This information comes from the November 2006 TIME magazine...

Elephants

U.S. zoologistssaid last week that latest study using mirrors shows that elephants are self-aware--atrait previously proved only in primates and dolphins.

Elephants may never forget, but can they recognize themselves in the mirror? New research says yes.




Gorillas

Researchers in Congo last year were the first to notice gorillas using tools. The great apes were seen opening nuts with rocks and gauging water depths with sticks.




Dolphins

Flipper? Try Hunter. Scientists have seen bottle-nose dolphins , thought to be the smartest marine animals, using sea sponges as fishing tools.

Thank you for sharing. Animals are much more clever than we think, and sometimes a lot nicer than humans.

Love,
yoko

Thank you so much dear Inda for this post. I am certain that these beautiful animals and others too are at a high position of evolution. I firmly believe that they also have a soul and will continue to exist consciously on another level after death.
My deepest hope is that people may respect animals (and all life), in order not to hurt them. We should allow them to build a relationship of mutual respect and love with their co-inhabitants of planet Earth, with US humans, who in so many cases are extremely cruel with animals.
Sometimes I happen to watch documentaries about animals and about the horrible treatments they receive by humans and I simply can't forget, those images follow me ...
Yes elephants remember! A Mother Elephant (in an Asian country)who during all her life had been tortured by her owners, has killed her offspring and scientists say she has done it to avoid such a miserable life to her baby. Yes she was conscious of herself and she suffered extremely. In that country there is now an organization who buys from those abusive owners the poor elephants and cures and saves them.
Oh the playful dolphins! What beauty! And they too are threatened especially in Asia ... they are highly intelligent animals and have such a trustful attitude towards humans.
It's sufficient to look into the eyes of a gorilla to establish a true contact.
May we preserve the habitat of all of these animals and go on with our researches in order to understand always better WHO THEY REALLY ARE ... God's creations who deserve all our love.



Love,
Margherita

Thank you yoko and Margherita.

I feel very sad about human beings. They are the destroyers of the earth.

Honor the sacred. Honor the Earth-
our Mother. Honor the Elders.
Honor all with whom we share the
earth. Four-legged, two-legged, winged ones,
swimmers, crawlers, plant and rock
people. Walk in balance and beauty.

~Native American

You can find an interesting article on:
http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/feedback/4157-4/

All birds that fly south for the winter are intelligent. They know when to leave, where the stops have to be made, and they return to their starting position each spring.

Thank you for this post.Animals are much more intelligent than we give them credit.
Humans are the ones destroying the planet and putting a lot of animals on the endangered species list.

Thank you for the post.
Many animals are very intelligent.

I will bring back your post about Koko and the dental appointment to prove the point:


This article was published in:
"Ontario Dentist" October 2004

When Koko the gorilla used American Sign Language to tell her teacher Penny Patterson that her mouth was in pain, 12 specialists, including three dentists, sprang into action.

When Koko began explaining her discomfort, pointing to a molar on her upper left, Dr. Patterson devised a pain chart offering Koko a scale from 1 to 10. When Koko indicated that an operation was needed as opposed to more medicine, a dental appointment was made.

"She would clearly communicate her pain level using her pain chart," explained research assistant/gorilla caregiver Tierra Wilson. "We were all eager to help."

"It's not often that we get to work on a celebrity," Dr. David Liang, assistant professor of medicine at Stanford, said. "Probably Koko is less demanding."

The only significant findings were periodontally related and were successfully treated by Dr.Bob Turner, DDS, Dr.Joe A. Provines ,DMD and Dr.Merhan Fotovatjah, DDS.

Koko insisted on meeting her specialists before she went under anesthesia. They crowded around her, and Koko asked one woman wearing orange to come closer. The woman handed her a business card, which Koko later politely returned. Koko was excited and eager for her tooth to be fixed.

Koko is now resting after her operation. "She is doing exceptionally well, purring occasionally and generally wondering what all the fuss is about," said Tierra Wilson.


Adapted fromThe Gorilla Foundation / Koko.org.
http://www.koko.org/kokomart/members.html

Koko knows human sign language; she knows 1000 signs.

Who's the Birdbrain? Birds may have a reputation for being less than geniuses, but researchers are discovering that some are remarkably smart.


Some birds have the capacity to recognize, count, or name different objects.

