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The Surprising Complexity of Animal Memories
- RappingBoomer 7y ago"Psychologists once locked an ape in a room, for which they had arranged only four ways of escaping. Then they spied on him to see which of the four he would find. The ape escaped a fifth way." -robert a heinlein
- agumonkey 7y agoSome documentaries also showed how monkeys would cooperate to solve a random problem. One I remember involved grabbing two different ropes to actuate a door. It took them half a second to organize try a few things and settle on each side to open the door. I don't think we would have done better out of the blue.
- stevenwoo 7y agoOne thing I've never seen discussed is how the behavior tests eliminate sense of smell (or some other sensory input that is different/better in the test subject versus humans) as a possible tool used by animals - several of the tests they discussed seemed like they could be explained by the test subject smelling what is the situation rather than reasoning.
- ggm 7y agoA good point but to assume it applies to all tests and invalidates the metaconcept might be too strong. It would not be hard to wipe both with fruit beforehand or wipe handles with alcohol etc. So I assume within the discipline well formed experimental setups account for this because it's too easy to do, to ignore. The corvid waxworm experiment for instance is a choice between two foods not one food and none, and crucially the birds don't even bother testing the caches of insects which have aged out. Yes birds have a good sense of smell but I think this tends to a marginal issue in the experiment not a deciding factor.