENCES" WASHINGTON (AP) — It's not just man's closer primate relatives that exhibit brain power. Dolphins, dogs and elephants are teaching us a few lessons, too. Dolphin brains involve completely different wiring from primates, especially in the neocortex, which is central to higher functions such as reasoning and conscious thought. Dolphins are so distantly related to humans that it's been 95 million years since we had even a remotely common ancestor. Yet when it comes to intelligence, social behavior and communications, some researchers say dolphins come as close to humans as our ape and monkey cousins. Maybe closer. "They understand concepts like zero, abstract concepts. They do everything that chimpanzees do and bonobos can do," said Lori Marino, a neuroscientist at Emory University who specializes in dolphin research. "The fact is that they are so different from us and so much like us at the same time." In recent years, animal researchers have found that thought processes in critters aren't a matter of how closely related they are to humans. You don't have to be a primate to be smart. Dolphin brains look nothing like human brains, Marino said. Yet, she says, "the more you learn about them, the more you realize that they do have the capacity and characteristics that we think of when we think of a person." These mammals recognize themselves in the mirror and have a sense of social identity. They not only know who they are, but they also have a sense of who, where and what their groups are. They interact and comprehend the health and feelings of other dolphins so fast it as if they are online with each other, Marino said. Animal intelligence "is not a linear thing," said Duke University researcher Brian Hare, who studies bonobos, which are one of man's closest relatives, and dogs, which are not. "Think of it like a toolbox," he said. "Some species have an amazing hammer. Some species have an amazing screwdriver." For dogs, a primary tool is their obsessive observation of humans and ability to understand human communication, Hare said. For example, dogs follow human pointing so well that they understand it whether it's done with a hand or a foot; chimps don't, said Hare, whose upcoming book is called "The Genius of Dogs." Then there are elephants. They empathize, they help each other, they work together. In a classic cooperation game, in which animals only get food if two animals pull opposite ends of a rope at the same time, elephants learned to do that much quicker than chimps, said researcher Josh Plotnik, head of elephant research at the Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation in Thailand. They do even better than monkeys at empathy and rescue, said Plotnik. In the wild, he has seen elephants stop and work together to rescue another elephant that fell in a pit. "There is something in the environment, in the evolution of this species that is unique," he says. ___ Online: Josh Plotnik 2011 video showing two elephants working together: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRpLgQm2p-s ___ Seth Borenstein can be followed at twitter.com/borenbears Poster Comment: LOST IN LOUISIANA Pigs are also very smart. I have a pot bellied pig that was raised with a litter of puppies. Other than thinking its a dog it learned all the basic "dog" tricks in 3 days and advanced considerably faster than the puppies. I tought it how to sit rollover stay etc in 1 day and taught it to speak and raise his hand if it wanted a cookie and tap his foot twice if it wanted 2 cookies and taught him to fetch a stick all in less than 3 days. Whenever I get home from work it comes running up to me just like a dog and tries to stand on his hind legs and although I don't keep him in the house he loves watching cartoons and squeels and waits for my daughter to put Barney on and without any housetraining will scratch at the door when it needs to go out. He likes playing with kids so whenever it hears my neighbors kids out in the yard he'll go visit. The only drawback is he also likes chasing cars and if he sees other dogs running he'll run with them and if he sees a newspaper in the driveway he'll pick it up and bring it to me it will be nasty with pig slober but I never taught him this trick. I get some funny looks when I take him on walks and you wouldn't think it but hes a chick magnet! GeorgeB SF,CA Part of the problem is that humans think they're so smart, but in reality they can't think outside their own reference frame. Shake a red or a green box in front of a dog, it has no meaning to him - but use something with a scent or odor they don't know and they'll investigate. Sight has little relevance for dogs, but smell primes everything - humans don't comprehend that. The few that do have to fight against stupidity, close-mindedness and religiosity (humans were created to rule - yeah, right).+13 Roland - Anyone who says dogs are not very smart has never witnesed an Australian shepard listening to his owner speak. Androgenoide @Roland, herd dogs are an excellent example of dogs that learn to take verbal instructions because it is expected of them. They typically recognize a couple hundred words and simple grammatical constructions... and, of course, they are very good at body language and recognizing emotional context. Dogs that serve primarily as pets tend to have much smaller vocabularies. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: Tatarewicz (#0)
Anyone who thinks dogs are smart has never owned a pug.
I sense a disturbance in the farce. Much gnashing will ensue.
Shades of the "Planet of the Apes". ;) "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one." Edmund Burke
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