Rethinking the bee’s waggle dance
Filed under: Animals and language
Bees that have found food tell their friends about it by dancing. Or so we thought – but it turns out their hive-mates aren’t paying attention
Full article: New Scientist
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Songbird study provides concrete measure of biology’s impact on culture
Filed under: Animals and language
A study by scientists from CSHL and CCNY performed among a species of songbirds called zebra finches provides new insights into how genetic background, learning abilities and environmental variation might influence how birds evolve “song culture” — and provides some pointers to how human languages may evolve.
Full article: EurekAlert
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Orphan chimpanzees cleverer than humans
Filed under: Animals and language
Orphaned chimpanzee infants given special ‘mothering’ by humans are more advanced than the average child at nine months of age.
Full article: University of Portsmouth
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Baby Birds Babble
Filed under: Animals and language
ust like human infants, baby birds also babble before mastering complex verbal communication, according to a study conducted by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and published in the journal Science. The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Herz Foundation and Friends of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research.
Full article: Natural News
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Graduate student working at Great Ape Trust publishes paper in scientific journal
Filed under: Animals and language
What happens when linguistic tools used to analyze human language are applied to a conversation between a language-competent bonobo and a human? The findings, published this month in the Journal of Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, indicate that bonobos may exhibit larger linguistic competency in ordinary conversation than in controlled experimental settings. …
Full article: Great Ape Trust of Iowa
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Elephants master basic mathematics
Filed under: Animals and language
Add elephants to the growing menagerie of animals that can count. An Asian elephant named Ashya beat this reporter at a devilishly simple addition problem. When a trainer dropped three apples into one bucket and one apple into a second, then four more apples in the first and five more in the second, the pachyderm recognised that three plus four is greater than one plus five, and snacked on the seven apples. (In my defence, I watched the video in a noisy and crowded auditorium.) …
Full article: New Scientist
Mirror self-recognition in magpies
Filed under: Animals and language
Self-recognition, it has been argued, is a hallmark of advanced cognitive abilities in animals. It was previously thought that only the usual suspects of higher cognition—some great apes, dolphins, and elephants—were able to recognize their own bodies in a mirror. In this week’s issue of PLoS Biology, psychologist Helmut Prior and colleagues show evidence of self-recognition in magpies—a species with a brain structure very different from mammals.
Full article: EurekAlert
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Sorry, Charlie, you and Nemo aren’t the only fish that talk
Filed under: Animals and language
Talking fish are no strangers to Americans. From the comedic portrayal of “Mr. Limpet” by Don Knotts, to the children’s Disney favorite, “Nemo,” fish can talk, laugh and tell jokes–at least on television and the silver screen. But can real fish verbally communicate? Researchers say, “Yes,” in a paper published in the July 18 issue of the journal Science. Further, the findings put human speech–and social communications of all vertebrates–in evolutionary context. …
Full article: EurekAlert
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Can animals comprehend the power of symbols?
Filed under: Animals and language
Humans interpret symbols every day, from traffic lights to warning labels on tins. We also use symbols on a more complex level such as currency. When we use money, be it a paper note or a coin, we inherently understand the corresponding intrinsic value that that note or coin has. Our whole economic system runs on the basis that we all understand the value currency has. The question is, do animals also have this understanding? The project SEDSU, funded by the EU with around EUR 37 500 in financing, is saying yes, animals may very well understand the power of symbols and of currency. …
Full article: European Commission Research
Counting monkeys tick off yet another ‘human’ ability
Filed under: Animals and language
At this rate a monkey might prove the Riemann hypothesis. Rhesus macaques have been shown to possess yet another numerical talent once thought unique to humans – they can simultaneously count audible beeps and dots on a computer screen. …
Full article: New Scientist
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Birds communicate reproductive success in song
Filed under: Animals and language
Some migratory songbirds figure out the best place to live by eavesdropping on the singing of others that successfully have had baby birds – a communication and behavioral trait so strong that researchers playing recorded songs induced them to nest in places they otherwise would have avoided. This suggests that songbirds have more complex communication abilities than had previously been understood, researchers say, and that these “social cues” can be as or more important than the physical environment of a site.
Full article: EurekAlert
Great apes think ahead
Filed under: Animals and language
Apes can plan for their future needs just as we humans can – by using self-control and imagining future events. Mathias and Helena Osvath’s research, from Lunds University Cognitive Science in Sweden, is the first to provide conclusive evidence of advanced planning capacities in non-human species. Their findings are published online this week in Springer’s journal, Animal Cognition.
Full article: EurekAlert
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Honeybee dance breaks down cultural barrier
Filed under: Animals and language
Asian and European honeybees can learn to understand one another’s dance languages despite having evolved different forms of communication, an international research team has shown for the first time. The findings are published this week in the journal PLoS ONE. …
Full story: EurekAlert!
Friday, May 2, 2008
Like babies learning to talk, birds babble before they sing
Filed under: Animals and language
The happy babbling that entertains parents as their babies try to mimic speech turns out to have a parallel in the animal world. Baby birds babble away before mastering their adult song, researchers report in Friday’s edition of the journal Science. …
Read the full article at AOL News
Friday, March 14, 2008
Song-Learning Birds Shed Light on Our Ability to Speak
Filed under: Animals and language
A new study may have been for (and about) the birds, but it also hints at how humans may have developed the ability to speak, potentially paving the way to one day to identifying the causes of speech deficiencies. …
Read the full news article at Scientific American
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