In this July 13, 2004 photo, Natalie Homza is notified by her
new hearing dog Arby that her oven timer is going off during a training
exercise in her Shreveport, La., home. In recent years, researchers are
finding that thought processes in animals aren't a matter of how closely
related they are to humans. You don't have to be a primate to be smart.
(AP Photo/The Shreveport Times, shreveporttimes.com, Shane Bevel) MAGS
OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT SHREVEPORTTIMES.COM; NO SALES
In this Dec. 13, 2006 photo provided by the Primate Research
Institute of Kyoto University, a 5 1/2-year-old chimpanzee named Ayumu
performs a memory test with randomly-placed consecutive Arabic numerals,
which are later masked, accurately duplicating the lineup on a touch
screen computer in Kyoto, Japan. The young chimpanzees in the study
titled "Working memory of numerals in chimpanzees" by Sana Inoue and
Tetsuro Matsuzawa could memorize the nine numerals much faster and more
accurately than human adults. The evidence that animals are more
intelligent and more social than we thought seems to grow each year,
especially when it comes to primates. It's an increasingly hot
scientific field with the number of ape and monkey cognition studies
doubling in recent years, often with better technology and neuroscience
paving the way to unusual discoveries. (AP Photo/Primate Research
Institute of Kyoto University) PART OF A SEVEN-PICTURE PACKAGE WITH
"ANIMAL SCIENCES"
In this Dec. 13, 2006 photo provided by the Primate Research
Institute of Kyoto University, a 5 1/2-year-old chimpanzee named Ayumu
performs a memory test with randomly-placed consecutive Arabic numerals,
which are later masked, accurately duplicating the lineup on a touch
screen computer in Kyoto, Japan. The young chimpanzees in the study
titled "Working memory of numerals in chimpanzees" by Sana Inoue and
Tetsuro Matsuzawa could memorize the nine numerals much faster and more
accurately than human adults. The evidence that animals are more
intelligent and more social than we thought seems to grow each year,
especially when it comes to primates. It's an increasingly hot
scientific field with the number of ape and monkey cognition studies
doubling in recent years, often with better technology and neuroscience
paving the way to unusual discoveries. (AP Photo/Primate Research
Institute of Kyoto University) PART OF A SEVEN-PICTURE PACKAGE WITH
"ANIMAL SCIENCES"
FILE - In this undated file photo provided by the National
Academy of Sciences, Dodger, a 2-year-old female dolphin, carries a
marine sponge for use as a foraging tool in Australia. Researchers say
sponge-carrying appears to be a cultural behavior passed on from mother
to daughter, a first for animals of this type, although such learning
has been seen in other species. In recent years, researchers are finding
that thought processes in animals aren't a matter of how closely
related they are to humans. You don't have to be a primate to be smart.
(AP Photo/National Academy of Sciences, Janet Mann, File)
FILE - In this Feb. 21, 2012 file photo, after being told a
word, an orangutan points to that object on an iPad computer tablet at
Jungle Island zoo in Miami. The evidence that animals are more
intelligent and more social than we thought seems to grow each year,
especially when it comes to primates. It's an increasingly hot
scientific field with the number of ape and monkey cognition studies
doubling in recent years, often with better technology and neuroscience
paving the way to unusual discoveries. (AP Photo/J Pat Carter, File)
In this 2009 picture provided by Think Elephants International,
two elephants pull a platform with a food reward, designed only to work
with the cooperation of two animals, at the Thai Elephant Conservation
Center in Lampang, Thailand. Animal researchers in recent years are
finding that thought processes in animals aren't a matter of how closely
related they are to humans. You don't have to be a primate to be smart.
(AP Photo/Think Elephants International)
Common chimpanzee in the Leipzig Zoo. Image by: Thomas Lersch / Wikimedia Commons
Chimps are able to not simply deceive, but plan for future deception according to a study.
The study, published on PloS One followed a captive chimp in a zoo - which was noted for its aggressive behaviour and throwing things at zoo goers.
According to the study the chimp initially acted aggressive, which
led zoo-keepers to backing zoo-goers away from its enclosure before it
could throw any stones.
Apparently recognising this, the chimp then stopped acting aggressive
in a subsequent encounter, simply seeming to be just carrying two
concrete rocks.
The zoo-keepers didn't realise what it was up to before those rocks were airborne.
