PYF Story of animal intelligence. - The Something Awful Forums

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Post Your Favorite (or Request) > PYF Story of animal intelligence.

amoraxkaka: Jan 4, 2013

Basically, post a story from wherever about animal intelligence. It can be from a website or anecdotal, just as long as it's interesting!

I'll start with the tale of a Japanese macaque monkey who has learned how to bartend. Link here (because I'm too lazy to write the whole thing out): http://www.cracked.com/article_2015...ht-animals.html (It's at the end of the article).

EDIT: Here's another from a D&D thread:

Nathilus posted:

My horse, Beavis (or Something To Talk About, outta Jet Texas, if you want official names) was quite a character. He had a massive fixation on food, as is common in gieldings, but also a number of personal eccentricities. He HATED hollow sounding bridges and grates and would not go over them at any cost, whereas his full blooded sister who was even more high strung had no issue with them. He was also a trickster. Aside from eating and GOTTA GO FAST, the third pillar of his life was Harrassing Mares. He'd just constantly gently caress with them like a grade school boy does to the girls that catch his interest, except with a lot more nipping and physical harrassment and less of everything else.

As his rider, I had a deeper level of communication with him. I always thought it sounded like bullshit when people claimed a psychic seeming connection to an animal they ride a lot, but it's amazingly true. It's not truly psychic of course, just nonverbal. My favorite example of this link of communication and trust happened when I rode at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. It's a huge event, one of the biggest in the world, but for some drat reason they had a closed loving gate 40 feet behind the timer line. So you had to be going full speed at the timer and stopped by the gate. As I was reining in as hard as I could, I felt Beavis' panic level rising rapidly. I immediately understood that we weren't going to make the stop in time. I tried guiding him to one side so as to approach the fence at a more oblique angle and thus buy us more time. It didn't work. When a horse really panics, they stop accepting input. To be fair to him, the gate was of the steel pipe variety. Not something you want to smash into at 15+ mph. Anyway at that moment, he turned his head and shot an eye back at me as he sometimes did, usually his way of calling me a dumbass. I noticed his pupil wasn't dilated as much as could be expected. My horse had just shot me a resolute stare. He then did something I've never seen another horse do. He jumped sideways and skidded to a halt sideways against the gate, putting his legs at great risk but shielding me from contact. This is not the natural reaction of a horse in these circumstance. An untrained horse would probably try to throw you. They can stop a lot easier without the extra weight. A trained one might blindly fly into the gate or turn, depending on how freaked out they are. Instead, Beavis made an assessment, determined to put himself at some risk for his rider's sake, and as dull and freaked out as he was, he followed through with the plan brilliantly.

amoraxkaka fucked around with this message at Jan 8, 2013 around 18:38

# ? Jan 8, 2013 18:30

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 24, 2013 14:51

ulilileeloo dallas: Nov 20, 2008

Im a cat and I swear when I smoke weed I can type in English for about 30 seconds and its really great because Imeow meow meow meow meow meow meow

# ? Jan 8, 2013 19:30

Fandyien: Feb 10, 2012; Liberal
Neanderthals

Someone posted this in the YOSPOS cats thread a few months back and I've had it bookmarked since. It's an awesome collection of animal intelligence stories from a pet fancy magazine from the 1890s.

http://publicdomainreview.org/2011/...spectator-1896/

# ? Jan 8, 2013 19:35

zidane13: Jan 2, 2005; "C'mon, aren't they supposed to get all
dewy-eyed, "Ooh, Mr. Yuri! Thank you ever so much! SMOOCH! Ain't that how it's s'posed to go? Oh man, now I'm all depressed."

ulilileeloo dallas posted:

Im a cat and I swear when I smoke weed I can type in English for about 30 seconds and its really great because Imeow meow meow meow meow meow meow

You're a better cat than mine, she won't even lick my fat spliff.

# ? Jan 9, 2013 02:10

Peanut President: Nov 5, 2008

Crows will drop walnuts in crosswalks, wait for cars to drive over them, then go into the crosswalk when they have the signal to pick up the meat. They will sit on the curb and wait.

# ? Jan 9, 2013 17:44

DrBouvenstein: Feb 28, 2007; I think I'm a doctor, but that doesn't make me a doctor. This fancy avatar does.

Peanut President posted:

Crows will drop walnuts in crosswalks, wait for cars to drive over them, then go into the crosswalk when they have the signal to pick up the meat. They will sit on the curb and wait.

Crows are probably in the top 5 smartest animals on the planet. Like...it's us (maybe...), then somewhere in the next four are dolphins, chimps, gorillas, and crows, not necessarily in that order.

Here's a video about what you're talking about :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGPGknpq3e0

And here's a crow using three successive tools to get some food:

The description is worth posting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZE4BT8QSgZk

quote:

New experiments by Oxford University scientists reveal that New Caledonian crows can spontaneously use up to three tools in the correct sequence to achieve a goal, something never before observed in non-human animals without explicit training.

