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DailyDirt: Smarter Than The Average Bear Cat... Bird?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Wed, Jun 22nd 2016 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Animals aren't as dumb as you might think, and the more we study our pets -- the more we find that we may not just be anthropomorphizing our favorite animals. Some animals definitely have personalities, and some can exhibit some pretty complex cognitive skills. If we can understand more and more animal brains, maybe we'll be able to figure out our own brains, too, someday. Here are just a few things to remember about cats, fish and birds.

Cats are pretty smart pets, and they may understand more than you think -- like cause and effect. Okay, that ability isn't exactly surprising, but cats might also understand a bit of physics, too -- but it probably won't help them when they're trapped in a box with a radioactive source connected to trigger a release of poison.
How long does a fish's memory really last? Finding Dory makes a joke out of fish having short term memory loss, but some researchers have measured some fish with memory spans that can last 3 months.
Bird brains are surprisingly packed with more neurons per pound than mammals (including primates). This might explain how some birds can make tools, pass the mirror test, understand cause and effect, and even be said to be as smart as a 5-year-old human child.

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

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Filed Under: animal cognition, biology, birds, brains, cats, fish, intelligence, smart animals, tool

8 Comments

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Lawrence D’Oliveiro, 22 Jun 2016 @ 5:16pm

Why Can Bird Brains Be So Much More Efficient Than Mammal Brains?
There is an idea that birds can be smarter than most mammals, in spite of having smaller brains, because their lungs are so much more efficient. Mammals have to breathe in and out through the same passages, whereas birds have separate in and out passages.
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- Anonymous Coward, 22 Jun 2016 @ 5:54pm
  
  Re: Why Can Bird Brains Be So Much More Efficient Than Mammal Brains?
  Time to start breeding hyper-intelligent parrots...
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afn29129 (profile), 22 Jun 2016 @ 5:22pm

Fish memory. Fish attention span
I'm not too sure how long a fish's memory is but their attention span is longer than the average teenager on his/her smartphone. About 8 seconds.

http://www.cnet.com/news/goldfish-the-actual-fish-not-the-crackers-may-have-a-better-attenti on-span-than-humans/
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- Lawrence D’Oliveiro, 22 Jun 2016 @ 6:02pm
  
  Re: About 8 seconds.
  I think it was Bill Bailey who did a joke about this, that a goldfish bowl had to be big enough so the fish would take 8 seconds to swim around it. And then they would be continually going, as they went round:
  
  “Oh, what a wonderful view!”
  
  “Oh, what a wonderful view!”
  
  “Oh, what a wonderful view!”
  
  If you made it slightly smaller, say 7 seconds, then it would be
  
  “Oh, what a wonderful view!”
  
  “Hang on, I’ve seen this bef--Oh, what a wonderful view!”
  
  “Hang on, I’ve seen this bef--Oh, what a wonderful view!”
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JoeCool (profile), 22 Jun 2016 @ 7:57pm

Smart birds - dumb reporters
By doing so, neuroscientist Suzana Herculano-Houzel and her team at Vanderbilt University discovered that avian brains contain more neurons per square inch than mammalian brains.

That would be per CUBIC inch.
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- Lawrence D’Oliveiro, 22 Jun 2016 @ 9:03pm
  
  Re: CUBIC inch.
  Odd that a country that fought a war of independence against the British Empire still clings so fondly to imperial units of measurement...
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  - Mason Wheeler (profile), 23 Jun 2016 @ 6:53am
    
    Re: Re: CUBIC inch.
    Not at all. It wasn't their measuring that we objected to.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 23 Jun 2016 @ 1:26pm

Can we make a corollary to "animals are smarter than we think"
...to admit that humans are stupider than we think?

I am sure many of our blunders come from presuming we're smarter than we are.
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