The chimp then started making hiding places near the edges of its
enclosure to hide rocks, which it got from the moat overnight when it
thought nobody was looking. Combining this with restricting its
dominance displays meant it could get more rocks off at the crowd before
they backed away.
The chimp does not appear to have observed such behaviour before, and seems to have come up with it by itself.
While the researchers state this does not necessarily imply a theory
of mind, in which chimps can model the mental behaviours of others it
does mean that chimps can, in a similar fashion to humans, plan future
events and innovate in order to deceive others.
Baboons can distinguish between written
words and gibberish.
Monkeys seem to be able to do
multiplication. Apes can delay instant gratification longer than a human child
can. They plan ahead. They make war and peace. They show empathy. They share.
“It’s not a question of whether they think
— it’s how they think,” says Duke
University scientist
Brian Hare. Now scientists wonder if apes are capable of thinking about what
other apes are thinking.
The evidence that animals are more
intelligent and more social than we thought seems to grow each year, especially
when it comes to primates. It’s an increasingly hot scientific field with the
number of ape and monkey cognition studies doubling in recent years, often with
better technology and neuroscience paving the way to unusual discoveries.
This month scientists mapping the DNA of
the bonobo ape found that, like the chimp, bonobos are only 1.3% different from
humans.
Says Josep Call, director of the primate
research center at the Max Planck Institute in Germany: “Every year we discover
things that we thought they could not do.”
Call says one of his recent more
surprising studies showed that apes can set goals and follow through with them.
Orangutans and bonobos in a zoo were
offered eight possible tools — two of which would help them get at some food.
At times when they chose the proper tool,
researchers moved the apes to a different area before they could get the food,
and then kept them waiting as much as 14 hours
Call says this is similar to a person
packing luggage a day before a trip: “For humans it’s such a central ability,
it’s so important.”
For a few years, scientists have watched
chimpanzees in zoos collect and store rocks as weapons for later use. In May, a
study found they even add deception to the mix. They created haystacks to
conceal their stash of stones from opponents, just like nations do with bombs.
Hare points to studies where competing
chimpanzees enter an arena where one bit of food is hidden from view for only
one chimp. The chimp that can see the hidden food, quickly learns that his foe
can’t see it and uses that to his advantage, displaying the ability to perceive
another ape’s situation. That’s a trait humans develop as toddlers, but something
we thought other animals never got, Hare said.
And then there is the amazing monkey
memory.
At the National Zoo in Washington, humans who try to match their
recall skills with an orangutan’s are humbled. Zoo associate director Don Moore
says: “I’ve got a Ph.D., for God’s sake, you would think I could out-think an
orang and I can’t.” In French research,
at least two baboons kept memorizing so many pictures — several thousand — that
after three years researchers ran out of time before the baboons reached their
limit. Researcher Joel Fagot at the French
National Center
for Scientific Research figured they could memorize at least 10,000 and
probably more.
And a chimp in Japan named Ayumu who sees strings
of numbers flash on a screen for a split-second regularly beats humans at
accurately duplicating the lineup. He’s a YouTube sensation, along with
orangutans in a Miami
zoo that use iPads.
It’s not just primates that demonstrate
surprising abilities.
Dolphins, whose brains are 25% heavier
than humans, recognize themselves in a mirror. So do elephants. A study in June
finds that black bears can do primitive counting, something even pigeons have
done, by putting two dots before five, or 10 before 20 in one experiment.
The trend in research is to identify some
new thinking skill that chimps can do, revealing that certain abilities are
“not uniquely human,” said Emory University primatologist Frans de Waal. Then
the scientists find that same ability in other primates further removed from
humans genetically. Then they see it in dogs and elephants.
“Capacities that we think in humans are
very special and complex are probably not so special and not so complex,” de
Waal said.
“This research in animals elevates the
animals, but it also brings down the humans.... If monkeys can do it and maybe
dogs and other animals, maybe it’s not as complex as you think.”
At Duke, professor Elizabeth Brannon shows
videos of monkeys that appear to be doing a “fuzzy representation” of
multiplication by following the number of dots that go into a box on a computer
screen and choosing the right answer to come out of the box. This is after
they’ve already done addition and subtraction.
This spring in France, researchers showed
that six baboons could distinguish between fake and real four-letter words —
BRRU vs KITE, for example. And they chose to do these computer-based exercises
of their own free will, either for fun or a snack.
