Study: Treats might mask animal intelligence

MAY 14, 2019

by Johns Hopkins University

Rewards are necessary for learning, but may actually mask true knowledge, finds a new Johns Hopkins University study with rodents and ferrets.

The findings, published May 14 in Nature Communications, show a distinction between knowledge and performance, and provide insight into how environment can affect the two.

"Most learning research focuses on how humans and other animals learn 'content' or knowledge. Here, we suggest that there are two parallel learning processes: one for content and one for context, or environment. If we can separate how these two pathways work, perhaps we can find ways to improve performance," says Kishore Kuchibhotla, an assistant professor in The Johns Hopkins University's department of psychological and brain sciences and the study's lead author.

While researchers have known that the presence of reinforcement, or reward, can change how animals behave, it's been unclear exactly how rewards affect learning versus performance.

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Crocodiles Are Cleverer Than Previously Thought: Some Crocodiles Use Lures to Hunt Their Prey

Dec. 4, 2013 — Turns out the crocodile can be a shrewd hunter himself. A University of Tennessee, Knoxville, researcher has found that some crocodiles use lures to hunt their prey.

Vladimir Dinets, a research assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, is the first to observe two crocodilian species -- muggers and American alligators -- using twigs and sticks to lure birds, particularly during nest-building time.

The research is published in the current edition of Ethology, Ecology and Evolution. Dinets' research is the first report of tool use by any reptiles, and also the first known case of predators timing the use of lures to a seasonal behavior of the prey -- nest-building.

read on

Video: Cat and dog in daring escape from kitchen

Meet Dexter and Gizmo. Their owner, Matt Hirst, would leave them in the kitchen while he was at work, but somehow, they were lazing around the whole house by the time he got back.

Curious to discover how the pair had managed to break free, he set up a camera by the kitchen door to see how they made their daring escape.

The stealthy cat does most of the work by climbing onto his scratching post beside the door. He then fiddles with the doorknob until it opens.

The dog looks on in hope, then reluctantly rushes out, presumably to have a snooze on a comfy sofa. Just before the camera switches off, he mischievously peeks around the kitchen door to see whether anyone saw their rule-breaking antics.

Sorry dog: this time, you were rumbled.

If you’re feeling impatient, fast forward to 01:35 on the video for the action.

http://metro.co.uk/2013/10/19/video-cat-and-dog-in-daring-escape-from-kitchen-4152302/

Elephants Know What It Means to Point to Something, No Training Required

Oct. 10, 2013 — When people want to direct the attention of others, they naturally do so by pointing, starting from a very young age. Now, researchers reporting in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, on October 10 have shown that elephants spontaneously get the gist of human pointing and can use it as a cue for finding food. That's all the more impressive given that many great apes fail to understand pointing when it's done for them by human caretakers, the researchers say.

"By showing that African elephants spontaneously understand human pointing, without any training to do so, we have shown that the ability to understand pointing is not uniquely human but has also evolved in a lineage of animal very remote from the primates," says Richard Byrne of the University of St Andrews, noting that elephants are part of an ancient African radiation of animals, including the hyrax, golden mole, aardvark, and manatee. "What elephants share with humans is that they live in an elaborate and complex network in which support, empathy, and help for others are critical for survival. It may be only in such a society that the ability to follow pointing has adaptive value, or, more generally, elephant society may have selected for an ability to understand when others are trying to communicate with them, and they are thus able to work out what pointing is about when they see it."

Byrne and study first author Anna Smet were studying elephants whose "day job" is taking tourists on elephant-back rides near Victoria Falls, in southern Africa. The animals were trained to follow certain vocal commands, but they weren't accustomed to pointing.

"Of course, we always hoped that our elephants would be able to learn to follow human pointing, or we'd not have carried out the experiments," Smet says. "What really surprised us is that they did not apparently need to learn anything. Their understanding was as good on the first trial as the last, and we could find no sign of learning over the experiment."

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Young mountain gorillas observed destroying poachers’ snares for the first time!

Some gorillas have learned to recognise and remoce snares - Sadly not all
July 2012. Field staff of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund observed several young gorillas in Rwanda, from a family of gorillas known as Kuryama's group, destroying snares set by poachers!

Deactivated 2 snares
"We knew that gorillas do this but all of the reported cases in the past were carried out by adult gorillas, mostly silverbacks," said Veronica Vecellio, gorilla program coordinator at the Karisoke Research Center. "Today, two juveniles and one blackback from Kuryama's group worked together to deactivate two snares and how they did it demonstrated an impressive cognitive skill."

