Elephants Smell Out Differences in Quantity
A new study finds that elephants can discriminate between two quantities of food using only their sense of smell. The study is an example of the move towards more species-specific, ecologically valid cognition tests and could have applications in conservation.
Read more at my Animal Minds blog: Elephants Smell Out Differences in Quantity.
New Brown Alum Profile: Andrew Beck
Brown alum Andrew Beck believes that pathology will be one of the first areas of medicine to benefit greatly from artificial intelligence. He is so sure of AI’s promise that, in 2017, he left a tenure-track position at Harvard to start his company, PathAI.
Read more from the Brown Alumni Magazine: Pathology Breakthrough?
Do Spiders Think?
Spider webs can be beautiful, intricate, and deadly – but what can they tell us about the spiders who build them? Orb weaving spiders’ flexible behavior during web construction seems to indicate some degree of insight or understanding.
Read more at my Animal Minds blog: Do Spiders Think?
Crows Infer Weight of Objects by Observing Them in a Breeze
Humans use a variety of cues to gauge an object’s weight without directly handling it, including how easily it can be moved. For instance, if we see one object blowing down the street in the wind while another object remains stationary, we can infer which object is heavier.
But what about other animals? I take a look at a clever new experiment with New Caledonian crows that suggests they possess this ability, too.
Read it here: Observant Crows Make Weighty Decisions.
