smart
dr. dolittle | October 30, 2017And the #1 blog entry published thus far in 2017 discussed whether there was an evolutionary advantage to being stupid:
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As I was looking through the scientific literature the other day, I came across an article published in 1973, "The Evolutionary Advantages of Being Stupid." With a title like that, how could I not read it?
In this article Dr. Eugene D. Robin discussed how larger and more complex brains are associated with greater intelligence, which by evolutionary standards was thought to be related to "superiority." He described how this line of thinking places man at the peak of…
dr. dolittle | September 28, 2017 Sara Letzner had humans compete against pigeons in a behavioural experiment. Photo from: Ruhr-Universitat at Bochum
A new study conducted by Drs. Sara Letzner and Onur Gunturkun (Ruhr-Universitat at Bochum) as well as Dr. Christian Beste (Technische Univeritat at Dresden) shows that pigeons are better than humans when it comes to multitasking. Their findings were published in Current Biology.
The findings from the study show that the mammalian cerebral cortex, with all of its cortical layers, is not the only type of brain that can perform complex tasks as birds do not have a…
dr. dolittle | August 12, 2016It must be Friday. I found myself perusing YouTube videos and I came across these showing pet tortoises that have figured out how to solve some interesting problems such as:
Using the doggie door to enter a house...
If that does not work, many have figured out how to just open the back door...
Some have even figured out how to open the refrigerator...
After watching these videos, I naturally went in pursuit of any information I could find as to whether tortoise intelligence has been tested scientifically. In support of many pet owner claims, tortoises do exhibit signs of intelligence. In…
dr. dolittle | February 28, 2016 Image of dodo bird skeleton and model By BazzaDaRambler - Oxford University Museum of Natural History ... dodo - dead apparently.Uploaded by FunkMonk, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20054563
Using computed tomography (CT) scans of an intact skull, researchers have discovered that extinct dodo birds (Raphus cucullatus), despite having a rather silly name, were actually pretty smart. Well, as smart as a pigeon at least, and pigeons are pretty smart. Dodos likely also had a good sense of smell based on measurements of the olfactory portion of the skull. This…
dr. dolittle | October 9, 2013 Image from: www.beagleworld.net
I should have read this article before adopting my beloved pet, who is certainly not on the top 10 list of smart breeds.
A cute article from pet360.com published the top 10 smart breeds according to the American Kennel Club:
1. Border collie
2. German Shepherd
3. Bloodhound
4. Beagle
5. Labrador Retriever
6. Newfoundland
7. Belgian Malinois
8. Siberian Huskies
9. Golden Retriever
10. Australian Shepard
Did your dog make the top 10?
To find out what classifies these as the top 10 choices, see the article in Pet360.com
dr. dolittle | July 3, 2013I am currently watching a re-run of the NOVA special called Dogs Decoded. If you have not already seen it, you should check it out! It was actually the subjects of a prior blog that you can read here.
dr. dolittle | December 25, 2012Dr. Alex Taylor from The University of Auckland has demonstrated that New Caledonian crows have the ability to perform causal reasoning, which is the ability to infer that something you cannot see may be the cause of something. According to the article, this is the first study to experimentally demonstrate this ability in a species other than humans.
Source
Science Now
dr. dolittle | August 14, 2012
Studies of guppies show that bigger brains may mean "smarter" fish, but less offspring. Credit: Marrabbio2/Creative Commons
...at least for guppies. Dr. Alexander Kotrschal and colleagues at Uppsala University (Sweden) either shrank or grew the brains of guppies over multiple generations to create animals with up to 8-10% variations in brain size. To test for "smartness" they had the fish count by training the animals to look for food where a card with two or four symbols was shown. According to the researchers, the animals with larger brains tended to learn the task, whereas those…