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 Post subject: Amazing animals
PostPosted: Wed Mar 10, 2010 10:40 pm 
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When I found this video today, I thought we could start a thread where we collect pictures, videos and stories about the wonders that nature has created. It's only a short video, but ever so fascinating: Underwater astonishments


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 Post subject: Re: Amazing animals
PostPosted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 12:45 am 

Joined: Fri Nov 07, 2008 2:02 pm
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Location: UK Worcester/Hereford border
Another fabulous TED video. Thanks for this, I copied and pasted the you tube link to email to some friends. xx

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 Post subject: Re: Amazing animals
PostPosted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 11:27 pm 

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Absolutely great!
Thank you Romy!

:love:

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 Post subject: Re: Amazing animals
PostPosted: Fri Mar 12, 2010 9:29 am 
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I suddenly became so nostalgic about scuba diving ))) The world under the water is truly amazing and what I love about it, is the fact that it is so peaceful, makes u slow down. its jsut wonderful and the TED camera captures that wonderfully! :love:

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 Post subject: Re: Amazing animals
PostPosted: Sat Jan 29, 2011 10:49 am 
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I don't really have words after watching this talk - just see it yourself: Beverly + Dereck Joubert: Life lessons from big cats


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 Post subject: Re: Amazing animals
PostPosted: Sat Jan 29, 2011 1:03 pm 
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I happen to love the newest WWF commercial on the dutch television.

It's not only about what Nature has created, but also what humans are and have created, since we are in fact part of the world.

Ofcourse the overall message is how special the world is and that we have to protect it (against ourselves...)

But it shows how close we are to nature, that combined with great images... I just love this commercial.

Not sure whether or not it fits in the topic... but that's what immediately popped into my mind and I'd like to share :yes:

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 Post subject: Re: Amazing animals
PostPosted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 1:30 am 

Joined: Fri Nov 07, 2008 2:02 pm
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Location: UK Worcester/Hereford border
I liked this one and the comments the video gathered.
Extraordinary Hippo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaU8dbVgneU

and this National Geographic from another area shows this is not a one off.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrBqEslJ ... re=related

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 Post subject: Re: Amazing animals
PostPosted: Thu Dec 22, 2011 10:44 pm 
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I just found this video, which is dealing with cooperation and morality among animals. So refreshing to watch this, especially after having read so much about the uniqueness of humans when it comes to cooperation. :)

Frans de Waal on morality among animals

Enjoy! :f:

And here is another video that I have linked to in another topic a while ago, but as it fits better here, I am adding the link to this topic as well: Susan Savage-Rumbaugh: Apes that write, start fires and play Pac-Man


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 Post subject: Re: Amazing animals
PostPosted: Fri Dec 23, 2011 4:08 pm 

Joined: Fri Nov 07, 2008 2:02 pm
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Location: UK Worcester/Hereford border
Shared the above Ted talk on my social accounts, animals and birds are truly amazing.

My favourites, (because I have rescued, rehab, release a few over the years and got to know some quite close up, - even whilst trying not to imprint when they will have option of return to the wild with food left out until supporting themselves) are Corvids, Crows mostly and a Rook.
They probably could learn to read a book, type a keyboard, order in food, and rather than reconcile after a fight with another bird, because bonded partners have shared empathy, they rarely squabble, but if involved in a disagreement with another of their flock will go for reassurance to their mate, and not forgive or make up with the bird who is of less importance in daily life. Not arguing with your best friend and partner seems sensible.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... d-way.html
Settling arguments the corvid way.

http://users.ox.ac.uk/~kgroup/index.html Betty is quicker at working out problem solving than I would be, especially given she has a beak rather than two hands.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... crows.html
Crows Have Human-Like Intelligence, Author Says.
Crows make tools, play tricks on each other, and caw among kin in a dialect all their own.
Savage's book, Crows: Encounters with the Wise Guys of the Avian World (October 2005), explores the burgeoning field of crow research, which suggests that the birds share with humans several hallmarks of higher intelligence, including tool use and sophisticated social behavior.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7027923.stm
Miniature cameras have given scientists a rare glimpse into how New Caledonian crows behave in the wild.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-10-cro ... shing.html
(PhysOrg.com) -- A new study published in Animal Behavior shows that crows are capable of recognizing symbols designed to represent different quantities and is one of many different studies currently looking at the behavior and intelligence of crows.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 644.x/full
Intelligence in Corvids and Apes: A Case of Convergent Evolution? A rather interesting study.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... z1hJs3klko this article condenses some of the findings, there are some youtube video studies but I have not got the links listed.

http://www.thecorvidjournal.blogspot.co ... telligence


http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/punct ... CMP=twt_gu
A new study adds support to two earlier reports that songbirds and parrots are each other's closest relatives (Psittacopasserae), indicating that vocal learning abilities appeared in this group of birds 30 million years earlier than originally assumed.

