Animal Einsteins
When it comes to intelligence, human beings are the top dogs of the animal kingdom. Or so we tell ourselves. But in recent years, scientists have been documenting surprising intelligence and emotional depth in animals ranging from humble honeybees to thundering elephants. Through studies in labs and in the wild, researchers have found animals communicating complex ideas, solving problems, using tools and expressing their feelings-- behaviors once thought to be uniquely human.
The intelligence we're talking about is more than, say, training a dog to detect cancer in humans, a feat that may save many lives. It's the ability of the animal to use an innate trait for a complex purpose. Here are some amazing examples. Artistic Monkey Business
Artistic Monkey Business
When Janet Schmid became executive director of the Little River Zoo in Norman, Oklahoma, in 1996, she learned a lot about the intelligence of monkeys. She and her husband adopted a young male who had a naughty personality, and named him Mr. Bailey. The monkey particularly liked taking ear rides, insisting that he insert the ignition key and ride shotgun in the passenger's seat. "He loved to duck below the window as we'd come to an intersection", Schmid recalls, "when we'd stop, he'd jump up and laugh at the car next to us, just to get a rise out of the passengers".
Now 12 years old, Mr.Bailey has become an avid painter. He uses a variety of brush strokes to create colorful, abstract canvases and, like any temperamental artist, prefers not to be disturbed while creating his art. "He'll paint steadily for almost an hour and won't let anyone interrupt him until he puts down his brush", says Schmid. "He's amazing to watch because you can tell there's a thought process occurring. When we raised him, we quit watching TV because he was so entertaining".
Ivy League Parrot
The term birdbrain is considered an insult, but some birds actually are pretty brainy. One African grey parrot in suburban Boston is said to have the cognitive abilities of a five-year-old child. Alex (for Avian Learning Experiment) is a 29-year-old bird that's been tutored most of his life by Irene Pepperberg, PhD, a Harvard-educated professor now teaching at Brandeis University. Alex can identify 50 different objects, seven colors, five shapes, quantities up to six, and the concepts of bigget, smaller, same and different. "And he said, 'I'm sorry'", reports Pepperberg. "He knew what was appropriate to say".
Pepperberg insists that Alex makes reasoned decisions-- meaning he possesses language abilities once thought to separate humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. During an experiment in 2004, researchers gave Alex different-colored blocks in sets of two, three and six. When asked which color group had five blocks, Alex replied, "None". And he repeated the answer in duplicate tests. Although Alex had previously learned the term to describe the difference between two identically sized objects, he apparently interpreted the concept of "none" as an absence of quantity all on his own.
"The important thing was not just that he understood a zero-like concept", says Pepperberg, "but that he was able to take information from one domain and apply it to another. That's a lot like a high school student answering questions on a quiz show". Such feats have made Alex a celebrity.
Cultured Orangutans (猩猩)
Because orangutans and humans share 97 percent of the same DNA, it's no surprise that the primates exhibit impressive brainpower. Take Chantek, a 28-year-old living in Zoo Atlanta. Raised like a human child by anthropologist H. Lyn Miles, PhD, Chantek learned to use a toilet, clean his room and receive an allowance, which he spent on trips to McDonald's. Today he knows more than 150 words in sign language and can comprehend spoken English. Likened to a four-year
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C．NG
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