Sit a dog in front of a television screen, and it may not always look intently at what it sees. But show a person on that screen who looks directly at the dog and says “hello,” and the canine will pay attention. In fact, a new study shows that a dog will go so far as to follow the gaze of the human on screen when he or she looks to one side or the other—something not even chimps can do.
Read more here: http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/01/in-the-eyes-of-a-dog.html?ref=hp
The most hated person to a crow is the person who climbs up into the nest and bands the babies. Scientists have claimed for years that the crows single them out and can recognize individuals. A report from the University of Washington just published the results from a five year study. To ensure that the crows were recognizing the face and not the clothes, they used masks (including one of a caveman and one of Dick Cheney). Even after going for a year without seeing the threatening human, the crows would scold the person on sight, cackling, swooping and dive-bombing in mobs of 30 or more. The interesting thing is that the crows doing the scolding were usually not even the ones involved in banding!
“Most of the birds that are scolding us are not the ones we captured,” said study researcher John Marzluff, a professor of wildlife science at the University of Washington and an occasional victim of crow attacks. “It’s likely that they’re learning from their parents and their peers that this dangerous person is still out there.”