Gorilla killed by snare - Second this year
Snares set by poachers are one of the worst threats to the safety of the mountain gorillas. The timing of this is especially significant in light of the death just two days ago, on Sunday, of juvenile Ngwino, who was caught in a snare. The rope made severe cuts into her leg, resulting in gangrene, as well as a dislocated shoulder caused by trying to escape from the snare. Although Fossey Fund staff intervened and, with vets from the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project (MGVP), made every effort to save her, it was too late. Hers is the second death this year resulting from a gorilla being caught in a poacher's snare.

Young gorillas destroying snares
John Ndayambaje, Fossey Fund field data coordinator, reported that he saw one snare very close to the group; since the gorillas were moving in that direction, he decided to deactivate it. Silverback Vuba pig-grunted at him (a vocalization of warning) and at the same time juveniles Dukore and Rwema together with blackback Tetero ran toward the snare and together pulled the branch used to hold the rope. They saw another snare nearby and as quickly as before they destroyed the second branch and pulled the rope out of the ground.

Continued:  http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/gorilla-snares.html

Birds Can Recognize People's Faces and Know Their Voices

ScienceDaily (June 22, 2012) — New research suggests that some birds may know who their human friends are, as they are able to recognize people's faces and differentiate between human voices.

Being able to identify a friend or potential foe could be key to the bird's ability to survive.

Animal behaviour experts from the University of Lincoln in the UK and the University of Vienna worked with pigeons and crows in two separate studies.

Research published in Avian Biology Research shows that pigeons can reliably discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar humans, and that they use facial features to tell people apart.

The team trained a group of pigeons to recognise the difference between photographs of familiar and unfamiliar objects. These pigeons, along with a control group, were then shown photographs of pairs of human faces. One face was of a person familiar to the birds whilst the other was of someone they had not seen before.

Continued:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120622163056.htm

Lukas the wonder horse can count to nineteen, fetch and sit like a dog

Owner Karen Murdock adopted the failed racehorse ten years ago, a bag of bones through neglect. 

‘I’ve always loved horse-riding and I wanted to be able to jump and compete at shows,’ she said. 

(Picture: Caters)

‘From the start, I could tell Lukas was intelligent, he worked out that it was much easier to go around the jumps than go over them.’ 

She quickly realised Lukas was more interested in learning than leaping and set about training him how to obey simple commands. 

‘His attention span was amazing and I taught him to come, rear and even sit on command,’ said Mrs Murdock, 54. ‘Then using a method of repetition I began to teach him to tell the difference between different shapes and even numbers.’ 

The 19-year-old chestnut thoroughbred broke the Guinness world record for the amount of numbers correctly identified by a horse – 19. 

Mrs Murdock, who lives with husband Doug, 61, in California, said he and daughter Angela, 37, are supportive of her special relationship with Lukas. ‘I think they love the way we are such close friends,’ she said.

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/896699-lukas-the-wonder-horse-can-count-to-nineteen-fetch-and-sit-like-a-dog

Apes' Simple Nests Are Feats of Engineering

When they are ready to snuggle up at the tops of trees, great apes make themselves cozy "nests" in which to rest for the night. New studies of these one-night nests reveal their incredible complexity.

"They are almost as complex as a man-made shelter you might make," study researcher A. Roland Ennos of the University of Manchester, in the United Kingdom, told LiveScience. "They know how the wood is going to break, and they have a feel for how strong they have to make it [the nest]. That shows the apes have intelligence and have a feel for the physics of their environment."

These nests are about 4 to 5 feet long and about 3 feet wide (1.2 to 1.5 meters long, and slightly less that 1 meter wide). The apes make them in the forest canopy, which can be between 30 and 60 feet (10 and 20 m) up, and it takes them only about 10 minutes to build. They use the nests only once, and then move on. The nests keep them warmer, away from insects and keep them safe, up off the forest floor.

http://www.livescience.com/19708-primates-build-sleeping-nests.html

Wild bear uses a stone to exfoliate

05 March 2012 by Michael Marshall

IT IS impossible not to scratch an itch, so it's no wonder this brown bear reached for some help. It was seen scratching its skin with rocks – the first bear definitively known to use a tool.

