Category: Learning
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Long ago, starter birdwatchers in an Arizona desert spotted a huge black bird. Perched commandingly, unimpressed by puny humans. Could it be – a raven? In the desert? Weren't they forest wilderness birds? A handy bird guide said the raven was “Common only in the Far North and in the West, especially near heavy timber.”…
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If Doctor Doolittle offered online courses in animal languages, I would take them all. He'd have many customers. Actually, all of us already know a few phrases in animal languages. We don't need Intro Dog to know that this dog is saying “I might bite! Check out these teeth!” We don't need Conversational Cat to guess that…
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Researcher Ava Chase had three large koi (a.k.a carp) in her lab. She wondered if they could learn to divide music into categories. The categories she chose were classical music and blues. Chase rigged up a button and a fish-chow reward system in the tank.* First, Beauty, Oro, and Pepi learned to press the button…
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A 2008 New Yorker story by Margaret Talbot on Irene Pepperberg's work with parrots and language made brief mention of unsuccessful work with mynahs and language. This was to explain why Pepperberg didn't train her eloquent parrot Alex with classic behaviorist methods of operant conditioning. I recognized the reference. While reading about animal communication for…
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The Brooks Park community garden sits on a knobby, windy hilltop with near views of San Francisco and Daly City, and a far view of the Pacific. With a plastic watering can left for the use of gardeners, I was dreamily watering lettuce seedlings in our nano-ranch when a high-energy individual sped up and gave…
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On Monterey Bay, a tour boat laden with wildlife photographers spotted a sea otter. The boat headed over. When they got close enough to point their cameras at the otter, the otter pointed a camera at them. Enrique Aguirre got the shot that shows the otter with the videocamera. As Stephanie Pappas wrote in the…
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In the summer wildfires, what would the condors do? When flames and smoke tore through their Ventana Wilderness sanctuary, how many would survive? These California condors were raised in captivity. Some grew up in large aviaries with two-parent families, and others were fed by condor puppets and raised in condor playgroups (most unnatural for a…
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Sometimes people get sentimental about the nobility of animals. But it depends on the animal. Perhaps you saw the story of Yosuke, a pet African Grey parrot in Japan. One day he got out. As parrots do, he flew around for a few days and a few miles before landing and seeking human help. (“Free!…
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I was reading Tupai: A Field Study of Bornean Treeshrews by Louise H. Emmons because that is the kind of thing I like, and learned about the absentee maternal system found in some treeshrew species. First I should say that treeshrews are the same as tree shrews, and the closing up of the word is…
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My sister took this photograph. (Click on it for a better look.) It shows Sky, a Thoroughbred mare, and her first foal. The foal's about 5 minutes old. Because it was her first foal, Sky had no idea what was happening when she went into labor. First she felt bad, and then she felt really…
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