Of felines and humans.

Sometimes, we humans think we are unique in the animal world, in ways which, actually, we are not. There is a tendency to attribute to humans a special set of values and behaviours which, of course, we think, no animal could ever have. Recently, I have come to observe how similar another animal is, to us, in what, to me, were surprising ways.

At our house in Kuala Lumpur, we have five cats – well, one mother cat and four kittens. We didn’t actually buy these cats…the mother turned up one day, and miaowed in search of food…and we, touched, perhaps, gave her some. She has stayed ever since.

Now, not long ago, I noted something very sweet about the mummy cat’s behaviour. Whenever I put out food for her and her family of kittens, she would not eat anything. She would sit off to one side and let her kittens eat, watching them warmly. She was never seen to eat, until her kittens had had their fill. Sometimes, this meant that they left nothing for her…but she would not complain.

This was quite affecting to see. It seemed to speak of a motherly love, of the cat, for her kittens. She was putting their needs before her own. This is something which a human mother might readily do, of course – but it was a surprise, to me, to see a cat…an animal with quite a small brain…do so.

On another occasion, I saw another behaviour which is very familiar from human conduct. One of her kittens, has what I would call a bad personality. He is always hissing at everyone – be it human, or animal. He even hisses when he seeks food from us. It is a nasty little hiss and sounds quite offensive, in a way. Well, one day, he hissed at his own mother. She reacted swiftly by hissing back at him, then swiping him, stiffly, with her paw. He was knocked back.

This again, seemed very “human”. It was of a mother scolding her child and then slapping him, for his poor manners. Again, I found it unexpected, since the behaviours were exactly akin to what one would find in a human, in similar circumstances.

It is observations and reflections like this that lead me to understand that we should all be much more kindly to our fellow animals in this world. They are much more like us, than you might believe. Yes, they are simpler – but they often share common “emotions” , which allow us to see parts of ourselves in them. It would not surprise me if there were not some common nature and set of responses, spread widely throughout the animal kingdom. I have seen enough of such, in our cats, to believe so.

If you have any interesting animal stories, please share them below.

Thanks.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

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The escape artist.

Mochi is a clever little rabbit. Perhaps her big head is a clue to this.

In the very early days, when Mochi and her friend Sushi were new to their life with us and the cage they spent their nights in, she conceived a very cunning plan.

She had watched us open the cage, by lifting up the door, and tilting it outwards to lock it in position. So, one day, when she didn’t realize we were looking, she bit down on the cage door bars, then lifted her big head upwards, pushing the gate open quite a bit. Indeed, so successful was this manoeuvre that, after a few tugs, it was open enough for her cage mate, Sushi, to be able to stick her head through the gap. They were in the act of escaping.

At that point, we intervened and closed the cage, once more, upon our intended escapees.

To my mind, this little display was quite impressive for a three month old rabbit. For comparison, most three month old baby humans are not up to much.

Mochi and Sushi are turning out to be interesting little characters, each different from the other. Mochi is a real foodie and Sushi is a natural explorer. It is fun to watch them exploring the world, much in the way that it is fun to watch a baby do so. For me, the interest is heightened because they see the world like no baby would and so do things no baby would choose to do. So, too, is it rewarding to see how much my children are enjoying them.

Rabbits are a lot more interesting than I had supposed. I will let you know what they get up to.

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page. To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

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Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

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An elephant for breakfast.

Last week, I had an elephant for breakfast. That might sound a little greedy and anti-green...but I shall explain.

At breakfast time, in Chiangmai, Thailand, where we were staying, an elephant walked past the window, right outside our hotel bungalow. As you can imagine, this was rather a surreal sight. Now, not being one who has elephants walk past his window every morning, I rushed out with a camera and my son, Tiarnan, three, to see what this elephant was up to.

We found the elephant just outside the main hotel building. Rather oddly, he was twirling a hula-hoop with his trunk, which he seemed to enjoy. I should point out that this was a "baby" elephant, or at least a child, because it was not fully grown, yet. He enjoyed playing. Standing beside the elephant was a "mahout".

Tiarnan was fascinated. Here was a baby elephant who liked to play games. He stood beside me, in entranced silence, his gaze upon the elephant's every deed.

The elephant turned out to be quite a versatile animal, with many a "trick" at his command. At one point, he played a harmonica with the air blown through his trunk. Tiarnan laughed at this: a musical elephant. At another, he took the proffered Thai Baht note from my hand, which I was trying to tip the mahout/elephant with, by sucking on it, and passed it to his mahout. He picked up a straw hat, nearby and put it on peoples' heads, then took it off again and put it on someone else's head. All of this, was with his trunk, of course. When we asked for a photograph, the elephant came toward us, somewhat, then lifted up one leg and raised his trunk into the air, to pose for it, rather dramatically. He kept the pose until he had heard the last click of our cameras (my sister in law was taking photos, too), then he dropped his leg and trunk.