It was once thought the control of
emotions and the ability to empathize and socialize separated us from our
primate cousins. But chimps console, and fight, each other. They also try to
soothe an upset companion, grooming and putting their arms around him.
“I see plenty of empathy in my
chimpanzees,” de Waal said. But studies have shown they also go to war against
neighboring colonies, killing the males and taking the females. That’s
something that also is very human and led people to believe that war-making
must go back in our lineage 6 million years, de Waal said.
When scientists look at our other closest
relative, the bonobo, they see a difference. Bonobos don’t kill. Hare says his
experiments show bonobos give food to newcomer bonobos, even when they could
choose to keep all the food themselves.
One reason scientists are learning more
about animal intellect is computers, including touch screens. In some cases,
scientists are setting up banks of computers available to primates 24-7. In the
French word recognition experiment, Fagot found he got more and better data
when it was the baboons’ choice to work.
Animal cognition researcher Steve Ross at
the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago
agrees.
“The apes in our case seem to be working
better when they have that control, that choice to perform,” he said.
Brain scans on monkeys and apes also have
helped correct mistaken views about ape brain power. It was once thought the
prefrontal cortex, the area in charge of higher reasoning, was
disproportionately larger than the rest of the brain only in humans, giving us
a cognitive advantage, Hare said. But imaging shows that monkey and ape
prefrontal cortexes have that same larger scale, he said.
What’s different is that the human
communication system in the prefrontal cortex is more complex, Hare said.
So there are limits to what non-human
primates can do. Animals don’t have the ability to communicate with the
complexity of human language. In the French study, the baboons can recognize
that the letters KITE make a word because through trial and error they learn
which letters tend to go together in what order. But the baboons don’t have a
clue of what KITE means. It’s that gap that’s key.
“The boundaries are not as sharp as people
think, but there are certain things you can’t overcome and language is one of
them,” said Columbia
University animal
cognition researcher Herbert Terrace.
And that leads to another difference, Ross
said. Because apes lack language skills, they learn by watching and mimicking.
Humans teach with language and explanation, which is faster and better, Ross
said.
Some of the shifts in scientific
understanding of animals are leading to ethical debates. When Emory University
researcher Lori Marino in 2001 co-wrote a groundbreaking study on dolphins
recognizing themselves in mirrors, proving they have a sense of self similar to
humans, she had a revelation.
“The more you learn about them, the more
you realize that they do have the capacity and characteristics that we think of
as a person,” Marino said. “I think it’s impossible to ignore the ethical
implications of these kinds of findings.”
After the two dolphins she studied died
when transferred to another aquarium, she decided never to work on captive
dolphins again. She then became a science adviser to the Nonhuman Rights
Project, which seeks legal rights or status for animals.
The idea, Marino said, is to get animals
such as dolphins “to be deemed a person, not property.”
The intelligence of primates was one of
the factors behind a report last year by the Institute of Medicine
that said the National Institutes of Health should reduce dramatically the
number of chimpanzees it uses in biomedical research.
The NIH is working on new guidelines that
would further limit federal medical chimpanzee use down from its current few
dozen chimps at any given time, said NIH program planning chief James Anderson.
Chimps are a special case, with their use “very, very limited,” he said. But he
raises the question: “What happens if your child is sick or your mother is
dying” and animal research might lead to a cure?
The issue is more about animal welfare and
giving them the right ”not to be killed, not to be tortured, not to be confined
unnecessarily” than giving them legal standing, said David DeGrazia, a
philosophy and ethics professor at George Washington University.
Hare says that focusing on animal rights
ignores the problem of treatment of chimps in research settings. He contends
that for behavioral studies and even for many medical research tests they could
be kept in zoos or sanctuaries rather than labs.
Animals
performing tasks in near-natural habitats “is like an Ivy League college” for
the apes, Hare said. “We’re going to see them do stunning and sophisticated
things.”
In this July 13, 2004 photo,
Natalie Homza is notified by her new hearing dog Arby that her oven
timer is going off during a training exercise in her Shreveport, La.,
home. In recent years, researchers are finding that thought processes in
animals aren't a matter of how closely related they are to humans. You
don't have to be a primate to be smart. (AP Photo/The Shreveport Times,
shreveporttimes.com, Shane Bevel) MAGS OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT
SHREVEPORTTIMES.COM; NO SALES
The more we study animals, the less special we seem.
