Author: Edward Lee Thorndike
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Animal behavior
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Author: Sonja Ingrid Yoerg
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674008700
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Researched, Clever as a Fox will challenge your previously held notions about animals and the measure of intelligence, both theirs and ours.

Author: Frans de Waal
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393246191
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
A New York Times bestseller: "A passionate and convincing case for the sophistication of nonhuman minds." —Alison Gopnik, The Atlantic Hailed as a classic, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? explores the oddities and complexities of animal cognition—in crows, dolphins, parrots, sheep, wasps, bats, chimpanzees, and bonobos—to reveal how smart animals really are, and how we’ve underestimated their abilities for too long. Did you know that octopuses use coconut shells as tools, that elephants classify humans by gender and language, and that there is a young male chimpanzee at Kyoto University whose flash memory puts that of humans to shame? Fascinating, entertaining, and deeply informed, de Waal’s landmark work will convince you to rethink everything you thought you knew about animal—and human—intelligence.

Author: Donald R. Griffin
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022622712X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
In Animal Minds, Donald R. Griffin takes us on a guided tour of the recent explosion of scientific research on animal mentality. Are animals consciously aware of anything, or are they merely living machines, incapable of conscious thoughts or emotional feelings? How can we tell? Such questions have long fascinated Griffin, who has been a pioneer at the forefront of research in animal cognition for decades, and is recognized as one of the leading behavioral ecologists of the twentieth century. With this new edition of his classic book, which he has completely revised and updated, Griffin moves beyond considerations of animal cognition to argue that scientists can and should investigate questions of animal consciousness. Using examples from studies of species ranging from chimpanzees and dolphins to birds and honeybees, he demonstrates how communication among animals can serve as a "window" into what animals think and feel, just as human speech and nonverbal communication tell us most of what we know about the thoughts and feelings of other people. Even when they don't communicate about it, animals respond with sometimes surprising versatility to new situations for which neither their genes nor their previous experiences have prepared them, and Griffin discusses what these behaviors can tell us about animal minds. He also reviews the latest research in cognitive neuroscience, which has revealed startling similarities in the neural mechanisms underlying brain functioning in both humans and other animals. Finally, in four chapters greatly expanded for this edition, Griffin considers the latest scientific research on animal consciousness, pro and con, and explores its profound philosophical and ethical implications.

Author: Mary Roach
Publisher: Disney Electronic Content
ISBN: 1426210035
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 65

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Book Description
The Animal Intelligence Bundle: “Minds of Their Own” by Virginia Morell (March 2008) “Almost Human” by Mary Roach (April 2008) “The Genius of Swarms” by Peter Miller (July 2007) In “Minds of Their Own,” Virginia Morell provides an overview of the science of animal intelligence. She introduces you to an African gray parrot named Alex, a bonobo named Kanzi, and a border collie named Betsy. Each of these animals tells us something interesting about the way they perceive and manipulate their world. The article also looks at what scientists are learning about the intelligence of dolphins and crows, beyond mere communication. In “Almost Human,” Mary Roach takes us to the savannahs of Senegal to meet a group of 34 chimpanzees, whose behavior and social structures have given scientists some important clues about the nature of their communication and intelligence. In “The Genius of Swarms,” Peter Miller looks at the collective behavior of ants, bees, and other insects for what they can tell us about social organization and how sometimes intelligence lies outside of the individual brain. This article served as the basis for his book, The Smart Swarm: How Understanding Flocks, Schools, and Colonies Can Make Us Better at Communicating, Decision Making, and Getting Things Done.

Author: Virginia Morell
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
ISBN: 0307461440
Category : Animal behavior
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Explores the frontiers of research on animal cognition and emotion, offering a surprising examination into the hearts and minds of wild and domesticated animals.