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 Post subject: Re: Amazing animals
PostPosted: Fri Dec 23, 2011 4:16 pm 

Joined: Fri Nov 07, 2008 2:02 pm
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Location: UK Worcester/Hereford border
http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy ... orvids.php

added this link because comments also has further links.
NOT so long ago, the idea that birds might possess some form of what we call intelligence seemed quite ridiculous. Yet this view has changed dramatically in recent years, with numerous studies showing that some bird species are capable of complex cognition. Members of one family of birds in particular - the Corvidae, which includes crows, rooks and ravens - have an ability to make and use tools which is at least as sophisticated as that of chimpanzees.

Two new studies, published this week, provide yet more demonstrations of the remarkable cognitive abilities of this group of birds. One shows that Caledonian crows can use up to three tools in sequence to obtain food, the other that rooks can use stones to raise the level of water in a vessel in order to bring a floating worm into reach.

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 Post subject: Re: Amazing animals
PostPosted: Sat Dec 24, 2011 1:49 am 

Joined: Fri Nov 07, 2008 2:02 pm
Posts: 1072
Location: UK Worcester/Hereford border
Pigeons have shown that they can learn abstract rules about numbers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/23/scien ... d=fb-share

A pigeon performing a math test. When the bird pecks a shape, a box appears around it.
By JAMES GORMAN
Published: December 22, 2011


By now, the intelligence of birds is well known. Alex the African gray parrot had great verbal skills. Scrub jays, which hide caches of seeds and other food, have remarkable memories. And New Caledonian crows make and use tools in ways that would put the average home plumber to shame.


Pigeons, it turns out, are no slouches either. It was known that they could count. But all sorts of animals, including bees, can count. Pigeons have now shown that they can learn abstract rules about numbers, an ability that until now had been demonstrated only in primates. In the 1990s scientists trained rhesus monkeys to look at groups of items on a screen and to rank them from the lowest number of items to the highest.

They learned to rank groups of one, two and three items in various sizes and shapes. When tested, they were able to do the task even when unfamiliar numbers of things were introduced. In other words, having learned that two was more than one and three more than two, they could also figure out that five was more than two, or eight more than six.

Damian Scarf, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Otago, in New Zealand, tried the same experiment with pigeons, and he and two colleagues report in the current issue of the journal Science that the pigeons did just as well as the monkeys.

Elizabeth Brannon, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, and one of the scientists who did the original experiments with monkeys, was impressed by the new results. “Their performance looks just like the monkeys’,” she said.

Score one for the birds. The pigeons had learned an abstract rule: peck images on a screen in order, lower numbers to higher. It may have taken a year of training, with different shapes, sizes and colors of items, always in groups of one, two or three, but all that work paid off when it was time for higher math.

Given groups of six and nine, they could pick, or peck, the images in the right order. This is one more bit of evidence of how smart birds really are, and it is intriguing because the pigeons’ performance was so similar to the monkeys’. “I was surprised,” Dr. Scarf said.

He and his colleagues wrote that the common ability to learn rules about numbers is an example either of different groups — birds and primates, in this case — evolving these abilities separately, or of both pigeons and primates using an ability that was already present in their last common ancestor.

That would really be something, because the common ancestor of pigeons and primates would have been alive around 300 million years ago, before dinosaurs and mammals. It may be that counting was already important, but Dr. Scarf said that if he had to guess, he would lean toward the idea that the numerical ability he tested evolved separately. “I can definitely see why both monkeys and pigeons could profit from this ability,” he said.

No testing has been done with numbers greater than nine, so whether a pigeon can count large numbers of bread crumbs or popcorn kernels is a question still open to investigation.

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 Post subject: Re: Amazing animals
PostPosted: Thu Sep 19, 2013 4:57 pm 
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I was just thinking again about first person view camera setups, when stumbled upon this video of an eagle in flight - just from the perspective of the eagle :ieks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3QrhdfLCO8

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