In July 2011, Volker Deecke of the University of Cumbria, UK, was on holiday in Alaska's Glacier Bay national park when he spotted a brown bear in shallow water. The animal picked up a small, barnacle-covered rock, turned it around a few times then rubbed the rock over its face for a minute. It repeated this with another rock (Animal Cognition, DOI: 10.1007/s10071-012-0475-0).

The bear was moulting, and had big patches of fur hanging off its skin. Moulting bears often scratch themselves with their claws, or rub their bodies against trees or rocks. "The barnacles," Deecke says, "may have given that exfoliating feeling."

Brown bears may not be the only bears to use tools, says Euclid Smith of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. A 1972 report suggested that a polar bear might have clubbed a seal over the head with a chunk of ice (Yearbook of the Norwegian Polar Institute, p 177). But the researchers did not see the event, and the behaviour has never been seen since.

Deecke points out that bears have large brains for their body size, suggesting they are clever, though too few tests of bear cognition have so far been carried out to say for sure.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21537-wild-bear-uses-a-stone-to-exfoliate.html

Ants remember their enemy's scent

By Victoria GillScience reporter, BBC Nature

Ant colonies - one of nature's most ancient and efficient societies - are able to form a "collective memory" of their enemies, say scientists.

When one ant fights with an intruder from another colony it retains that enemy's odour: passing it on to the rest of the colony.

This enables any of its nest-mates to identify an ant from the offending colony.

The findings are reported in the journal Naturwissenschaften.

For many ant species, chemicals are key to functioning as a society. Insects identify their nest-mates by the specific "chemical signature" that coats the body of every member of that nest.

The insects are also able to sniff out any intruder that might be attempting to invade.

This study, carried out by a team from the University of Melbourne in Australia, set out to discover if ants were able to retain memories of the odours they encounter.

The researchers studied the tropical weaver ant (Oecophylla smaragdina), which builds is home in trees; one nest can contain up to 500,000 workers.

Read on:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/17099761

Fish-catching trick may be spreading among dolphins

PERTH, Australia (Reuters) - Dolphins in one western Australian population have been observed holding a large conch shell in their beaks and using it to shake a fish into their mouths -- and the behavior may be spreading.

Researchers from Murdoch University in Perth were not quite sure what they were seeing when they first photographed the activity, in 2007, in which dolphins would shake conch shells at the surface of the ocean.

"It's a fleeting glimpse -- you look at it and think, that's kind of weird," said Simon Allen, a researcher at the university's Cetacean Research Unit.

"Maybe they're playing, maybe they're socializing, maybe males are presenting a gift to a female or something like that, maybe the animals are actually eating the animal inside."

But researchers were more intrigued when they studied the photos and found the back of a fish hanging out of the shell, realizing that the shaking drained the water out of the shells and caused the fish that was sheltering inside to fall into the dolphins' mouths.

A search through records for dolphins in the eastern part of Shark Bay, a population that has been studied for nearly 30 years, found roughly half a dozen sightings of similar behavior over some two decades.

Then researchers saw it at least seven times during the four-month research period starting this May, Allen said.

"There's a possibility here -- and it's speculation at this stage -- that this sort of change from seeing it six or seven times in 21 years to seeing it six or seven times in three months gives us that tantalizing possibility that it might be spreading before our very eyes," he added.

"It's too early to say definitively yet, but we'll be watching very closely over the next couple of field seasons."

The Shark Bay dolphin population is already unusual for having developed two foraging techniques, one of which involves the dolphin briefly beaching itself to grab fish after driving them up onto the shore.

The other is "sponging" -- in which the dolphins break off a conical bit of sponge and fit it over their heads like a cap, shielding them as they forage for food on the sea floor.

But both of these spread "vertically," mainly through the female dolphin population, from mother to daughter. The intriguing thing about this new behavior with the conch shells is that it might be spreading "horizontally," Allen said.

"If it spreads horizontally, then we would expect to see it more often and we'd expect to see it between 'friends'," he added, noting that dolphins are known for having preferences in terms of companions and whom they spend time with.

"Most of the sightings from this year are in the same habitat where we first saw it in 2007, and a couple of the individuals this year are known to associate with the ones that we saw doing it a year or two ago."

The next step would be not only to observe the behavior again in another season but also to try and gather evidence Of deliberate actions on the part of the dolphins.

"If we could put some shells in a row or put them facing down or something like that and then come back the next day, if we don't actually see them do it but find evidence that they've turned the shell over or make it into an appealing refuge for a fish, then that implies significant forward planning on the dolphins' parts," Allen said.

