Most Amazing Animals

[*Classic*Charm*]

Classic Charm: These two u-tubes are very interesting. Crows are indeed intelligent, as are magpies for problem-solving, I've noticed this just by watching how they operate, especially in co-operation with each other. Just loved the one on African Grey Parrot, especially when it expresses boredom with the exercises. Great stuff.

As far as I know, crows are the first species witnessed using tools since Dr. Jane Goodall discovered chimps using tools and debunked the theory that tool use was a distinguishing feature of humans. I've seen another video where the crows are given materials and they have to make their own tools. You can see them make a tool and use trial and error to test and improve on it until they get the reward. Incredible stuff.

As for Alex, I have wondered whether or not his asking to stop the exercises was boredom or stress. Throughout his life he was often in poor physical condition- lots of feathers that he had torn out of himself, which I would interpret as an indicator of stress. I haven't watched enough of his handler's discussions to see if that was ever discussed. They say Alex has the capacity for reason equivalent to a 5 year old child, which is just amazing. He would ask questions unrelated to his present situation which shows a totally different relationship between an animal and its experience of time and the world than we considered before.

[Snowqueen]

Nobody mentioned The Birds-of-Paradise! I think these are pretty amazing creatures too.

http://www.wimp.com/birdsproject/

[NikolaiI]

The most spectacular animal of all, Alex the African Grey Parrot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldYkFdu5FJk

Classic! Great see you. I've been wondering whether any old-timers would come back to the forum.

I can't watch the videos right now but I will a little later... Crows are definitely on my list of animals I want to someday own and have trained. (It's a fairly long list but they're pretty high up on it, because of their intelligence.)

Nobody mentioned The Birds-of-Paradise! I think these are pretty amazing creatures too.

http://www.wimp.com/birdsproject/

Love them. I like their name, too.. "the family Paradisaeidae of the order Passeriformes."

I've only seen a bit of footage from the Planet Earth series, it was that black one, hopping around on a branch. I know that sounds bad but I don't remember the name of it...

here's another page about them
http://www.factzoo.com/birds/birds-o...r-dancers.html

[NikolaiI]

As far as I know, crows are the first species witnessed using tools since Dr. Jane Goodall discovered chimps using tools and debunked the theory that tool use was a distinguishing feature of humans. I've seen another video where the crows are given materials and they have to make their own tools. You can see them make a tool and use trial and error to test and improve on it until they get the reward. Incredible stuff.

As for Alex, I have wondered whether or not his asking to stop the exercises was boredom or stress. Throughout his life he was often in poor physical condition- lots of feathers that he had torn out of himself, which I would interpret as an indicator of stress. I haven't watched enough of his handler's discussions to see if that was ever discussed. They say Alex has the capacity for reason equivalent to a 5 year old child, which is just amazing. He would ask questions unrelated to his present situation which shows a totally different relationship between an animal and its experience of time and the world than we considered before.

Agreed.

I love the way the crow seems so deft and self-assured.

About Alex, words just don't seem to do it- that is really beautiful!

The crow one reminds me of a silly idea I have of how you could get a mouse or something to pilot a space ship of some kind... The crow seems much better, but I thought of little buttons a mouse could press to move it and turn it and all... In an age when the smartest robots are not quite to a cockroach's level of intellignce, it seems there could be a lot of uses if one could get a higher level animal, but still very small, to be the brains or pilot. . . of course, if I were doing this, the animal would have to be well cared for and happy

[NikolaiI]

I don't suppose you have links to these?

Shadows is a beautiful and brilliant work about evolution and our place in the larger framework of nature. I really can't say enough good things about it. Written by Ann Druyan and Carl Sagan. Similar in some regards to an earlier work by Sagan, The Dragons of Eden, published 15 years earlier. Both are incredibly good.

Naked mole rats are very fascinating creatures, I am coming to find out. As I'm reading up on them, they're more and more interesting.
All quotes are from the Wiki article.