Betty does not attempt to probe for food, but immediately uses the tabletop tool to retrieve a medium-length tool. She then appears to look into the food-tube, without probing, before using the tool to extract the longest tool. Finally, she uses this tool to retrieve the reward from the food-tube. It is noteworthy that she seems to actively dispose of each tool as its role in the sequence is completed, and she also turns the tools around in order to place the cross-piece distal, where it is most effective as a hook-like instrument.

Here's a HufPost video with a professor who studies crows:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/..._n_1943816.html

And a crow having fun snowboarding:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzp7GMRibQ0

# ? Jan 9, 2013 18:15

Zephonith: Jun 25, 2008; Maybe if I actually played Mafia, I'd get a better gift from my Mafia Secret Santa.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5l0DNaVQ-P4

The Kea is a really smart mountain parrot which lives in New Zealand. They're right up there with crows in tool use. One of my favourite stories about them is that there was a conservation worker in the remote bush, setting vermin traps to protect native bird eggs from predation. He noticed some juvenile kea following him along and didn't think much of it until he finished a few days later, when he realised that the birds had actually been setting the traps off with sticks for fun, ruining all his work.

# ? Jan 12, 2013 11:00

Nastyman: Jul 11, 2007; Men call it 'The Weed'
Gods 'The Herb of the Field'
'Seaweed of Chills' in hell
'Bong-Food' the giants,
'Fair-Trees' the elves,
'The Dank' is it called by the Wanes.

I've got a small windchime hanging on the handle of the door between the living room and the kitchen. My cat has somehow learned to use it as a door bell. Whenever he wants to be fed or go outside, he'll swat it a couple of times and then sit down and wait for me to come open the door.

I don't even know how he made the connection of "chimes ring" -> "door opens" but he has complete control of me now

Nastyman fucked around with this message at Jan 12, 2013 around 11:09

# ? Jan 12, 2013 11:06

Oh Hell No: Oct 10, 2007; I've got the world on a string.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBrmaE82uY4

An elephant messing around with a smartphone.

# ? Jan 13, 2013 05:51

Torka: Jan 5, 2008

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2...ternationalnews

quote:

Four swimmers were saved from a great white shark by a pod of altruistic dolphins, who swam in circles around them until the humans could escape.

Rob Howes, a British-born lifeguard, had gone swimming with his daughter, Niccy, and two of her friends off Ocean beach near Whangarei on the North Island, when the dolphins suddenly appeared. At first, he thought the mammals were being playful, but he soon realised the danger the swimmers were in.

"They started to herd us up, they pushed all four of us together by doing tight circles around us," Mr Howes told the New Zealand Press Association.

He tried to drift away from the group, but two of the bigger dolphins herded him back - just as he spotted a three-metre [10ft] great white shark heading towards him. "I just recoiled," he said. "It was only about two metres away from me, the water was crystal clear and it was as clear as the nose on my face. They had corralled us up to protect us."

The dolphins kept their vigil for 40 minutes until the shark lost interest, and the group could swim 100m back to the shore.

# ? Jan 13, 2013 06:04

Chamale: Jul 11, 2010; Men on the moon and men spinning around the earth and there's not no attention paid to earthly law and order.

Torka posted:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2...ternationalnews

Dolphins have also been known to get angry at swimmers who scare schools of fish and drag them out to sea. Dolphins are dicks.

Magpies and crows are very smart, and display advanced social behaviour that isn't even seen among most primates. Magpies communicate specific information with body language and vocalizations, and use their voices to coordinate attacks against larger birds. During the winter they live together in groups and split up for the mating season in the spring. A tribe of magpies controls an area of territory proportional to their numbers, and during the spring the magpies peacefully divide the territory based on dominance. There's folklore that says magpies hold funerals for their dead and hold trials to punish members of the tribe, but that behaviour's never been properly documented.

# ? Jan 13, 2013 08:21

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 24, 2013 14:51

AKZ: Nov 4, 2009

I grew up on a farm and we have a horse named Sport who is now a little lame and really nothing more than a large goofy pet. Late one night my dad realized that he had left the barn light on, so he throws on a coat and walks down to the barn to turn it off. Sport was standing in his stall and my dad being the nice guy that he is gives him some grain. A couple days later dad looks out and sees that the barn light is on again. Dad is pretty sure that he hadn't left it on but walks out all the same and turns it off. Sport is again standing in the stall and dad gives him some grain. This happens about three more times, now dad is getting curious. One night the sun sets and the light is on again. Dad decides to wait a bit. After about an hour the lights flip on and off a few times and then stays on. Dad walks down and looks through one of the small windows on the bottom floor of the barn and sees Sport stretching his neck over the stall wall and using his tongue to flip the light switch on and off. Sport realized that whenever my dad had to come out to the barn because the light was on he got some extra grain, so he had started to turn the light on himself. Pretty smart horse. He also will steal hats and play keep away with them.

# ? Feb 22, 2013 01:31

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Post Your Favorite (or Request) > PYF Story of animal intelligence.