"The nice idea is that there is this intriguing possibility that they might manipulate the object beforehand. Then that might change using the shell as just a convenient object into actual tool use," he added.

(Reporting by Elaine Lies; Editing by Alex Richardson)

http://news.yahoo.com/fish-catching-trick-may-spreading-among-dolphins-080748681.html

Do Tayras Plan for the Future?

Humans buy unripe bananas, then leave them on the kitchen counter. The tayra, a relative of the weasel native to Central and South America, appears to do much the same thing, picking unripe plantains and hiding them until they ripen, according to a new study. The authors speculate that tayras are showing a human-like capacity to plan for the future, which has previously been shown only in primates and birds.

Biologist Fernando Soley was an undergraduate at the University of Costa Rica in 2004 when he first started thinking about tayras. He was studying poison dart frogs at La Selva Biological Station in northern Costa Rica, when he noticed a tayra—essentially a giant weasel with a bushy tail—approach a tree. "It climbed 4 meters high, went directly to a bromeliad [a plant growing in the tree], and came back down with a ripe plantain and ate it," Soley says. The trees in the forestry plantation where he was working are planted in neat rows, and it's easy for humans to get lost. Because the animal went straight to the plantain, he thought it couldn't have found it by chance. "I thought, wow, for sure this animal was the one that brought it there."

A few years later, Soley came back for a closer look at the tayras, teaming up with Isaías Alvarado-Díaz, a self-taught biologist who lives near La Selva. Animals don't spend much time in the forestry plantation, so Soley thought tayras might hide their fruit there to keep it safe from prying snouts. The duo set up an Easter egg hunt for fruit thieves to find out if the tayras were doing a good job. "We hid pieces of banana, which pretty much tastes and smells very similar to plantains, in the forest and in the plantation, and after 2 days we went to count them," he says. Animals found fewer bananas in trees than on the ground, and fewer in the plantation than in the forest. That means hiding plantains in the plantation and up in tree is a smart move by tayras that don't want other animals to find their treasures.

Soley and Alvarado-Díaz also monitored plantain plants to see what fruits were being taken. They borrowed motion-sensitive camera traps from a research team that studies mammals and confirmed that tayras were the only plantain eaters that snapped off a whole fruit; toucans, coatis, and opossums gnawed on ripe fruits while they were still attached to the plant. Soley was surprised to find that the tayras were not only eating ripe plantains, but also taking unripe ones. They borrowed radio transmitters, taped them into unripe plantains, and found that the unripe fruits were taken away and eaten later.

Many birds and animals cache food, but most do it with leftovers—food that could be eaten now but isn't needed. Shrews stash extra insects; squirrels hide nuts. Soley says tayras are different because the unripe plantains aren't edible yet. "It's like knowing that it's going to be food in the future," Soley says. That means the tayras are thinking about their hunger a few days from now and planning ahead, he and Alvarado-Díaz report in this month's issue of Naturwissenschaften.

Several studies have found the capacity for forethought in nonhuman primates and some birds, but the results are controversial because some people think only humans can think ahead. Cognitive scientist Mathias Osvath of Lund University in Sweden is confident that, for example, a zoo chimp that he wrote about in one paper plans for the future by calmly collecting rocks and making concrete disks to throw at zoo visitors later, but he says Soley's study doesn't provide conclusive evidence that the tayras are doing so. "One of the signs … is being able to plan for a need that you're currently not experiencing," he says. "For example, we don't know if the tayras are actually hungry when they are caching."

Osvath says more research is needed to tell if the tayras are imagining a hungry future 5 days from now, or if they've just learned that if you leave a fruit and come back a few days later, it will be edible. "True planning is when you shut your eyes and you think about what you will have for lunch tomorrow."

by Helen Fields
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/08/do-tayras-plan-for-the-future.html?ref=hp

21 February 2011 Last updated at 08:54
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-12521541

Study shows Welsh sheep 'more clever than thought'

Sheep aren't viewed as the cleverest of creatures, but new research has found they might be a lot more intelligent than previously thought.

Scientists at the University of Cambridge found that Welsh mountain sheep can map their surroundings, and may even be able to plan ahead.

The discovery shows they have the brainpower to equal rodents, monkeys and, in some tests, even humans.

The study was part of wider research into Huntington's Disease.