They seem to have quite a few unique features. They are the one of only two mammals known to ba eusocial, meaning they have a strict social structure with a queen, workers, and soldiers. . Only the queen and one to three males reproduce. They are the only mammalian 'thermoconformer' (as opposed to thermoregulartors). They don't have sensitivity to pain in their skin. Their teeth are on the outside of their mouth, so they can tunnel through the ground without swallowing dirt.

"The naked mole-rat and the Damaraland mole-rat are the only known eusocial mammals." Meaning they have a queen. . . "The naked mole-rat is the first mammal discovered to exhibit eusociality. This eusocial structure is similar to that found in ants, termites, and some bees and wasps. Only one female (the queen) and one to three males reproduce, while the rest of the members of the colony function as workers."

"As in certain bee species, the workers are divided along a continuum of different worker-caste behaviors instead of discrete groups. Some function primarily as tunnellers, expanding the large network of tunnels within the burrow system, and some primarily as soldiers, protecting the group from outside predators."

"[They] feed primarily on very large tubers (weighing as much as a thousand times the body weight of a typical mole-rat) that they find deep underground through their mining operations, but also eat their own feces. A single tuber can provide a colony with a long-term source of food—lasting for months, or even years, as they eat the inside but leave the outside, allowing the tuber to regenerate. Symbiotic bacteria in their intestines ferment the fibres, allowing otherwise indigestible cellulose to be turned into volatile fatty acids."

There are several other unique characteristics as well, and not at all least, they seem to have a total resistance to cancer.

[NikolaiI]

I'm going to re-do the last post, because I think I made an extremely interesting creature a bit boring by my narration. Instead, I'll just make a short list of NMR's special traits..

Quotes from the above mentioned Wiki article, here



1.They, along with Damara mole-rats, are the only known eusocial mammals. This means they have a very strict social hierarchy, headed by a queen. Only the queen and a few males are reproducing at any one time. The other social group is workers, some of which are frequent and some infrequent.. There are builders, and some who tend to the young, and very importantly there are soldiers.

2.They live in colonies of up to 300, but averaging around 75.

3.Their territories can be up to a kilometer in diameter.

4.They have no sensitivity to pain in their skin.

5.They are resistant to tumors: Cancer has never been observed in them.

6.Metabolism and oxygen: "The [NMR] is well adapted for the limited availability of oxygen within the tunnels that are its habitat: its lungs are very small and its blood has a very strong affinity for oxygen, increasing the efficiency of oxygen uptake. It has a very low respiration and metabolic rate for an animal of its size, about 2/3 that of a similarly sized mouse, thus using oxygen minimally. In long periods of hunger, such as a drought, its metabolic rate can be reduced by up to 25 percent."

7.Longevity (somehow I missed this one until now!) "The naked mole-rat is also of interest because it is extraordinarily long-lived for a rodent of its size (up to 31 years[18]) and holds the record for the longest living rodent."

8.Their teeth are on the outside of their mouths, and 25% of their whole muscle mass is used to keep their jaws closed.

9.They live on tubers, which they tunnel long distances to find. When they get one, it can last them for months, or even years, as they eat out the inside of it, allowing it to regrow.

10.They can move backwards as well as forwards; in the tunnels the older rats are usually on top of the others. . . and though strict social structure is observed elsewhere, where eating is concerned, all are equal and allowed to get their fill.

11.

"Reproducing females become the dominant female, usually, by founding new colonies, fighting for the dominant position, or taking over once the reproducing female dies. These reproducing females tend to have longer bodies than that of their non-reproducing counter parts of the same skull width. Interestingly enough, the measurements of females before they became reproductive and after show significant increases in body size. It is believed that this trait does not occur due to pre-existing morphological differences but to the actual attainment of the dominant female position. As with the reproductive females, the reproductive males also appear to be bigger in size than their non-reproducing counterparts but not as much so as in the case of the females. These males also have visible outlines of the testes through the skin of their abdomens. Unlike the females, there are usually multiple reproducing males."