Baboons
can distinguish between written words and gibberish. Monkeys seem to be
able to do multiplication. Apes can delay instant gratification longer
than a human child can. They plan ahead. They make war and peace. They
show empathy. They share.
“It’s not a question of whether they think — it’s how they think,” says Duke University scientist Brian Hare.
Now, scientists wonder if apes are capable of thinking about what other apes are thinking.
The evidence that animals are more intelligent and
more social than we thought seems to grow each year, especially when it
comes to primates. It’s an increasingly hot scientific field with the
number of ape and monkey cognition studies doubling in recent years,
often with better technology and neuroscience paving the way to unusual
discoveries.
This month, scientists mapping the DNA of the
bonobo ape found that, like the chimp, bonobos are only 1.3 percent
different from humans.
Says Josep Call, director of the primate research
center at the Max Planck Institute in Germany: “Every year, we discover
things that we thought they could not do.”
Call says one of his recent more surprising studies showed that apes can set goals and follow through with them.
Orangutans and bonobos in a zoo were offered eight
possible tools — two of which would help them get at some food. At times
when they chose the proper tool, researchers moved the apes to a
different area before they could get the food, and then kept them
waiting as much as 14 hours. In nearly every case, when the apes
realized they were being moved, they took their tool with them so they
could use it to get food the next day, remembering that even after
sleeping. The goal and series of tasks didn’t leave the apes’ minds.
Call says this is similar to a person packing
luggage a day before a trip: “For humans it’s such a central ability,
it’s so important.”
For a few years, scientists have watched
chimpanzees in zoos collect and store rocks as weapons for later use. In
May, a study found they even add deception to the mix. They created
haystacks to conceal their stash of stones from opponents, just like
nations do with bombs.
Hare points to studies where competing chimpanzees
enter an arena where one bit of food is hidden from view for only one
chimp. The chimp that can see the hidden food, quickly learns that his
foe can’t see it and uses that to his advantage, displaying the ability
to perceive another ape’s situation. That’s a trait humans develop as
toddlers, but something we thought other animals never got, Hare said.
And then there is the amazing monkey memory.
At the National Zoo in Washington, humans who try
to match their recall skills with an orangutan’s are humbled. Zoo
associate director Don Moore says: “I’ve got a Ph.D., for God’s sake,
you would think I could out-think an orang, and I can’t.”
In French research, at least two baboons kept
memorizing so many pictures — several thousand — that after three years
researchers ran out of time before the baboons reached their limit.
Researcher Joel Fagot at the French National Center for Scientific
Research figured they could memorize at least 10,000 and probably more.
And a chimp in Japan named Ayumu who sees strings
of numbers flash on a screen for a split-second regularly beats humans
at accurately duplicating the lineup. He’s a YouTube sensation, along
with orangutans in a Miami zoo that use iPads.
It’s not just primates that demonstrate surprising
abilities. Dolphins, whose brains are 25 percent heavier than humans,
recognize themselves in a mirror. So do elephants. A study out this
month found that black bears can do primitive counting, something even
pigeons have done, by putting two dots before five, or 10 before 20 in
one experiment.
The trend in research is to identify some new
thinking skill that chimps can do, revealing that certain abilities are
“not uniquely human,” says Emory University primatologist Frans de Waal.
Then the scientists find that same ability in other primates further
removed from humans genetically. Then, they see it in dogs and
elephants.
“Capacities that we think in humans are very
special and complex are probably not so special and not so complex,” de
Waal says. “This research in animals elevates the animals, but it also
brings down the humans.... If monkeys can do it and maybe dogs and other
animals, maybe it’s not as complex as you think.”
At Duke, professor Elizabeth Brannon shows videos
of monkeys that appear to be doing a “fuzzy representation” of
multiplication by following the number of dots that go into a box on a
computer screen and choosing the right answer to come out of the box.
This is after they’ve already done addition and subtraction.
This spring in France, researchers showed that six
baboons could distinguish between fake and real four-letter words — BRRU
vs KITE, for example. And they chose to do these computer-based
exercises of their own free will, either for fun or a snack.
It was once thought the control of emotions and the
ability to empathize and socialize separated us from our primate
cousins. But chimps console, and fight, each other. They also try to
soothe an upset companion, grooming and putting their arms around him.
