Tomorrow is Today

Dolphins Have Names, Demonstrate Capacity for Learned Language in the Wild

They seemed to be using the whistles to keep in touch with the dolphins they knew best, just as two friends might if suddenly and unexpectedly separated while walking down a street.

Moreover, copying wasn’t exact, but involved modulations at the beginning and end of each call, perhaps allowing dolphins to communicate additional information, such as the copier’s own identity.

That possibility hints at what linguists call referential communication with learned signals, or the use of learned rather than instinctively understood sounds to mentally represent other objects and individuals. As of now, only humans are known to do this naturally.

“We learn language and refer to objects. This has been shown with captive dolphins and captive gray parrots, but hasn’t been seen in the natural communication system of any species,” said King. “We’re not saying that this is what they’re doing, but we’re definitely suggesting that we should look into it.”

(via Dolphins May Call Each Other by Name | Wired Science | Wired.com)

Bees Can Sense Electrical Fields, Interpret Them to Make Decisions

As they travel through the air, bumblebees lose electrons, accumulating a small positive electrical charge. Flowers, meanwhile, are generally negatively charged at the top, thanks to a slight positive charge in the air around them. As a bee approaches a flower, a tiny electric field is created between plant and pollinator. In the past, scientists have suggested that these differing charges encourage the transfer of pollen between flower and bee, helping the tiny pollen grains “jump” onto the pollinator.

However, [a] new study showed that the bee’s landing actually influences the flower’s electrical charge—increasing it slightly—for a short period of time. The study’s authors hypothesize that this change may signal to the next bee that the flower has just been visited and that its nectar stash is depleted. Other cues, such as a flower’s shape or color, sometimes change in response to a bee’s visit, but these changes can take hours. The electrical field, on the other hand, changes almost instantaneously, providing a nearly immediate signal to incoming bees.

In order for this process to work, bees must be able to sense the electrical fields of flowers. To test this ability, the researchers created a field of fake flowers that they could manipulate. Half the flowers were positively charged, and these flowers held a tiny bit of sugar solution as a reward for the bees. The remaining flowers had no charge and held a bitter quinine drink. After just 40 visits, the bees had learned that the positively charged flowers were rewarding, and they visited them more than 80 percent of the time. Once the charges were turned off, the visitation rate to the sugar-laden flowers decreased to random chance, since the bees no longer could use the electric field as a cue.

In a similar test, the researchers found that the bees could even distinguish between flowers that differ in the geometry of their electric field. The bees learned quickly that flowers with a “bullseye” electrical pattern—with a negatively charged center ring and a positively charged outer ring—were rewarding, while flowers with an even positive charge were not.

(via Bees can sense—and learn from—the electric fields of flowers | Ars Technica)

Animal Consciousness: Corvids Demonstrate a Sense of Fairness

a pair of biologists at the University of Vienna trained six carrion crows and four ravens to exchange pebble tokens for food. The researchers then created same-species pairs for a series of experiments. When the birds saw their partners getting food for free, without having to exchange tokens, they tended to exchange tokens less often. Sometimes the birds that got the short shrift even gave away tokens, but refused to take their reward. Other research has suggested that a sense of equity evolved several times in unrelated animals, the University of Vienna researchers write. Knowing what’s fair is linked to cooperative behavior in species, they say, and that makes sense with crows and ravens, which form alliances and share food and information.

(via New Study Says Unfairness Really Ruffles Crows’ Feathers | Popular Science)

More Proof of Animal Consciousness: Scientists Observe Theory of Mind Among Corvids

You might think that, to a bird, one meal is as good as any other. But at least for jays, you’d be wrong. The birds actually aim for variety when they make caches of food to eat later, trying to ensure they’ll have a mixture of food to enjoy the next day.

The researchers confirmed that Eurasian jays have a similar desire for variety. If researchers pre-fed the jays a meal of wax moth larvae and then offered them a mix of that and mealworm larvae, the birds preferentially ate the mealworms. If the researchers did that after a meal of bird food, the birds chose the wax moths at a greater frequency.

When males were given the chance to present foods to their mates, they acted as if the female had just been given bird seed—they gave their mates a mixture of wax moths and mealworms. But if the males had the chance to watch their partners being fed a bunch of wax moths, their gifts shifted, and mealworms were presented with a much higher frequency.

This eliminated the possibility that the female somehow signaled the male to indicate which treat she preferred (if that were the case, it wouldn’t matter whether the male watched her eat before hand).

The one remaining possibility the researchers considered is that the male ended up feeling satiated with wax worms just by watching the females chow down on them. But the males showed identical feeding behaviors whether they watched their partners eat or not.

The researchers conclude their experiments show these birds are capable of attributing a specific mental state to others (namely, desiring a mealworm). They base this on the fact that the males weren’t simply giving the females what they wanted. In other words, their frequency of gift types didn’t match the frequency at which they ate. In addition, they note the females didn’t provide any signals that the males used to determine what to feed them. With those two possibilities eliminated, the authors conclude that the males were inferring the desires of the females.

(via Birds infer their partner’s desires during bonding ritual | Ars Technica)

Navy To Replace Military Dolphins With Knifefish Drones

The Navy has now set its sights on the Knifefish, named for the freshwater fish that images objects using electric fields. At 19 feet (5.8m) and 1700 pounds (770kg), the torpedo-shaped drone is much larger than the Seafox and will greatly extend its capabilities.

