Octopuses, bees and birds made an appearance in my life earlier this month. This is not the part in the blog where I recount my dreams -- although Gargamel and a giant bee used to chase me around the rings of Saturn.
As you might expect, bees are more than their sting, octopuses more than their alien appearance and birds more than their “bird brain.” That’s according to their human translators, a panel of experts brought to Hunter College in NYC by Thinking Animals, a group dedicated to sharing the cognitive and behavioral perspectives of non-human animals. Here are some of the highlights of the panel.
As you might expect, bees are more than their sting, octopuses more than their alien appearance and birds more than their “bird brain.” That’s according to their human translators, a panel of experts brought to Hunter College in NYC by Thinking Animals, a group dedicated to sharing the cognitive and behavioral perspectives of non-human animals. Here are some of the highlights of the panel.
Bird brains
“HEY! Where’s my chocolate cake??!!??”
Inside the fridge, staring back at you, is the lack of chocolate gooiness, a gaping hole of emptiness where the chocolate cake should be. Your expectation has been violated, and you are affected by the lack of something. You set off to maim your brother, the obvious culprit.
In this context, behaviors associated with being startled, upset or confused actually tell us something. We would only expect to see behaviors associated with absence if an individual has the expectation or concept of presence.
What about birds? Dr. Irene Pepperberg, founder and President of The Alex Foundation, finds that parrots change their behavior when their expectations have been violated... minus the brother-maiming.
“HEY! Where’s my chocolate cake??!!??”
Inside the fridge, staring back at you, is the lack of chocolate gooiness, a gaping hole of emptiness where the chocolate cake should be. Your expectation has been violated, and you are affected by the lack of something. You set off to maim your brother, the obvious culprit.
In this context, behaviors associated with being startled, upset or confused actually tell us something. We would only expect to see behaviors associated with absence if an individual has the expectation or concept of presence.
What about birds? Dr. Irene Pepperberg, founder and President of The Alex Foundation, finds that parrots change their behavior when their expectations have been violated... minus the brother-maiming.
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| http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/profile-irene-pepperberg.html |
In one test, Pepperberg pretended to hide a desirable cashew, but instead hid a normal nugget. When Alex and Griffin, two African grey parrots, discovered the pellet instead of the cashew, their behavior changed. “Alex... turned away, slit his eyes, puffed his feathers, slightly opened his wings, and lowered his head.... Griffin threw all the cups onto the floor” (Wise, 2002).
Not so “bird brained” after all.
Not so “bird brained” after all.
Bees shakin’ that thang
If the fact that bees perform a waggle dance isn’t cool enough for you, the dance not only informs others in the hive where to find food, it also indicates food sweetness, distance, quantity, odor intensity and ease of extraction (apparently bees prefer long, thin tubes over wide shapes). And all this is conveyed through a dance! A DANCE! And from a being with a wee little brain!
If the fact that bees perform a waggle dance isn’t cool enough for you, the dance not only informs others in the hive where to find food, it also indicates food sweetness, distance, quantity, odor intensity and ease of extraction (apparently bees prefer long, thin tubes over wide shapes). And all this is conveyed through a dance! A DANCE! And from a being with a wee little brain!
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| http://www.colorado.edu/intphys/Class/IPHY3730/16migration.html In this image, bees appear controlled by a godly ray of light. Watch the below video for a better explanation. |
The dance explanation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7ijI-g4jHg
According to Dr. Jim Gould, a Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University, “experiments suggest that recruits, having attended a dance in the hive specifying the distance and direction of a food source, can evaluate the ‘plausibility’ of the location without leaving the hive; this suggests a kind of imagination” (Gould, 1990).
Which of course makes me wonder about imagination in dogs, a topic recently discussed on a Scientific American blog post, Animal Imagination: The Dog That Pretended to Feed a Frog (and other tales).
Octopuses?
Difference in form doesn’t imply that a heck of a lot isn’t going on in the octopus world. For example, what about consciousness? That’s what Dr. David Edelman, our octopus translator and an Associate Fellow in Experimental Neurobiology at The Neuroscience Institute in San Diego, is considering.
Edelman suggests that consciousness could be investigated in widely different phyla. Why octopuses? In Dr. Edelman’s words, “If you wanted to test any invertebrate for what we might call consciousness, the octopus seems like a good bet, with about half a billion neurons in total and many hetreogeneous brain lobes. It’s an interesting animal with a very sophisticated set of sensorimotor adaptations, which look like a very good set of constituent elements that would go into a potentially conscious system.” **
So what do octopuses have up their tentacles? I’ll let these videos do the talking:
Social learning in octopuses? Check
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQwJXvlTWDw
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| Image from the above social learning video |
The ability to change color and texture to match surroundings? Check http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmDTtkZlMwM
After watching this video you will have no choice but to share it on Twitter, Facebook, and weave it into any talk you give, even if it’s about breast feeding.
Looking ahead
And this is just the beginning. Over the next few months, Thinking Animals continues its lecture series. Join experts from across the globe to explore the worlds of non-human animals.
Up next!
Exploring Creative Minds with Marc Bekoff, Dorothy Fragaszy, Kevin McGowan, Diana Reiss & Moderator: Stuart Firestein
Hunter College in NYC
March 2, 2012 @ 7 PM
For example, what's behind dolphins' "perma-smile"?
Glorious references!
Gould, J., 1990. Honey bee cognition. Cognition 37, 83-103.
Wise, S., 2002. Drawing the line: science and the case for animal rights. p. 101-102.
**Google: Interviews on consciousness - Dr. David Edelman Cephalove
**Google: Interviews on consciousness - Dr. David Edelman Cephalove
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