27th
![I told Tom, my flatmate about this yesterday. He’s the ultimate zoology nerd and was inevitably going to up the ante. He told me a story about a legendary parrot that contributed greatly to our understanding of animal intelligence.
The parrot was trained to understand the difference between shape, colour and texture. So for example if you held up an smooth sheet of paper and a rough sheet of cardboard it would go ‘TEXTURE’ (in a parrot voice), then if you held up two shapes identical apart from colour it would go ‘COLOUR’ (in the same parrot voice) and so on for hundreds of objects it had never seen before.
The researchers were so stoked with such a massive breakthrough in the volume of evidence to suggest that animals could understand and start to utilise complex building blocks of language that they rinsed the parrot for hours - getting it to categorise object after object after object.
Finally the parrot said ‘TIRED, SLEEP NOW’ (in a weary parrot voice) and returned to its corner to sleep.
Now I’m writing this on the internet for everyone to read I suspect he may have been teasing me. Either way I’m inspired to get a parrot and a monkey, leave them together and see what happens.
thewreckingball:
What’s been blowing my mind all weekend: my best friend is writing her Ph.D. in philosophy on self-consciousness. She told me a story about a chimp in Sweden who has been stockpiling stones to throw at visitors—not only stockpiling but also creating ammunition by chipping away at the concrete.
This means that in a moment of calm, he has been planning for a future moment of rage. What does this mean? That the chimp recognizes his own moods? Not only that, the chimp has been hiding his arsenal in a moat—hiding it because he knows he’s not supposed to be throwing these rocks, and discovery would result in punishment. Holy cow, that’s evolution in action.
“He is not driven by an immediate physical or physiological need …[but]… by an image of his future mental and physiological state,” he says. “He is extremely calm when collecting stones, and then becomes very agitated when throwing them.” This indicates he can diligently take actions that will prepare him for future events. (via Scientific American)](http://17.media.tumblr.com/H4mtLEw2bl6bexmlNCPdDTI3o1_400.jpg)
I told Tom, my flatmate about this yesterday. He’s the ultimate zoology nerd and was inevitably going to up the ante. He told me a story about a legendary parrot that contributed greatly to our understanding of animal intelligence.
The parrot was trained to understand the difference between shape, colour and texture. So for example if you held up an smooth sheet of paper and a rough sheet of cardboard it would go ‘TEXTURE’ (in a parrot voice), then if you held up two shapes identical apart from colour it would go ‘COLOUR’ (in the same parrot voice) and so on for hundreds of objects it had never seen before.
The researchers were so stoked with such a massive breakthrough in the volume of evidence to suggest that animals could understand and start to utilise complex building blocks of language that they rinsed the parrot for hours - getting it to categorise object after object after object.
Finally the parrot said ‘TIRED, SLEEP NOW’ (in a weary parrot voice) and returned to its corner to sleep.
Now I’m writing this on the internet for everyone to read I suspect he may have been teasing me. Either way I’m inspired to get a parrot and a monkey, leave them together and see what happens.
What’s been blowing my mind all weekend: my best friend is writing her Ph.D. in philosophy on self-consciousness. She told me a story about a chimp in Sweden who has been stockpiling stones to throw at visitors—not only stockpiling but also creating ammunition by chipping away at the concrete.
This means that in a moment of calm, he has been planning for a future moment of rage. What does this mean? That the chimp recognizes his own moods? Not only that, the chimp has been hiding his arsenal in a moat—hiding it because he knows he’s not supposed to be throwing these rocks, and discovery would result in punishment. Holy cow, that’s evolution in action.
“He is not driven by an immediate physical or physiological need …[but]… by an image of his future mental and physiological state,” he says. “He is extremely calm when collecting stones, and then becomes very agitated when throwing them.” This indicates he can diligently take actions that will prepare him for future events. (via Scientific American)
