Sheep Must Be Smart
… and locusts must be geniuses.
According to a recent study:
Slime molds, of course, are the most social creatures on Earth (even if they sometimes make logical errors) and must be superintelligent.The study analysed available data on the brain and body size of over 500 species of living and fossilised mammals. The brains of monkeys grew the most over time followed by horses, dolphins, camels and dogs.
It found that groups of mammals with relatively bigger brains tended to live in stable social groups. The brains of more solitary mammals such as cats, deer and rhino, grew much more slowly during the same period.
1 Comments:
I do think some animals are more intelligent than others, but I don't know if socialization is a factor, or there are multiple reasons for this difference.
"This style of ‘comparative valuation’ may seem uncannily human, but it’s also one that’s shared by hummingbirds, starlings, honeybees and many other animals." Is comparative a style or is it due to a biological instinct?
The Physarum experiment was fascinating but a failure: The mold didn't successfully retrieve the food in the maze.
The statement that "it finds a short cut through a tiny gap in the wall" is inane. How about it found the path of least resistance? Not to mention the fact that the maze was constructed of cardboard, and likely not level. Further the explanation that the mold was "making good headway with duel paths" strikes me as silly. The mold just simply slpit into two paths to take advantage of the natural shading found against the outer walls, and it explains why it is attracted to dead-end corners, bypassing the food in favor of the areas with less light.
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