Promisingly, the mahout had an easel available, but the elephant didn't seem in the mood for that and so we never saw the elephant paint.

By the time the elephant sauntered off back down the lane, outside our bungalow, back to its waiting mother, both Tiarnan and I were most impressed by this elephant's intelligence. Watching it at play, I rather felt there was a happy, experimental, human child stuck inside its massive body. Indeed, looking at the size of its head, and the brain that was no doubt there, I did wonder at just how intelligent elephants really are. It seems such a pity that some people see fit to shoot elephants for sport or their tusks. They are magnificent and intelligent animals.

Where had the elephant come from? Well, much as a hotel might keep a fine dog, in some countries, in Thailand, this particular hotel kept a young elephant and its mother (both female, I think), on the property. They were there to entertain the children, but seemed well looked after. While we were there, Tiarnan visited the elephants every day. He seemed most interested in their doings and beings. He was a lot braver than he should have been, however, and sometimes wanted to get rather too close to them, while they rested. I would have to pull him back, since, though they seemed friendly and tame enough...I wasn't sure they might not step on my little boy without really noticing him.

One thing is for sure: I will never forget the day I had an elephant for breakfast.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to:http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

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Chimps' maths skills rival humans'

Research conducted by Duke University, just published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Biology, establishes that chimpanzees are as accomplished at mental addition as are human subjects.

Again, like the previous research on memory conducted by the Japanese research team, written of in a prior post, I would like to point out that the human subjects were NOT average humans. They were Duke University college students - and so, presumably, are superior to a typical human. So, again, this is a comparison between two randomly selected laboratory chimps and a group of superior humans. The fact that the chimps performed similarly to the human subjects is, therefore, extremely telling in these circumstances.

Prior chimp research had already established that chimps had some number skill. Non-human primates are known to be able to match numbers of objects, compare numbers of objects, and choose the larger of two numbers. This piece of research, however, took a look at mental addition as a skill.

The chimps and human subjects were briefly shown two sets of dots and were asked to add them up. They were then shown two possible results and were asked to choose between them. The human subjects were not allowed to use their verbal skills to assist them. They were not allowed to count verbally (the chimps couldn't do this so a comparison would then not be fair), nor were they allowed to verbalize in any other way. They had to proceed as fast as possible to come to an assessment of the situation. Typically, both chimps and humans answered in less than 1 second.

Contrary to what you might expect, young adult students, with many years of exposure to maths, in school, were no better than the chimps at this task.

Both chimps and humans were rewarded for their participation - the chimps with their favourite drink, the humans with $10 a session.

Jessica Cantlon, a cognitive neuroscience researcher at Duke University observed that "It shows when you take language away from a human, they end up looking just like monkeys in terms of their performance." She further noted that: "I don't think language is the only thing that differentiates humans from non-human primates, but in terms of math tasks, it is probably the big one."

Two chimps participated in the experiment: Boxer and Feinstein. Fourteen Duke University students pitted their wits against the chimps - and didn't win.

So, in the past few weeks we have seen two sets of chimp vs human students experiments. The chimps won in one case and drew in the other. This should really give ammunition to those who are striving hard to preserve the populations of non-human primates all over the world. Many people do not realize that non-human primates are, in many places, endangered species. It is a pity to lose any of the diverse species of this world - but how much more of a pity is it, when we understand that such fellow beings share so many of what we once thought of as our unique gifts?

Humans are not the only primates skilled in memory. We are not even the best at it. Humans are not the only primates adept in maths - and we are no better than our chimp cousins (without the aid of language). We would do well to remember that and make a little bit more effort to preserve the diversity of life on our planet, for so much of it is being lost, before we even get a chance to understand what it is, what it can do, and how precious it is.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and no months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and five months, and Tiarnan, twenty-two months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

Chimpanzee Brain vs Human Brain

It is customary for humans to think of themselves as mentally superior to all other known forms of life - but is this true? Do we truly have the best minds on Earth?

In one way, it is evident that we do: we are, after all, the dominant life-form. But perhaps all is not as it seems.

Two days ago, an article published in the US Journal Current Biology challenges some of our most basic assumptions about ourselves. Researchers from the Kyoto University Primate Research Institute, led by Professor Tetsuro Matsuzawa wanted to compare the memories of chimpanzees with the memories of humans.

The researchers pitted three pairs of chimpanzees versus nine University students. Note that this is not a fair match. The chosen humans were of a superior type: University students will have superior intelligence compared to the average person in the street. Thus randomly chosen chimpanzees were being compared to superior humans. This is not, one might suppose, a fair match - and you would be right, for reasons soon to be clear.