It is powered by lithium-ion batteries and can remain active for up to 16 hours, giving it a much longer range. It also uses a low-frequency synthetic aperture sonar that can penetrate beneath a soft sea floor. The Knifefish will be able to tell actual mines from other submerged debris with better accuracy. Mines will be able to be fingerprinted in real time by using resonance patterns obtained during imaging and comparing them to known signatures.

Eight units will be jointly built by General Dynamics and Bluefin Robotics, at a total cost of $20 million. Naval divers will still carry out many mine clearing operations themselves, but drones will reduce dive frequency and associated risk.

(via US Navy finally starts replacing killer dolphins with mine-hunting Knifefish drones | ExtremeTech)

Tool Use by Captive Cockatoo Drives Researchers to Re-Evaluate The Relationship Between Tools and Intelligence

Figaro used a different tool in each subsequent trial, and in most cases made some modifications to it before successfully retrieving a nut. In at least one case, he performed four separate modifications before putting a stick to use in retrieving the nut. He also managed to use the tool in two different ways, often alternating dragging and sweeping motions in his efforts to pull the food within reach.

After observing this, the authors used the same setup to test another male cockatoo, but he showed no indications of tool use. But a female who witnessed Figaro in action (she was in the cage “to avoid the stress of isolation”) showed the impressive abilities of birds to absorb social information. Heidi, the bird in question, attempted to insert sticks into the enclosure, as she had seen Figaro do. She did not, however, adjust their sizes or attempt to manipulate them once they were on the same side of the wire mesh as the nut. Perhaps if she had been given more time to observe Figaro at work (he chased her off), she might have had a greater sense of how to use the sticks.

The authors conclude that tool use is within the cognitive capacity of this species, even though they have never been observed using tools in the wild. They’re not sure why Figaro had the breakthrough that he did, but it’s clear that the behavior, once learned, was sticking around.

The authors note the corvids and parrots are so widely separated within the birds’ evolutionary tree that it’s unlikely that they had a common, tool-using ancestor. They argue that, although we tend to think of tool use as a distinctive mental capacity, it might be more accurate to consider it as a possible outcome of having some minimum level of what they call “physical intelligence.” Goffin’s cockatoos don’t normally exercise this capacity but, under the right circumstances, it can be uncovered.

(via Parrot in captivity manufactures tools, something not seen in the wild | Ars Technica)

Elephant in Korean Zoo Manipulates Vocal Tract With Trunk To Speak Human Words

Koshik outsmarted nature, which graced him with a large vocal tract, by putting his trunk in his mouth, which adjusts the shape of his vocal tract so it can produce sounds similar to human speech.

According to the study, no one has recorded an elephant doing that before. Researchers found that Koshik can imitate five words: “anja”(sit down), “aniya” (no), “nuo” (lie down), “choa” (good) and “annyong.” They measured the accuracy by comparing transcriptions of Koshik’s speech to that of humans.

His speech isn’t perfect, but “annyong” is the word Koshik repeated with the most success…

The researchers concluded that Koshik learned to imitate human speech because he lacked social interaction with members of his species during his developmental stage. The elephant spent most of his time around humans. This research suggests that one function of vocal learning, besides communicating ideas, is to cement social bonds, even across species.

(via Lonely Asian Elephant Learns To Speak 5 Words In Korean | Popular Science)

Chimps and Bonobos Found to Lack Sense of Fairness, Uniquely Human Characteristic

The scientists, including Prof. Keith Jensen, from Queen Mary’s School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, put the apes through a series of ultimatum games. One against the other, they had to choose whether to steal or leave the other’s grapes. The games were set up in a variety of different ways involving equal proportions of grapes and others were split with a higher proportion given to one over the other.

“In each scenario one ape had to choose whether to steal the grapes or leave a portion of grapes for the other. We found that consistently they would steal the food without taking into account whether their action would have an effect on their partner.”

“Neither the chimpanzees nor bonobos seemed to care whether food was stolen or not, or whether the outcomes were fair or not, as long as they got something. Our findings support other studies of chimpanzees but also extend these to bonobos. Both apes have no concern for fairness or the effects that their choices may have on others; in stark contrast to the way humans behave,” 

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2012/08/chimps-don%E2%80%99t-care-about-fairness

Panel of Scientists Unanimously Determine that Mammals and Birds Possess Consciousness

Earlier this month, some of the leading scientists from around the world congregated …in Cambridge to discuss the evidence [of non-human consciousness] that has amassed over the years.  The experts reached a unanimous decision that animals – specifically mammals and birds – are in fact conscious beings.

Through advancements in brain imaging techniques such as fMRI and EEG machines, the scientists concluded that animals show a sufficient degree of characteristics that indicate they are not as non-human as some had believed. The official decision was reached late into the night after the Francis Crick Memorial Conference on July 7th. …The group consisted of 25 of the planet’s top minds on the mind, including honorary guest Stephen Hawking.

The scientists discerned the key differences in human and animal brains, mainly found in the frontal cortex, do not play a role in the phenomenon we associate with consciousness. The decision does not in any sense define what consciousness is, which will be a debate that continues to rage on. But moving forward, there are many consequences to this finding that will need to be addressed as we look to develop a more humane relationship with animals.

(via Non-Human Consciousness Exists Say Experts. Now What? | Singularity Hub)