Hello everyone,
I was browsing the forums and after a while I noticed a startling belief amongst some of our members that animals are simply dumb and purely
instinctive. Many people here think they have very little intelligence!
I'm going to attempt to put that to rest in this video compilation, because when it comes to talking about intelligence, it is easier to recognize it
then hear about it..
But First, here is a video talking about human superiority.
MUST WATCH!!!
I think to begin, I am going to start with Alex the Grey Parrot. The reason is because Alex has shown understanding of identification of object, but
he does not merely identify them as a preprogrammed response. He can actually differentiate between objects and can answer questions in regards to
quantity, quantity of a certain color. He can identify objects within a collection also. This is not the most amazing thing though. Alex can
communicate with us in our own medium. He can tell us what he wants and at one point as you can see notices his food is cold and makes a comment to
that effect. Very amazing stuff here.
R.I.P. Alex..
Another sign of intelligence, thought to be absent in most nonhuman animals, is the ability to engage in complex, meaningful communication; only
recently has the general perception of parrots as mindless mimics been shown to be incorrect.2 Prior to the 1970's, researchers lacked knowledge of
psittacine communication in the wild, and assumed that natural behaviors would not differ greatly from what had been observed in captivity: the
ability of parrots to reproduce, with great accuracy, sounds such as those of human speech,5 but little (if any) ability to use these vocalizations in
a meaningful way.6 The few studies in the 1950's and 1960's to challenge these perceptions -- e.g., Mowrer's attempts to teach mimetic birds to
engage in meaningful communication with humans -- used standard psychological laboratory training paradigms and were not successful.7,8 Since the
1970's however, researchers working both in the field and in aviary settings have provided data to indicate that natural psittacine vocalizations
might indeed be meaningful: Vocalizations appear to mediate social interactions between mated pairs and among flock members, and not only the physical
structure but also the appropriate use of these vocalizations seems to be learned.3,4,9 Such findings on sophisticated vocal behaviors, when taken in
conjunction with the data on complex problem-solving abilities, suggested that the psychologists' failures to achieve meaningful communication with
their birds might be due to inappropriate training techniques, rather than to any inherent lack of intelligence in the psittacine subjects.1
Source
Alex is not where it ends! Grey parrots are not the only birds that show intelligence.
Yes I know they where trained to do it, but they understand the concept which is important. What about what ravens can do in the wild where they are
not trained?
Next I would like to talk about Koko the gorilla. Koko learned American sign language, which was later turned into his own dialect gorilla sign
language. The first video, is in regards to emotion and how an animal is capable of feeling.
Koko Describing the death of his mother.
Can an animal show artistic ability? Can they create works of art like we can? How about an elephant?
Who's memory is better? Us or chimps? Lets find out.
Chimp is distracted, but remembers anyway.
Time for some Comic releif!!
The octopus is the smartest of all invertebrates, they really do display uncanny intelligence. At least a billion times more than you would expect.
PURE PROBLEM SOLVING BY AN INVERTEBRATE! WATCH!!
.
This one is really cool..
HOW ABOUT THE SQUIRREL?
This is a great mako shark documentary. It's kind of long so be patient, it is really worth a watch all the way through. It will eventually get into
real mako intelligence.
Mako Shark - Long Vid : Some Parts May Be Disturbing for Animal
Lovers.
I will post more in the future but I hope you enjoy this compilation!!
[edit on 5-6-2009 by DaMod]
[edit on 5-6-2009 by DaMod]
[edit on 5-6-2009 by DaMod]