This was a multi-year study. The chimpanzees were trained to recognize the numbers 1 to 9 when written down. In the tests, they were rewarded with food (a peanut) when they got the right answer. These numbers were distributed at random about the screen and the chimps had to tap each number in the right order to get a reward. (So the chimps were essentially counting through a sequence).

The next step in the experiments was to cover the randomly distributed numbers with a white box and to ask the chimps - and humans - to again tap through the numbers in sequence, without being able to see them again. Thus, of course, the memory of the test subjects was called upon.

Shockingly, the chimpanzees did FAR better on this task than the University students did. The chimpanzees showed inherently much superior memories for the position of numbers, than smart human subjects.

There was another stage in the testing. Some of the numbers - and covers - were removed, leaving some behind. The test subjects - both chimp and human - had to again tap through them in ascending order, taking account of the fact that a number of them were missing.

Again, the chimpanzees far outperformed the smart, young human students.

So much better at this task were chimpanzees than humans, that the chimps could correctly remember the position of the numbers, once hidden, from a single glance at the array. The human subjects were unable to do this.

The researchers suggested that this demonstrated that, perhaps, humans had lost a similar ability, perhaps giving it up for the new skill of language.

I am not convinced, myself, for Koko, the gorilla, has managed to acquire human sign language (as posted elsewhere), showing that other primates can learn a language, too.

The chimpanzees beat the human students on both speed and accuracy. They even managed to do this, when interrupted in their tapping, by loud distracting noise.

So, this experiment establishes that, in terms of this mental function, anyway, that of memory, chimpanzees are superior to relatively smart, young humans.

All of this makes me wonder just why some people persist in treating our primate relatives so poorly. We may be the dominant life-form, but our primate cousins are certainly not without their gifts. They should be better looked after, all over the world. Perhaps experiments like this can inspire better efforts to care for them.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and no months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and five months, and Tiarnan, twenty-two months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

The universality of intelligence

There is a person called Koko who is very special in a way that might surprise you.

Now Koko has a curious disability - being unable to speak, but can use 400 signs of American Sign Language. Koko has an interesting sense of humour and makes jokes and rhymes using these signs. Koko even uses metaphor, sometimes - all in Sign Language. So, although unable to speak, Koko can communicate.

Koko's IQ is not what you might call gifted - and so may not seem a suitable subject for this blog. Koko's IQ regularly tests at around 80. You might not think much of that - but I do. You see, Koko is a gorilla.

Did that surprise you? Koko is more intelligent than many humans - for an IQ of 80 is not actually all that low, when you consider that the average for the United States is 98 (and the average for France 94). There are even countries on Earth, populated with humans, whose IQs average in the 60s and 70s. Thus Koko is more intelligent than many humans. Yet, Koko is not free, in the sense, of being self-determining. Shouldn't Koko, whose IQ is well into the human range, have rights just like those other primates - the humans?

You should note that the IQ tests used on Koko are normal, human IQ tests for which no adjustment has been made for the differences between gorilla and human culture. Given this disadvantage, perhaps a culture fair test, that took account of what it means to be a gorilla, might actually produce a higher score. I would be surprised if this did not, in fact, occur.

Koko is a thinking being with a rich life of thought. Yet, most people would dismiss him (her?) as "just an ape". I think it is time to revisit our ideas of what is intelligent - and who - and think a little more clearly about how we treat our fellow "animals" on this planet. Koko would probably make a very interesting person to talk to - what with his (her?) different perspective, allied to fluency in a human language - American Sign Language.

Koko's abilities also lead us to ask: what is the role of education in the development of the human? Koko has been educated by Francine Patterson, since 1972 - and the results are incredible. If an educational programme can do this for a gorilla, what other animals, in our environment, could attain human level performance? In the light of this, are we humans fair, kind and reasonable in our conduct towards animals in general? These are uncomfortable questions but they have to be asked. If all that separates us and our near relatives is a decent education, then we have really, really, really, not been behaving well towards our kindred.

Perhaps it is not the place to point this out, but I think I should. A gorilla, if educated, can perform in the human intellectual range. Yet, gorillas are still considered FOOD for some people in this world. Now, that really is an awful thought.

By writing this post, today, perhaps I can enlarge people's respect for our fellow animals - and perhaps cause some of you to think about what it means to be human - and ask how we got that way in the first place. After all, a gorilla can go pretty far to becoming "human" by just being given the chance to grow, intellectually. There is a very profound lesson in that.

(If you would like to read of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and no months, or Tiarnan, seventeen months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, baby genius, savant, the creatively gifted, gifted children and gifted adults in general. Thanks.)