Animal intelligence

[nothinghead]

Hominid evolution is thought to have been greatly accelerated by a nutrient rich/nutrient accessible diet (through whatever mechanism, whether it was more meat proteins, cooking food more often etc). Meanwhile, hominids were being naturally selected for intelligence, pretty drastically since it was likely the key to human domination of the planet (and has been posited as a reason for homo sapiens' survival where neanderthalensis became extinct). Consciousness is arguably a product of heightened intelligence (executive functions etc). So; is it likely that animals such as companion animals which are bred/selected for intelligence and fed nutrient rich/available diets (as they often are), will (conceivably) develop consciousness' resembling that of humans' in the next n hundreds/thousands of years? Would such a consciousness look very different from ours if it were selected by human principles rather than environmental pressures?

Or just post your thoughts about animal intelligence. Blows my mind how stupid we took animals to be as recently as half a century or so ago. Some people still think lobsters don't feel pain, or that animals don't display 'real' cooperation etc. Or, there are nuts at the other end of the spectrum like that family in the Project Nim documentary who seemed to believe Freudian techniques could bring a chimpanzee into human-style consciousness over the course of a few years. People who've spent a lot of time close to other animals often have interesting stories about what the animal is or seems capable of.

[bogfrog]

My instant thought/feeling is: why should animal intelligence be defined in the same terms as human intelligence?

I get the feeling that animal intelligence surpasses human intelligence in many ways already.

To me, the most undeniable example of animal intelligence has to be the endearing personal relationship one can establish with a horse.

I grew up around horses and spent many years riding the same horse, Carmel.

It surprised me greatly, that after not seeing her for honestly about 5 years, that I only had to offer her my hand for one sniff, and I knew she instantly remembered me, she greeted me like an old friend, nuzzling her face into the side of my neck and spent a few special moments looking deep into my eyes. Then I could get on her, and she co-operated right away, the emotional connection we had shared all those years was re-kindled within a couple of minutes.

Another thing which makes horses incredible creatures in my mind is the way they read your mental and bodily signals.

As a child, I was taught to guide the horse by *thinking* where I wanted to go. The physical messages which you give a horse are secondary to the mental connection. It may sounds weird. But anyone who has really bonded with a horse will fully understand.

Edit:

Some vids which I found:

Amazing raven intelligence test:

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SvOzdqnTE2I

Bird intelligence: the New Zealand Kea (I am named after this clever critter it is supposedly the world's smartest bird)

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5l0DNaVQ-P4

Dog's intuition confirmed by science:

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eo2dMLs3rAI

Psychic dog experiments 1 & 2:

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SvOzdqnTE2I

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yr3IK0EryqM&feature=relmfu

Edited August 14, 2013 by bogfrog

[bℓσωηG]

I used to have a pet mouse and took it for walks along the beach at night it followed me without a leash , true story lol..

Mighty mouse attacks snake to save pal

A mouse has been given its freedom after it tackled a poisonous snake in a bid to save a fellow rodent at a zoo in China.

The two mice were served up as a live dinner for the snake at Hangzhou Zoo in Zhejiang province, eastern China.

Keeper Wen Shao said: "We always give the snakes live food and we put the two mice into the snake enclosure, but instead of trying to hide like they usually do one of the mice attacked the snake when it saw it trying to eat the other mouse.

"I have never seen anything like that before, usually the mice keep as far away from the snake as possible but this one caused a lot of damage.

"It was biting the snake on the head as the snake was trying to eat the first mouse."

He added that the mouse had deserved its freedom after putting up such a brave fight.

"In any case it didn't do the snake any good either, it was expensive and the mouse did a lot of damage by biting it on the head," he added.

Sadly the mouse did not succeed in its bid to free its pal. It died and was later eaten even if mighty mouse was no longer around to witness it.

[Slybacon]

M dog is so fuckin smart. Its like he is psychic , I want to elaborate but I have to get to work unfortunately. I'll check in later....

[bogfrog]

Domesticated cats are the only felines which meow.

They do this because they view their human caregivers as a surrogate parent, and they live out their lives in a prolonged childhood, and the meow has supposedly been developed by cats in an attempt to mimic the shrill cries of a human infant.

Now I have to say, I think thats pretty darn intelligent, albeit lazy.

Forget hunting for yourself, when you can just cry like a baby and enslave a human to feed you!

