Turns out humans aren’t the only ones who can keep a beat!
This sulphur-crested cockatoo can dance “in time” to a changing rhythm—and in a particularly impressive display, it can even raise its feathers when the music picks up.
Posts Tagged ‘animal intelligence’
The Great Escape! Pigeons Caught Smuggling Cell Phones into Prison
In a move of criminal genius, prisoners in Brazil got carrier pigeons to do some of their dirty work for them. Or got them to try, at least—until they got caught. Last week, guards at a Sao Paulo prison noticed that a pigeon on a nearby electric wire had a small bag tied to one of its legs. They lured it down with some food, and found a small cell phone inside the bag.
The next day, another pigeon was found with a similar bag—this time, with the phone’s charger.
Birds Don’t Cry Over Defeat—They Groom One Another
They cheer together. They lose together. They commiserate together. In that way, Andy Radford says, South African birds called green woodhoopoes are much like soccer fans in his native Britain.
Radford, a University of Bristol professor, found that woodhoopoes live in gangs of about a dozen, and those groups don’t get along terribly well—they often descend into shouting contests. Unlike human shouting matches, which usually just end up with everyone unhappier than they were before, the birds’ contests have a definite winner. But, Radford says, the interesting part is what happens with the losers.
Angry Crows Recognize Humans—Even Dick Cheney
Birds aren’t just smart; they remember when they’ve been wronged.
John Marzluff, of the University of Washington in Seattle, wanted to prove his gut feeling that the crows he studied could identify individual human faces. So he and his students brought out some props. They donned a series of Halloween masks—one was a caveman, which the scientists wore when they trapped the birds. They then let the birds see them in “neutral” masks, like one resembling Vice President Dick Cheney (though this is probably one of the few times Cheney has been referred to as “neutral”).
Can Fruit Flies See Magnetism?
Scientists have long known that one of their favorite test subjects, the fruit fly, has a talent unavailable to humans: sensing magnetic fields. Now, researchers led by Steven Reppert of the the University of Massachusetts Medical School say that while fruit flies might not actually “see” magnetism, their perception of it is linked to their sight—specifically, to a molecule called cryptochrome, a receptor for blue and ultraviolet light.
In their experiment, Reppert and Robert Gegear trained test flies to associate a magnetic coil with food. When the scientists put the flies in a small maze with two coils, one working and providing a magnetic field and one not, the flies flew toward the live magnet, presumably sensing the magnetic field and associating that with a sugary snack.
A Rubik’s Cube Could Tell Us Which Arm Is an Octopus’ Favorite
Humans, for the most part, are either right-handed or left handed. But how do you find out if an eight-armed creature has a preferred limb? You give it a Rubik’s Cube.
Today, marine biologists from Sea Life Centres, a group of aquatic attractions scattered across Europe, will begin a month-long observation of the octopus’ grabbing habits. By throwing toys—including Rubik’s Cubes—and food into the tank, the researchers hope to see whether octopuses favor one arm or one side of their body when reaching for things, or whether they are in fact “octidextrous” and have no preference.
Road Block Proves No Match for Adaptable Ants
Leaf-cutter ants are one of the world’s most organized species, sending out swarms of individuals to cut off leaf scraps and carry them back to the nest. Now, it seems, they’re even smarter than we thought: They can adjust on the fly.
To test the insects’ intelligence, a team of scientists led by Audrey Dussutour at the University of Sydney threw a road block in their way. The researchers built a lab setup in which the ants could only travel between a source of leaves and their nest via a short passageway with a roof only one centimeter off the ground. But instead of getting confused or frustrated that their cargo wouldn’t fit under the bridge, the ants adapted their tactics.
Does a Dancing Cockatoo Really Feel the Rhythm?
Perhaps you’ve seen the YouTube video, shown below, of Snowball the cockatoo bobbing its head and kicking its legs in time with Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust.” Nature reports that some scientists have seen it, too, and they say it could be more than a neat trick. If Snowball really feels the beat, the researchers say, that could help show them whether there’s a biological basis for rhythm perception.
At first, Aniruddh Patel of the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, California, and his colleagues had doubts. Snowball’s owners say they actually would dance off-camera while filming the bird to encourage it to bust a move. If Snowball were just a copycat, Patel says, that wouldn’t be nearly as impressive as if he could dance on his own. So to figure out whether the bird could actually feel the rhythm, they traveled to Snowball’s home in Indiana and videoed the bird dancing to music with different tempos. You can see the rhythm get progressively faster here, here, and here.
Better Meat Through Bach: Classical Music Makes Piglets Less Stressed
And here we thought uncultured swine didn’t care for classical music.
Piglets, like many young mammals, like to fight amongst themselves, and pressing them together in the confined space of a hog house only exacerbates this tendency. However, a team of Dutch scientists led by Francien de Jonge at Wageningen University announced this week that they’d discovered a way to calm the little pigs—playing the music of Edward Elgar and Johann Sebastian Bach.
I’m Telling You Birds—You’re Just Going to Love this Neighborhood
We thumb through real estate listings and drive around neighborhoods to find the best place to live, but some birds have it easier—they just listen to songs.
Male black-throated blue warblers sing to their newborn chicks in the autumn, probably trying to teach the young ones to sing themselves. But biologist Matthew Betts from Oregon State University, along with two Canadian colleagues, studied the warblers in New Hampshire and found that the song of males who successfully reproduced is also a cue—when other males hear it, they assume that location must be a good place to nest, and so they’ll try to return there the next year. Not only that, the scientists say, but eavesdropping on the songs other warblers can override the birds’ other senses.