12.

Thermoconformers instead of thermoregulators.
The [NMR] does not regulate its body temperature in typical mammalian fashion, homeostasis. They are thermoconformers rather than thermoregulators in that, unlike other mammals, body temperature tracks ambient temperatures. The relationship between oxygen consumption and ambient temperature, however, switches from a typical poikilothermic pattern to a homeothermic mode when temperature is at 28 °C or higher. At lower temperatures, they use behavioral thermoregulation, as when cold, naked mole-rats huddle together or bask in the shallow, more sun-warmed parts of their burrow systems. Conversely, when they get too hot, they retreat to the deeper, cooler parts of their tunnel system.

[NikolaiI]

Solenodon, a mammal that's been around since the dinosaurs lived.
http://www.edgeofexistence.org/mamma..._info.php?id=5
,
from here

And Olm, an amphibious creature that lives in limestone caves in Central and Southeastern Europe, in places like Croatia. It can live up to 100 years.. They are all white, have no sense of sight, but a great sense of smell, and also can sense changes in the electrical field around them.. They also have a very effective "starvation mode" and can survive for 10 years at a time without eating... quite the opposite of a shrew.





Velvet-purple Coronet
Ecuador

[NikolaiI]

Of course we all love the Flying Squirrel :-)

but what about the flying snake? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysopelea

although those two are actually just gliders. . .

Flying fish are built for it too. . . these were just ridiculously beautiful to me

[Dreamwoven]

Flying Fish are indeed beautiful. I have never seen one before, not that close up in a still (photo).

[NikolaiI]

Archer fish are quite incredible. . they shoot water at insects above the surface. They can account for the refraction, and they also account for the parabolic nature of projectiles, and adult fish have a very high percentage of hitting their targets. . . they can shoot water up to 3 meters. Pretty awesome :-)

[Dreamwoven]

This is an odd fish! Using water to both swim and breathe in and also as a hunting weapon. Learned something new...

[NikolaiI]

The Namib desert is really interesting . . .totally fascinating to me. The land is very arid, it gets almost no rain and it's very hot in the day, and very cold at night like a normal desert; sometimes it doesn't rain for years. . and it's right next to a very, very cold ocean. . life is partly made possible by the strong winds blowing in off the ocean. . because of the unique environment, the animals are very specially adapted. The wind blows in little bits of tiny animals and plants, and some moisture.

The ants are unique. . they have a hard time navigating because the landscape all is homogeneous, so they navigate by the sun. . they build their homes in the grass. . the beetles keep cool by running, and the crickets (check this out)





The golden mole lives underground, hunts at night and is completely blind, they're very good at hearing, and they can travel a few miles, even though they're very small, about the size of a thumb.



The Namib sand gecko is also nocturnal and also buries under the ground during the day to keep cool.. they get their moisture mainly from dew drops on the vegetation in the morning, and they can also absorb water through their skin.

Then there are two species of sidewinders, those are always cool. Very similar to other sidewinders around the globe, they're small, hide almost completely under the sand a lot of the time, and when they move across it, only touch it with a very small part of their body.

One that I thought was very incredible is the African penguin,



They hide in shelters made of bird dung, some of the time, to hide from the heat. . and when they get too hot, they leave their young temporarily to jump in the icy cold water and cool off for a while. They're extremely agile and good swimmers. . I find it very fascinating, how they can withstand very hot temperatures and very cold ones. . Socrates would have loved them. :-)




Sadly, their numbers have been in great decline over the last few centuries, about 95%. It appears their current total population is around 52,000, from around 4 million a couple centuries ago.

[Dreamwoven]

The golden mole is interesting. I had no idea they exist. Looking them up in Wikipedia they seem to have other curious characteristics, too.

[NikolaiI]

Like "most species do not need to drink water at all."

Thank you for making me go back for a second look!! :-)

I'm rather speechless right now.

[Dreamwoven]

Yes, I thought those golden moles were quite amazing. Don't know where you find such animals.