Edited August 14, 2013 by bogfrog

[IndianDreaming]

A fish in my tank - Clown Loach - spent 2 months collecting large decorative rocks from the middle of the tank and piled them up at one corner. I could hear the click click clicking as the rocks were gently nudged around the tank at night.

After 2 months, all the decorative rocks had been moved - so I moved them back. 2 months later, the fish had diligently moved them again... I thought about this for a long time and then it dawned on me!

I started dropping the fish food into the other end of the tank - 3 months later, all the rocks were moved there.

The fish - a clever little clown loach, which is the only fish in the tank that can move rocks, build itself a 'food trap' to collect the food that falls in between the large rocks. At night it would sit at its pile of rocks, pick one up and move it out of the way - eat the trapped food, and place the rock back again.

To me that shows planning, environmental awareness, use of tools, and a plethora of other highly intelligent cognitive features - Have a think about that - a serious think about it - where did this fish learn this? There were no other fish in the tank that could have taught it to do this.

[nothinghead]

Bogfrog - your question about why we would use human standards for intelligence to measure animal intelligence, as well as your comment about cats clever emotional enslavement of humans (by oxytocin milking, no less!) reminds me a bit of Michael Pollan's speculation about plant evolution. He puts the case that we could be fooled by our limited perspective into thinking we are in control/top of the food chain, etc. while if you think about monocultural practices like the vast fields of corn being grown, it could be that our behaviour and practices are manipulated in complex ways by plants who want more share of the earth. I think he's joking in order to get us to think about our practices from a different perspective, since the theory involves ascribing self-conscious motivation to the (probably) automatic mechanism of reproduction - kind of like people who interpret Dawkins' selfish gene as having agency.

Back to the animals. Going for regular walks as I do here at the northern parts of Europe I have seen a type of crow (jackdaws) who've come across nuts that have a shell. The birds take the nut in their mouth, fly up over the road (they've noticed the surface is hard) and drop the nut. If that doesn't crack it, they'll fly up higher and drop it again. If that still doesn't do the trick - and here's the really interesting part - they'll place the nut a little bit in towards the middle of the road from the gutter next to a speed bump (jutterbar for bogfrog ) then wait for a car to approach, slow down, and crunch the nut for them.

Speaking of cat noises:

 

[Leaves]

How animals seem to read minds is thoughts are material and don't just disappear. They exist in space and can be 'tuned' in. Anyone how has fallen in love would be able to describe how they seem to know what their partner is thinking without saying a word. I think some professor wrote something about this long ago describing thoughts as torsion fields or something along those lines.

[bogfrog]

Raketemensch,

You got me lol, i'm clearly under the influence of mr pollan after watching the botany of desire.

I didn't even think of it at the time, but yes I see what you mean

But still, I think they are intelligent in different ways than us.

Take dolphins for example. Now I've never met a dolphin, but I have heard first hand and read about other people's experiences with them, and they way they describe it is fascinating. Many people seem to have a heart-opening, spiritual experience just being in the presence of a dolphin. Similar deal with whales. I saw a whale watching doco where these whales just loved human contact, they would come to this particular area with no percievable agenda other than sharing connection with little human beings in their little boats,

I saw one lady kiss the whale on the head and she looked the happiest I have ever seen anyone, others were hugging the whales, and telling them they loved them, and the whales were just chilling, lapping up all the affection and love.

But its not just one sided. Soo many people say they can feel pure, powerful love simply radiating off dolphins and whales

I was thinking about animal intelligence today and I realised that many of the examples that were coming to mind involved animals which were innovating to respond to human influence.

Such as the cat who meows, IndianDreaming's VERY CLEVER fish who moves and piles rocks as food suppositories, the crows getting the cars to crack the nuts (thats incredible!) are all examples of animals who have adapted their stratergy to cope with all the dumb shit we humans do.

..Now what I would like to learn about is how totally wild animals exemplify their intelligence, which is a catch 22, because they will always act differently when they are being observed by something. (Even those sneaky web-cams they set up in nature documentaries don't seem to fool many animals, they get up in the camera's face, knock it about, sniff it etc)

I'll do some reading and see what I can find lol.

Edit: and another note on cats, i'm absolutely SURE that my cat knows how to say my name and "NOOOO!" ... Its kinda creepy how good she is at manipulating me

Edited August 15, 2013 by bogfrog

[Leaves]

 

You fellas have seen this haven't you??

