About animals

That is good to know about ants. Selfless behavior benefits the entire community.

I clipped this from a newspaper years ago, but copied this off the net; my favorite: Attachment 9805

Lol!At least here the birds are pals.

That's a nice one about those buzzards. It makes me wonder what animals think of us.

Other people also aske themselves this question and in the net. I just found this:

https://www.quora.com/What-do-you-th...k-of-us-humans

I remember my cat using a lot of tail language. When he looked satisfied his tail danced lightly.
When he got nervous or irritated his tail flogged the ground like a whip.

I didn't know that part about a cat's tail curling. I think the cat we have likes us.

She certainly does!

Islands dominated by an animal species. I was astonished about the quantity of islands.

http://www.livescience.com/58707-isl...y-animals.html

The Earth as an island of sorts would be dominated by us. It occurred to me that our species is rather young, 30 to 200 thousand years. I figure we have hundreds of millions of years ahead of us, maybe billions if we can keep the Earth in the habitable zone of the Sun. It is like a climax forest where a few species of trees dominate indefinitely.

I would add, ...and if our species is able to keep itself out of mischief.

You're right. We have to be careful since we don't know what damage we are causing. We only think we do.

I was reading some new age guru who said if we did not do something or other, our species would go extinct. Maybe. It used to be if we did not do something or other, we would go to hell.

I didn´t know what the guru said but right now our species could put some more effort in living in harmony.

I agree. We won't get very far without harmony.

Snow leopards relaxing!

http://www.livescience.com/58878-wil...era-video.html

They are like cats playing together.

They don´t feel menaced. They are among themselves and didn´t notice or didn´t mind the camera.

I wonder if animals have "shared intentionality"? Reading Haidt ("The Righteous Mind") he seems to think only humans have that, but I wonder. This would be like two animals communicating to do something together. It seems crows showed such shared intentionality. It would be like one animal holding down the branch of a tree so that another animal can gather fruit that they both can eat and not fight over afterwards. Or if two monkeys together carried something.

I think those crows showed shared intentionality when they grouped together to attack the researchers.

I believe they have it too. This concept seems to mean that a member of a certain species is able to act together with one or more companions. There are several examples. I remember for example some solidarity tests with monkeys and elephant way back in this thread.

Haidt's Moral Foundation Theory is very good when he stays close to his experimental evidence which is mainly tests on human subjects including use of fMRI data. His research is able to isolate six innate moral foundations that make sense once he describes them as well as noting that reason is primarily used to rationalize positions. When he tries to justify that "innateness" his evolutionary theory seems controversial. He seems to separate humans from other animals too much, but certainly we have been very successful and that needs some explanation.

I looked him up. A psychology of morals is something new for me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Haidt

A rather curious dissertation subject. Part of the research was done here. I just had a look but didn´t read it yet.

http://people.stern.nyu.edu/jhaidt/a...on.pub001b.pdf

Posting Unesco site about Fernando de Noronha-area of turtle and other animals preservation:

http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1000/gallery/

Those were beautiful photographs in the gallery.

Thanks for the links on Haidt. I finished the book and I think it is more political posturing than I originally expected.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbina_(genus)

Please feel free to watch in mute mood if you prefer:

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

Doves are such peaceful-looking birds.

Yes, I wasn´t sure if they were doves though. They have another name. The urban doves we find around here are more hungry than peaceful. They are much abused but they bring life into this gray city.

They could be pigeons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbidae

I thought the Columbina was "dove", but I am just guessing.

I looked up the diferences between the "pombas" (the doves) and the "rolinhas", they all belong to the waster family of the Columbidae.The page only opens in Portuguese, but maybe you get it in English because of your location:
http://en.wikiaves.com//doku.php?&&&...bas_e_rolinhas

I didn't realize doves and pigeons are very similar birds until you mentioned them. Doves make me think of "peace" and pigeons, well, I have heard them described as "flying rats". I haven't heard the name "rolinhas" before, but Google was able to translate the page clearly enough.

Me neither. I still can´t tell the pigeons from the doves. The "rolinhas" seem to be smaller and I don´t know if they live in cities.
My dentist called the doves "flying rats" on account of the illnesses they transmit. The doves don´t care what they are called. As long as there is enough food and they can flock together, they seem to enjoy their life. And São Paulo would be so much grayer and stonier without them.

Doves (or pigeons) seem to fit cities like seagulls fit beaches. It would be less pleasant without them.

Koalas

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/an...mmals/k/koala/

Those koalas are cute whether they are bears or not.

I agreewith your both last posts Yes/No. Am in fact looking for a new theme.
Interesting article.
Dogs don´t have a bad memory, if one remembers that the police uses them to find hidden drugs.

http://www.livescience.com/58602-do-...-memories.html

It doesn't surprise me that animals have memories because the brain would be a way for animals to access memories. I wonder where the content of that memory lies. I don't think it's in the brain. Plants also have memory. Here's an example: http://www.sci-news.com/biology/scie...ory-01695.html I heard about this from Stefano Mancuso and Alessandra Viola's "Brilliant Green".

Amazing, Yes/No! I tried to remember if I know that "prude" Mimosa. Am going to research on it later.
I found this article on cat´s brains. There are more, but the connection at present is not so good:
http://www.petful.com/behaviors/cat-...d-human-brain/
And here is one on dog´s brains:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/...much-humans-do
And on both:
https://braindecoder.com/post/how-do...urs-1141211520

The whiskers on cats and the simulation of a cat's brain sound interesting. That dogs and cats understand what we say to them makes sense. Plants may also understand us as well.

Cat´s and dog´s seem to understand what one says to them, and also when one talks about them. I just looked the "Mimosa pudica". I found a detailed account of the experiment in Portuguese and also the original article but one has to pay to read it.

I don't think the current research is worth reading unless one wants to continue that research. According to Mancuso and Viola ("Brilliant Green", page 68) this knowledge about mimosa pudica was first discovered by Lamarck and his collaborator Augustin Pyramus de Candolle around the 1800's. Augustin put these plants on a cart at Lamarck's request and pulled them around the streets of Paris. Initially they contracted, but once they realized the bumpy ride did not threaten them, they relaxed and, as I would put it, enjoyed it.

So, in fact there is nothing new about it. Plants it seems have there sense of security too.