“I see plenty of empathy in my chimpanzees,” de Waal says.
But studies have shown they also go to war against
neighboring colonies, killing the males and taking the females. That’s
something that also is very human and led people to believe that
war-making must go back in our lineage 6 million years, de Waal says.
When scientists look at our other closest relative,
the bonobo, they see a difference. Bonobos don’t kill. Hare says his
experiments show bonobos give food to newcomer bonobos, even when they
could choose to keep all the food themselves.
One reason scientists are learning more about
animal intellect is computers, including touch screens. In some cases,
scientists are setting up banks of computers available to primates 24-7.
In the French word recognition experiment, Fagot found he got more and
better data when it was the baboons’ choice to work.
Animal cognition researcher Steve Ross at the Lincoln Park Zoo agrees.
“The apes in our case seem to be working better when they have that control, that choice to perform,” says Ross.
Brain scans on monkeys and apes also have helped
correct mistaken views about ape brain power. It was once thought the
prefrontal cortex, the area in charge of higher reasoning, was
disproportionately larger than the rest of the brain only in humans,
giving us a cognitive advantage, Hare says. But imaging shows that
monkey and ape prefrontal cortexes have that same larger scale, he says.
What’s different is that the human communication system in the prefrontal cortex is more complex, Hare says.
So there are limits to what non-human primates can
do. Animals don’t have the ability to communicate with the complexity of
human language. In the French study, the baboons can recognize that the
letters KITE make a word because through trial and error they learn
which letters tend to go together in what order. But the baboons don’t
have a clue of what KITE means. It’s that gap that’s key. “The
boundaries are not as sharp as people think, but there are certain
things you can’t overcome and language is one of them,” says Columbia
University animal cognition researcher Herbert Terrace.
And that leads to another difference, Ross said.
Because apes lack language skills, they learn by watching and mimicking.
Humans teach with language and explanation, which is faster and better,
Ross said.
Some of the shifts in scientific understanding of
animals are leading to ethical debates. When Emory researcher Lori
Marino in 2001 co-wrote a groundbreaking study on dolphins recognizing
themselves in mirrors, proving they have a sense of self similar to
humans, she had a revelation.
“The more you learn about them, the more you
realize that they do have the capacity and characteristics that we think
of as a person,” Marino says. “I think it’s impossible to ignore the
ethical implications of these kinds of findings.”
After the two dolphins she studied died when
transferred to another aquarium, she decided never to work on captive
dolphins again. She then became a science adviser to the Nonhuman Rights
Project, which seeks legal rights or status for animals. The idea,
Marino said, is to get animals such as dolphins “to be deemed a person,
not property.”
The intelligence of primates was one of the factors
behind a report last year by the Institute of Medicine that said the
National Institutes of Health should reduce dramatically the number of
chimpanzees it uses in biomedical research.
The NIH is working on new guidelines that would
further limit federal medical chimpanzee use down from its current few
dozen chimps at any given time, said NIH program planning chief James
Anderson. Chimps are a special case, with their use “very, very
limited,” he said. But he raises the question: “What happens if your
child is sick or your mother is dying” and animal research might lead to
a cure?
The issue is more about animal welfare and giving
them the right “not to be killed, not to be tortured, not to be confined
unnecessarily” than giving them legal standing, says David DeGrazia, a
philosophy and ethics professor at George Washington University.
Hare says that focusing on animal rights ignores
the problem of treatment of chimps in research settings. He contends
that for behavioral studies and even for many medical research tests
they could be kept in zoos or sanctuaries rather than labs.
Animals performing tasks in near-natural habitats
“is like an Ivy League college” for the apes, Hare says. “We’re going to
see them do stunning and sophisticated things.”
After
being told a word, an orangutan points to that object on an iPad
computer tablet at Jungle Island zoo in Miami. The evidence that animals
are more intelligent and more social than we thought seems to grow each
year. /AP photo
WASHINGTON — The more we study animals, the less special we seem.
Baboons can distinguish between written words and
gibberish. Monkeys seem to be able to do multiplication. Apes can delay
instant gratification longer than a human child can. They plan ahead.
They make war and peace. They show empathy. They share.
“It’s
not a question of whether they think — it’s how they think,” says Duke
University scientist Brian Hare. Now scientists wonder if apes are
capable of thinking about what other apes are thinking.
