A team from Aix-Marseille University led by Johnathan Grainger has found that baboons are able to distinguish words from non-words.
Pigeons can perform abstract mathematical reasoning just as well as primates. I will add that to my super long list of why I think pigeons are totally amazing.
Read more here:http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/23/science/pigeons-can-learn-higher-math-as-well-as-monkeys-study-suggests.html?_r=1&ref=science
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.”
Find the cuttlefish! They have totally amazing shape-shifting and camouflaging abilities. They can change the shape, texture and color of their skin to evade predators.
When octopuses first encounter one another, they touch each other with their suction-cup covered arms. But after getting acquainted, they prefer to stay away. Italian researchers used these behaviors to tell if the animals recognized each other. When one octopus meets another octopus, the animal remembers the acquaintance for at least a day. The also play practical jokes, have incredible eyes, and wear jewelry and costumes.
