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New signs of pig genius
Pigs can figure out how mirrors work and use the reflected images to keep an eye on their surroundings and search for food, says a new study.
This latest finding in pig cognition is yet another sign that they learn in a manner similar to humans. Says the New York Times:
Other researchers have found that pigs are brilliant at remembering where food stores are cached and how big each stash is relative to the rest. They’ve shown that Pig A can almost instantly learn to follow Pig B when the second pig shows signs of knowing where good food is stored, and that Pig B will try to deceive the pursuing pig and throw it off the trail so that Pig B can hog its food in peace.
Pigs can also learn what the paper calls a “circus’s worth” of tricks, such as bowing, spinning, uttering wordlike sounds, herding sheep (Babe!), playing videogames with joysticks and unrolling rugs.
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A CRUSTACEAN OF A DIFFERENT COLOR New Hampshire lobsterman Bill Marconi, 52, caught a rare cobalt-blue lobster in one of his 400 traps last week off the Isle of Shoals. Blue lobsters are better than others at processing astaxanthin, an antioxidant with pigment derived from algae and, according to the New England Aquarium, only one in 5 million lobsters is blue. Marconi donated his lobster to the Seacoast Science Center.
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A study published Wednesday found that rapamycin, a drug used in organ transplants, increased the life span of mice by 9% to 14%, the first definitive case in which a chemical has been shown to extend the life span of normal mammals.
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Mailbox kitten is safe and sound
A kitten dubbed “Postina” (above) is up for adoption after being abandoned in a Boston mailbox.
According to Today, the 2-pound, 8-week old kitten was stuffed through the opening of a mailbox on Friday and dropped several feet into the envelopes and packages below.
(Animal abandonment in Massachusetts, the report neatly points out, is punishable by up to a $2,500 fine and five years in prison.)
She was discovered on Saturday afternoon by a postman collecting mail from the box. After a few days of recuperation, feeding and a round of vaccinations, Postina is up for adoption.
An official from the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals tells The Boston Globe that they’ve been getting 10 calls an hour from people who want to adopt the calico cat.
The application deadline for adopting Postina is Thursday.
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New study: Dogs are just shameless
A new study by Barnard College researcher Alexandra Horowitz has established that the canine body language often misread by dog owners as “guilt” has nothing to do with a dog’s reaction to its own misdeeds.
For the study, Horowitz instructed dog owners to forbid their pup to eat a tasty treat. Then the owners left the pup in the room with her. Sometimes she fed the dog the treat on the sly, sometimes she did not.
The owners would return to the room and Horowitz would either tell them their dog had behaved or tell them their dog had eaten the treat. If the owner reprimanded the dog, the pooch usually took on a hangdog “guilty” look, whether it had eaten the treat or not.
Says a report via Fox News: “Dogs that had been obedient and had not eaten the treat, but were scolded by their (misinformed) owners, looked more ‘guilty’ than those that had, in fact, eaten the treat.”
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The secret world of tapirs, revealed
Scientists have discovered new facts about tapirs, says yesterday’s New York Times, southeast Asian jungle animals described as “ponderous, powerful herbivores, weighing about 650 pounds” with “incessantly sniffing” anteater-like snouts.
Biologist Carl Traeholt and behavioral ecologist Boyd Simpson have, through exhaustive recent research and tracking, found that tapirs…
- can be indentified by unique wrinkles on their necks.
- will travel up to three miles a night in search of salty mineral deposits they like to lick, despite normally having a rather small home range.
- are much more endangered than previously assumed, numbering only 1500 to 2000 in Malaysia and perhaps 300 in Thailand. (Previous estimates, says Dr. Traeholt, were “way off reality” and would have resulted in “a traffic jam of tapirs.”)
- will occasionally defend their companions, though they are nonviolent.
- are equipped with canine-like teeth unusual in herbivores.
- poop neatly in streams.
Tapirs are still targets for poachers but, some good news, Dr. Traeholt “is confident that [tapir] habitat in Malaysia and Thailand is now stable.” He hopes to create “a conservative plan backed by ecology” to further slow the loss of the jungle beasts.
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Do animals have morals?
A bold new book argues that animals can exhibit empathy and understand the moral codes of right and wrong.
In “Wild Justice” (out May 30), Marc Bekoff, an ecologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, presents a case that species from mice to monkeys possess the tools to make moral judgments.
He presents examples in which animals from around the world appear to have displayed an innate sense of fairness, or have helped animals that are in distress. And, he says, the bonds of animal morality can extend across species.
“There are cases of dolphins helping humans escape from sharks,” he says, “and elephants that have helped antelope escape from enclosures.”
Bekoff’s ideas have met with skepticism from the scientific community, says the London Telegraph, but fellow researchers admit that animals share neurological characteristics that were once solely attributed to humans.
For instance, whales including humpbacks (above) have all been found to have spindle cells in their brains – large, specialized cells that play a role in human empathy and understanding the feelings of others. (See the Telegraph article for Bekoff’s examples involving wolves, coyotes, elephants, Diana monkeys, chimps, rats, mice and bats.)
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This frog is new on the scene
The Latin name for this green fellow is boophis aff elenae, and he’s one of 200 new species of frogs recently discovered in Madagascar.
The Spanish Scientific Research Council released photos of some of the finds last week. Check out the gallery here.
Also in the mix are guibemantis liber, boophis ulftunni, and a rather serene-looking example of boophis aff miniatus ranomafanakely.
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These sea beasts are out of control
Two of this week’s Digg.com favorites aim to enlighten us about the largest and the oddest sea creatures ever seen. In the first category, we’ve got the famous Mekong catfish (above), a nearly 9-foot mammoth as heavy as a grizzly bear that was caught in Thailand. In the second category, we have the Leafy Sea Dragon, a variety of seahorse that sports weedy fins as camouflage. (Caution: some of the other beasts on the “oddest” list aren’t this pretty. One looks like a giant bedbug.)
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