The
evidence that animals are more intelligent and more social than we
thought seems to grow each year, especially when it comes to primates.
It’s an increasingly hot scientific field with the number of ape and
monkey cognition studies doubling in recent years, often with better
technology and neuroscience paving the way to unusual discoveries.
This
month scientists mapping the DNA of the bonobo ape found that, like the
chimp, bonobos are only 1.3 percent different from humans.
Says
Josep Call, director of the primate research center at the Max Planck
Institute in Germany: “Every year we discover things that we thought
they could not do.”
Call says one of his recent more surprising studies showed that apes can set goals and follow through with them.
Orangutans
and bonobos in a zoo were offered eight possible tools — two of which
would help them get at some food. At times when they chose the proper
tool, researchers moved the apes to a different area before they could
get the food, and then kept them waiting as much as 14 hours. In nearly
every case, when the apes realized they were being moved, they took
their tool with them so they could use it to get food the next day,
remembering that even after sleeping. The goal and series of tasks
didn’t leave the apes’ minds.
Call says this is similar
to a person packing luggage a day before a trip: “For humans it’s such a
central ability, it’s so important.”
For a few years,
scientists have watched chimpanzees in zoos collect and store rocks as
weapons for later use. In May, a study found they even add deception to
the mix. They created haystacks to conceal their stash of stones from
opponents, just like nations do with bombs.
Hare
points to studies where competing chimpanzees enter an arena where one
bit of food is hidden from view for only one chimp. The chimp that can
see the hidden food, quickly learns that his foe can’t see it and uses
that to his advantage, displaying the ability to perceive another ape’s
situation. That’s a trait humans develop as toddlers, but something we
thought other animals never got, Hare said.
And then there is the amazing monkey memory.
At
the National Zoo in Washington, humans who try to match their recall
skills with an orangutan’s are humbled. Zoo associate director Don Moore
says: “I’ve got a Ph.D., for God’s sake, you would think I could
out-think an orang and I can’t.”
In French research,
at least two baboons kept memorizing so many pictures — several thousand
— that after three years researchers ran out of time before the baboons
reached their limit. Researcher Joel Fagot at the French National
Center for Scientific Research figured they could memorize at least
10,000 and probably more.
But what are their true motives? That remains to be seen, researchers say
Science / AAAS
This trapped rat's cagemate ultimately opened the container's door to set the rat free, without any rewards, researchers found.
By Joseph Castro
updated
12/8/2011 4:14:43 PM ET
The act of helping others out of empathy has long been
associated strictly with humans and other primates, but new research
shows that rats exhibit this prosocial behavior as well.
In the new study, laboratory rats repeatedly freed their cage-mates
from containers, even though there was no clear reward for doing so. The
rodents didn't bother opening empty containers or those holding stuffed
rats.
To the researchers' surprise, when presented with both a rat-holding
container and one containing a chocolate — the rats' favorite snack —
the rodents not only chose to open both containers, but also to share
the treats they liberated.
Peggy Mason, a neuroscientist at the University of Chicago and lead author of the new study, says that the research shows that our empathy and impulse to help others are common across other mammals.
"Helping is our evolutionary inheritance," Mason told LiveScience.
"Our study suggests that we don't have to cognitively decide to help an
individual in distress; rather, we just have to let our animal selves
express themselves."
The oldest known bedding — sleeping mats made of
mosquito-repellant evergreens that are about 77,000 years old — has been
discovered in a South African cave.
Empathetic rats
In previous studies, researchers found that rodents show
the simplest form of empathy, called emotional contagion — a phenomenon
where one individual's emotions spread to
others nearby. For example, a crying baby will trigger the other babies
in a room to cry as well. Likewise, rats will become distressed when
they see other rats in distress, or they will display pain behavior if
they see other rats in pain.
For the new study, Mason and her colleagues wanted to see if rats
could go beyond emotional contagion and actively help other rats in
distress. To do so, the rats would have to suppress their natural
responses to the "emotions" of other rats, the result of emotional
contagion. "They have to down-regulate their natural reaction to freeze in fear in order to actively help the other rat," Mason explained.
The researchers began their study by housing rats in pairs for two
weeks, allowing the rodents to create a bond with one another. In each
test session, they placed a rat pair into a walled arena; one rat was
allowed to roam free while the other was locked in a closed, transparent
tube that could only be opened from the outside.