I find cats in particular to be like enlightened wise monks that have the ability to either radiate the light of love or maybe they are reflecting back the love we give to them. My cat always knows what is going on, whether I like it or not

[nothinghead]

^Yeah toxoplasmosis is wild. It really seems intuitively like the plasma knows how to propagate itself by behavioural control. I remember reading something by a Czech scientist who studied it for most of his career, where he was reflecting on things like how he stopped worrying about walking out into traffic etc. and wondered whether it was an effect of the toxoplasmosis.

I met some dolphins when I was younger and would absolutely love to meet some again, but have never felt right getting a boat tour out to a common spot. Think I'll have to wait on my luck for that to happen again. Have also been stoked to see whales crashing about in the water from shore, because they're so majestic.

Speaking of (sort of) whales and animal intelligence, I remembered a corker. The story (or what I can remember and find of it) goes:

In what's now Eden, NSW, there used to be an interesting relationship between the Yuin people and orcas. The orcas would hunt nearby baleen whales up and down the coast, then herd the whales into the bay where the Yuin folks could spear/harpoon them, the orcas being afterwards rewarded by the hunters with some of the whale meat/carcass. There are even reports of the orcas making a racket when they'd herded whales into the bay so that the hunters on land would hear and come to kill the whales. Orca hunting techniques are already pretty incredible in themselves.

Where all the ethologists at!?

[nothinghead]

http://news.discovery.com/animals/animals-humans-brain-size-environment-130823.htm

Somewhat related to my initial question. Article considers whether human construction in urban and rural space are causing an increase in brain size in some animals.

[SunChaser]

I think it’s a lot more complicated than just slowly evolving a large brain for a species to see the world from a perspective of which we consider unique to humans.

Homo Erectus for example had a slightly larger brain than us and was obviously intelligent enough to manipulate their environment in a sophisticated way. But they still most likely didn’t have language as we know it and didn’t have ceremonial burials (as far as we can tell), so there for probably didn’t have the ability of spiritual expression, or at least in a way which we could easily understand. So if we meet a Homo Erectus today, It would probably come across as more animal than Human to most people.

The creation of what people would consider as unique to humans, was probably more a pure fluke than an evolutionary process. Most likely there was a mutation in an isolated group of Homo Erectus that caused small weak jaw muscles, this isolated group probably then inbreed till this mutation stabilised, which then took massive amounts of pressure of there brain and allowed it to develop in a way that just happened to make us view the world in a different way, causing the big bang of human consciousness and then homo sapien was born. It was probably a mathematical miracle that it even happened in the first place, so I would question the chances of it happening again.

Though having said all that, I personally believe all animals already have a consciousness, it’s just that there brains simply don’t have the capacity to express it to us in a way that we can easily recognise. I think we are just unconsciously blinded by the consciousness of animals, which then allows us to treat them so inhumanly, kind of like white people did to black people not so long ago.

They want to live in peace just like us, they like to play, have fun and socialise just like us and they have an overwhelming desire to raise healthy offspring just like us. So really I don’t personally understand why people view them as so inferior and keep them locked up and even eat them and shit. It just seems barbaric to me.

Just saw this clip on utube. How could anyone watch this and just think of them as stupid animals whose lives are any less valuable than ours. Whatever flows though us (call it a soul or whatever) that makes us feel significant, flows though them as well, imo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCqYY-bZumU

[IndianDreaming]

There's a great article about an octopus climbing out of its tank, slopping across the floor and up a table into another tank and eating the fish after the researchers went home... surely that sort of act can convince someone that animals aren't stupid...

Also - my dog is 12 years old, it's never been a very bright thing, and never dug a hole in its life, not once. A friends puppy came to stay for a week, digging like mad, and now, my 12 year old dog will dig and bury it's food. Old dogs can learn new tricks too! Now for the people... c'mon humans, you can do it!

[mimzy]

My PhD is very closely related to this area. Recently I have been looking at neurogenesis (brain developement) in humans. Roughly speaking, our brains are highly organised structures of neurons that sit in a mesh of other cells. While what you eat is important for brain development, it's also how you get those nutrients to the brain that matters. Think about a tumor; one of the primary mutations a tumors must obtain in order for it to continue growing is angiogenesis (promotion of blood vessel develops), otherwise the tissue on the edge of the tumor starves and dies. Our brain is no different, as it developes we not only need a nutrient rich diet, but we need promoted vessel growth to feed the brain. Heres the really weird part though; the gene that controls vessel growth in the brain is regulated by a another gene that has its origins in the flu virus. This suggests it may have been evolutionary serendipity that lead us to aquire this gene. As you would expect this gene is found with decreasing homology in higher primates through to more primitive primates like lemurs.

