Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Birds Do It.... so do Chimps and Dolphins

Display remarkable intelligence, that is...after spending all of yesterday discussing various aspects of personhood (from embryos to animals to artificial intelligence) at the Terasem conference, this article is timely in illustrating the evidence accumulating on animal intelligence:

'The chimp who outwits humans; the dolphin who says it with seaweed; the existential dog... An elephant that never forgets its extended family, a chimp that can outperform humans in a sophisticated test of visual memory and an amorous male dolphin that likes to say it with flowers -- well, a clump of river weeds to be more precise. These are just some of the recent observations from the field of animal behaviour. They appear to show that there is no limit to the intelligence of animals, but what do we really know about the true cognitive powers of the non-human brain?"

To read the rest of the article, click here. And to see a remarkable demonstration, click here.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey Linda! Nice blog. Intelligent topics. This is Justin Loew from over at the Immortality Institute. The email you gave me didn't work. Look me up at Imminst so that we can talk.