Author: George Page
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0767909313
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
In the bestselling tradition of When Elephants Weep and Dogs Don't Lie About Love, Inside the Animal Mind is a groundbreaking exploration of the nature and depth of animal intelligence. While in the past scientists have refused to acknowledge that animals have anything like human intelligence, a growing body of research reveals otherwise. We’ve discovered ants that use leaves as tools to cross bodies of water, woodpecker finches that hold twigs in their beaks to dig for grubs, and bonobo apes that can use sticks to knock down fruit or pole-vault over water. Not only do animals use tools–some also display an ability to learn and problem-solve. Based on the latest scientific and anecdotal evidence culled from animal experts in the labs and the field, Inside the Animal Mind is an engrossing look at animal intelligence, cognitive ability, problem solving, and emotion. George Page, originator and host of the long-running PBS series Nature, offers us an informed, entertaining, and humanistic investigation of the minds of predators and scavengers, birds and primates, rodents and other species. Illustrated with twenty-four black-and-white photographs, the book is the companion to the three-part, hour-long show of the same name, hosted by Page.

Author: Marc Bekoff
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262523226
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 508

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Book Description
The fifty-seven original essays in this book provide a comprehensive overview of the interdisciplinary field of animal cognition. The contributors include cognitive ethologists, behavioral ecologists, experimental and developmental psychologists, behaviorists, philosophers, neuroscientists, computer scientists and modelers, field biologists, and others. The diversity of approaches is both philosophical and methodological, with contributors demonstrating various degrees of acceptance or disdain for such terms as "consciousness" and varying degrees of concern for laboratory experimentation versus naturalistic research. In addition to primates, particularly the nonhuman great apes, the animals discussed include antelopes, bees, dogs, dolphins, earthworms, fish, hyenas, parrots, prairie dogs, rats, ravens, sea lions, snakes, spiders, and squirrels. The topics include (but are not limited to) definitions of cognition, the role of anecdotes in the study of animal cognition, anthropomorphism, attention, perception, learning, memory, thinking, consciousness, intentionality, communication, planning, play, aggression, dominance, predation, recognition, assessment of self and others, social knowledge, empathy, conflict resolution, reproduction, parent-young interactions and caregiving, ecology, evolution, kin selection, and neuroethology.

Author: Charles P. Thompson
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 1317713966
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
The organization of the first Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition (SARMAC) conference centered around two specifically identifiable research topics -- autobiographical memory and eyewitness memory. These two areas -- long-time staples on the menu of investigators of memory in more natural settings -- differ on a variety of dimensions, perhaps most notably in their specific goals for scientific inquiry and application. For many questions about memory and cognition that are of interest to scientific psychology, there have been historical as well as rather arbitrary reasons for their assignment to the autobiographical or eyewitness memory fields. Perhaps as a result of differing historical orientations, the first volume's seven autobiographical memory chapters focus upon the qualities or types of recall from research participants, whereas the seven chapters in the eyewitness memory volume generally focus upon the quantity (a concern for completeness) and accuracy of recall. This interest in the ultimate end-product and its application within the legal process in general encourages eyewitness memory investigators to modify their testing procedures continually in an attempt to gain even more information from participants about an event. Indeed, several of the eyewitness memory chapters reflect such attempts. Beyond the specific contributions of each chapter to the literature on autobiographical and eyewitness memory, the editors hope that the reader will come away with some general observations: * the autobiographical and eyewitness memory fields are thriving; * these two fields are likely to remain center stage in the further investigation of memory in natural contexts; * although the autobiographical and eyewitness memory chapters have been segregated in these two volumes, the separation is often more arbitrary than real and connections between the two areas abound; * the two research traditions are entirely mindful of fundamental laboratory methods, research, and theory -- sometimes drawing their research inspirations from that quarter; and * the two fields -- though driven largely by everyday memory concerns -- can contribute to a more basic understanding of memory at both an empirical and a theoretical level.

Author: Paul Shepard
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820342343
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
In a world increasingly dominated by human beings, the survival of other species becomes more and more questionable. In this brilliant book, Paul Shepard offers a provocative alternative to an "us or them" mentality, proposing that other species are integral to humanity's evolution and exist at the core of our imagination. This trait, he argues, compels us to think of animals in order to be human. Without other living species by which to measure ourselves, Shepard warns, we would be less mature, care less for and be more careless of all life, including our own kind.