Now that's a lot of pre-amble but my point is that intelligence and brain evolution are not just about diet.

[bogfrog]

There's a great article about an octopus climbing out of its tank, slopping across the floor and up a table into another tank and eating the fish after the researchers went home... surely that sort of act can convince someone that animals aren't stupid...

Lol, the local aquarium sure got a run for their money trying to keep their resident octopus in his tank.

This one survived for 5 days sneaking through the sea-water drain in an attempt to make it to open ocean.

http://www.odt.co.nz/your-town/dunedin/38623/roving-octopus-be-freed

[nothinghead]

Octopuses are thought to be really intelligent, and possibly social. They can learn a lot of things, and possibly by observation, and it's been speculated that they have a distributed brain (rather than a central one):

...other creatures that are believed intelligent — such as dolphins, chimpanzees, some birds, elephants — are relatively closely related to humans. They’re all on the vertebrate branch of the tree of life, so there’s a chance the intelligence shares at least some characteristics. Octopuses, however, are invertebrates. Our last common ancestor reaches back to the dim depths of time, 500 million to 600 million years ago. That means octopus intelligence likely evolved entirely separately and could be very different from that of vertebrates.

“Octopuses let us ask which features of our minds can we expect to be universal whenever intelligence arises in the universe, and which are unique to us,”

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/10/thinking-like-an-octopus/

[IndianDreaming]

Graham Hancock's take on Intelligence and evolution:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKHMH4FfWrw

[botanika]

Homo Erectus for example had a slightly larger brain than us

Not really, their brains were about 69% of modern humans on average. Some larger brained erectus specimens are more likely considered heidebergensis.

Still very smart. Erectus conquered much of the europe and asia long before modern humans did.

[Optimystic]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2411168/Extraordinary-images-just-similar-closest-living-relative--bonobo.html

[SunChaser]

Not really, their brains were about 69% of modern humans on average. Some larger brained erectus specimens are more likely considered heidebergensis.

Still very smart. Erectus conquered much of the europe and asia long before modern humans did.

Yeah true! I actually meant Neanderthal, don’t know why I said Erectus. They lived in Europe for like 250 thousand years as primitive cave men before the big bang of higher thought began about 40 thousand years ago.

That’s what I meant when I said I think there’s more to our complex comprehension of the world than just having a big brain.

[SunChaser]

Double Post!!

Edited September 9, 2013 by SunChaser

[Bigred]

I have two cats the female will minic me and say " i know " as when she gets at me to feed her i would say "i know i know)

but the male can tell the time as soon as it is 2 50 he will go to the steps and wait for my sister to get back from work.

Plus will wake me up every morning just before the alarm clock goes off .

[bogfrog]

I have two cats the female will minic me and say " i know " as when she gets at me to feed her i would say "i know i know)

:D i can fully imagine this scene cause me and my cat have conversations too.

The new cat, a ginger tom doesn't use his meow very much, instead of meowing at the door or window, he stands on his back legs and frantically scrapes at the door with his front paws. The longer you wait before opening it, the faster he scratches and the more noise his paws make on the glass. We don't know why he does this, or where he learnt it, but its obviously more effective than meowing, because my cat has picked it up off him too!

[Sallubrious]

My dog can tell what I'm going to do outside by seeing what I'm carrying. If I've a got a bag of rubbish he walks to the bin ahead of me, if I come out the door with the bucket I keep the food scraps in he will go to the wormfarm ect.

Responding to visual cues isn't really surprising or idicative of intelligence but he surprised me last week.

I have several different bath tub worm farm farms and normally only one is actively being used and getting fed food scraps. Last week I emptied the one I'd been using for the last 6 months or so and moved all the worms to another bath tub. I came outside the next day to take food scraps to the new bath tub and he saw me with the bucket and then made his way to the new one and waited there for me.

So he's responded to the visual cues as normal but applied some logic and he was correct in his assumption.

Edited September 10, 2013 by SallyD