Professor Jenny Morton from the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Cambridge says the beasts' 'stupid' reputation may be unwarranted.

She told BBC Wales: "Our tests showed they can do what is known as executive decision making.

"We looked at whether they were able to understand rules and got them to do what is known as a choice discrimination task.

"But when we changed the rules, they behaved pretty much as a human in that they got bothered about us changing those rules."

Professor Morton put a flock of Welsh mountain sheep through a series of tests to measure their intelligence.

One saw her using coloured buckets to see how long it would take the sheep to work out they could find food in the same-coloured bucket every time.

The colour of the buckets was then changed, so the sheep had to re-learn the association. They were able to do this in the same amount of time it takes monkeys and rodents in similar tests.

In a more complex task the sheep had to learn where the food was according to coloured shapes and were able to learn the new rules within 32 attempts.

Professor Morton added: "We expected that looking at sheep wouldn't be that helpful but they are actually reasonably similar to humans in many ways.

Mutant gene

"They're very good animals and very enthusiastic subjects.

"If you talk to farmers they'll probably tell you that they have a very good spatial memory - they're not as daft as they look."

Her research, which is published in the journal Public Library of Science One, is part of a wider attempt to use sheep as an animal model for examining Huntington's Disease (HD).

The disease, which is genetically inherited, affects muscle co-ordination, often causing involuntary writhing movements called chorea, and it leads to cognitive decline.

It currently affects at least 6,700 people in England and Wales.

Anyone who carries the mutant gene will go on to develop HD, and their child has a 50% chance of inheriting it.

"Sheep have great potential, not only for use as a large animal model of HD, but also for studying cognitive function and the evolution of complex behaviours in normal animals," added Professor Morton.

She has also conducted trials to test the spatial memory of sheep and found they are able to navigate by forming memories of their surrounding environments.

She is now conducting tests to see whether sheep are able to plan ahead.

Previous research at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge has also shown that sheep have the ability to recall human faces and react to different facial expressions.

They can also recognise other sheep by their facial features.

Escape by a whisker: Quick-thinking cat saves house from fire...

A clever cat has been hailed a hero after he prevented his owners' home from burning down - by opening a window.


Five-year-old Pepper has learned to open windows and lets himself out every night by hopping on to a kitchen worktop and using his paws to turn the latch.

So when a fire broke while his owners were Christmas shopping, the quick-thinking puss leapt into action and opened the window to allow the acrid smoke to escape.
The billowing cloud of ash alerted neighbours and firefighters rushed to the scene and extinguished the blaze before it spread to the rest of the house.


Owner Sharon White, of Totnes, Devon said: 'He first did it (opened the window) at a dinner party and everyone was applauding him, I think it spurred him on.

'He can climb back in through the window by jumping diagonally on to the ledge as well so he really does come and go as he pleases.

'Pepper is still a bit spooked by the ordeal but is still managing to eat plenty of food.' Sharon and husband Phil, a radiologist at Torbay Hospital, Devon, were handed Pepper over four years ago after a neighbour could no longer look after it.

Pepper developed a 'fierce independent streak' and would often leave the house for days on end.


But over the last few months, he has become increasingly nomadic and has learnt to let himself out through the downstairs window by turning the metal lever 90 degrees with his paws.

The dramatic fire started at 4pm on Saturday after the couple nipped to the shops and left their microwave on a ten minute timer, which then caught fire.

Sharon, who owns a publishing consultancy, said: 'We put something in the microwave for ten minutes and then popped out to do our Christmas shopping in the local town.

'I discovered on the way that I had left my purse at home but decided not to turn around.

'It was my sister-in-law who lives next door that rang us about two hours into our trip and said you had better get home as there is quite a lot of smoke coming out of your house and the fire brigade are here.

'We are thankful our neighbours did not just dismiss the smoke as a bonfire.'

Firefighters rushed to their £350,000 house and extinguished the flames before they could spread and the kitchen suffered only smoke damage.

Phil added: 'Pepper managed to get out and smoke must have been pouring out the window which alerted the neighbours.

'There is some damage to the kitchen but it was isolated so nothing compared to what it could have been.

''He's got a real mind of his own and is usually a bit of a pain. But on this occasion we're grateful as without him, and our neighbours, the fire could have been so much worse.'

Stefan Belsten, of Devon and Somerset fire service, said: 'If Pepper hadn't opened the window the fire would have developed quite a lot.'

By Daily Mail Reporter