The free rat was initially wary of the container in the middle of the
arena, but once it got over the fear it picked up from its cage-mate,
it slowly began to test out the cage. After an average seven days of
daily experiments, the free rat learned it could release its friend by
nudging the container door open. Over time, the rat began releasing its
cage-mate almost immediately after being placed into the arena.
"When the free rat opens the door, he knows exactly what he's doing —
he knows that the trapped rat is going to get free," Mason said. "It's
deliberate, purposeful, helping behavior."
The researchers then conducted other tests to make sure empathy was
the driving force in the rats' behavior. In one experiment, they rigged
the container so that opening the door would release the captive rat
into a separate arena. The free rat repeatedly set its cage-mate free,
even though there was no reward of social interaction afterward. True motivations
While it appears that the rats are empathetic, questions about the rodents' true motivations still remain.
"It is unclear whether the rats sympathize with the distress of their
cage-mates, or simply feel better as they alleviate the perceived
distress of others," Jaak Panksepp, a psychologist and neuroscientist at
Washington State University, wrote in an article accompanying the
study.
Mason says they don’t yet know if the free rats are acting to relieve
their own distress, the distress of their cage-mates, or a combination
of both, but this is definitely a topic for further research. She’s also
looking to study if the rats would behave the same way if they weren’t
cage-mates, and she would like to tease out the brain areas and genes involved in the behavior.
But, she says, “We now have this incredibly controlled, reproducible
paradigm.” Other scientists should be able to use the model they
developed to see if empathy and prosocial behavior are present in other
animals, she said.
The study was published Thursday in the journal Science.
http://quadsearch.csd.auth.gr/ssearch.php?m=1&wtl=1&frop=501&lan=1&tos=2&pp=2&query=quantitative+measure+of+intelligence&query2=&sst=2&ResPerPage=500&frp_p=1&btn=1
You have to search this quadsearch engine using the full article name.
Otherwise it will not appear at all.
I am surprised that my conference paper was cited more times than
Multiple Intelligences theory, although google ranking is much much
lower at 1.
I had tried a few citation extracting engines. quadsearch is the third
one that I tried. It does not search properly when I use my name. Even
complete title search failed. You must make it a general search for
all languages and subjects. If you narrow the search, it will fail.
You must be willing to filter it yourself. We cannot rely on search
engines to filter for us.
I would like to know how quadsearch calculates the number of
citations. Many citation engines cannot quote from all publications
especially from conferences that are deemed to be low class
publications, but I prefer to quote from conferences and even internet
sources. They are more up to date and controversial.
It is refreshing that quadsearch is able to extract from google
scholar all citations for all types of articles. Google ranking tends
to be very subjective and highly filtered. For example, it takes into
account who the author is, and how old the publication was.
Since I am not active publishing articles since it is not my job and
it is costly to publish, I am not that well known. Theory is more than
20 years old and not much development had been published based on this
work but I have been developing it by myself comparing my results with
current state of the art in computer architectures.
Intelligence Theory was developed for computer architecture or more
oriented to organisation as current textbooks would like to call it
since it is hardware based. Many of my results shows that Intel and
other established computer developers are missing the whole point,
most probably because they have not approached the problem
scientifically, such as using Information Theory and therefore
Intelligence theory.
The adhoc, SPEC-mark style of measurements are still being used,
making optimal designs very difficult to do. I am trying to get
funding in order to publish more papers on this theory. In fact
campaigning to make Information Theory more acceptable to computer
scientists and architects/designers. It should also be easy to patents
many new designs based on IntelligenceTheory but it is a question of
whether it is worthwhile or not. How can we compete against multi-
billion dollar companies such as Intel and IBM?
I shall put the screen capture of the quadsearch result of my paper in
my blogspot, scientificintelligence.
I have to rename it as scientificintelligence because
intelligencetheory blogspot was taken by the multiple intelligences
theory group, which I call nonsense because of its impracticality.
After
being told a word, an orangutan points to that object on an iPad
computer tablet at Jungle Island zoo in Miami. The evidence that animals
are more intelligent and more social than we thought seems to grow each
year. /AP photo
After
being told a word, an orangutan points to that object on an iPad
computer tablet at Jungle Island zoo in Miami. The evidence that animals
are more intelligent and more social than we thought seems to grow each
year. /AP photo