Ravens, for instance, have the ability to solve difficult puzzles, such as untangling a knotted string to free up a tasty treat or figuring out how to steal fish by hauling in an angler's untended line. And, as shown in the first part of NATURE's INSIDE THE ANIMAL MIND, crows on the remote Pacific island of New Caledonia have learned a skill that people once thought only primates could master: the use of tools. The birds use long, specially chosen twigs to spear the plump grubs that hide deep beneath the bark of rotting logs.

Raven antics and New Caledonia's clever crows have helped make people much more willing to admit that many animals, including birds, are quite intelligent. Dolphins can follow complex instructions, for instance, while orangutans learn complex tasks, such as washing clothes by hand, after just a few tries. And even pigeons and parrots have shown an extraordinary capacity to recognize, count, or name different objects.

But no bird has done more to give a whole new meaning to the phrase "birdbrain" than Alex the African Grey parrot. More than 20 years ago, researcher Dr. Irene Pepperberg of the University of Arizona began systematically studying Alex and several other African Greys, parrots that are remarkable mimics, to understand avian intelligence. "Before I began my studies, I knew that parrots could reproduce the sounds of human speech, but that the general belief was that such vocalizations could not be meaningful," Pepperberg has written.




Who's the Birdbrain? Birds may have a reputation for being less than geniuses, but researchers are discovering that some are remarkably smart.


Some birds have the capacity to recognize, count, or name different objects.

Ravens, for instance, have the ability to solve difficult puzzles, such as untangling a knotted string to free up a tasty treat or figuring out how to steal fish by hauling in an angler's untended line. And, as shown in the first part of NATURE's INSIDE THE ANIMAL MIND, crows on the remote Pacific island of New Caledonia have learned a skill that people once thought only primates could master: the use of tools. The birds use long, specially chosen twigs to spear the plump grubs that hide deep beneath the bark of rotting logs.

Raven antics and New Caledonia's clever crows have helped make people much more willing to admit that many animals, including birds, are quite intelligent. Dolphins can follow complex instructions, for instance, while orangutans learn complex tasks, such as washing clothes by hand, after just a few tries. And even pigeons and parrots have shown an extraordinary capacity to recognize, count, or name different objects.

But no bird has done more to give a whole new meaning to the phrase "birdbrain" than Alex the African Grey parrot. More than 20 years ago, researcher Dr. Irene Pepperberg of the University of Arizona began systematically studying Alex and several other African Greys, parrots that are remarkable mimics, to understand avian intelligence. "Before I began my studies, I knew that parrots could reproduce the sounds of human speech, but that the general belief was that such vocalizations could not be meaningful," Pepperberg has written.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/animalmind/intelligence.html

Dogs are capable of leading blind people across the street.
They respond to a shepherd's command within a split second.

Schmichael, a dog, was honored at the Purina Animal Hall of Fame for alerting his family to a fire in their barn and saving their lives within just 24 hours of joining the family.

Schmichael

The tiny rufous hummingbird, which is barely 9 cm. long, has a brain 7,000 times smaller than a human's, according to scientists.

Researchers have discovered that this tiny hummingbird, which each day feeds on hundreds of flowers containing just a fraction of a drop of nectar, has a mighty memory that can pinpoint the location of the flowers it has visited and when the nectar in each would be replenished.

Rufous hummingbird is barely 9 cm. long and weighs very little (less than a small coin), is considered the most feisty and nomadic of hummingbirds. It has the longest known bird migration proportional to its body size. It travels between its wintering grounds in the southern United States and Mexico to its breeding grounds in Western Canada and as far north as Alaska.

Information from The Globe and Mail newspaper.





A team of Canadian, British and Scottish researchers monitored three male hummingbirds during their summer migration to the Rocky Mountain region in Alberta, Canada.

While hummingbirds are drawn to anything colorful to find food-bearing flowers, the birds in this study were first shown that they could feed from artificial flowers.
The researchers set up eight wooden stakes holding up different colors of cardboard flowers, each fitted with a small nozzle holding a sucrose solution.
Half of the flowers were refilled at 10 minute intervals, while the rest were refilled 20 minutes after they were drained.
The researchers found the birds returning to the flowers according to refill schedule, and not visiting flowers that they had already drained.
Even more remarkably, according to the study, the birds were able to update their memories in specific intervals as they visited each flower throughout the day.

Information from The Globe and Mail newspaper

The small ground dwelling African mammal known as the meerkat has a distinct "language" that indicates different warning calls for various predators, from snakes to jackals. Such symbolic, abstract logic is considered a sign of true intelligence.

Let us not forget the dogs who are used to help children with autism, and the little beagle from one of our previous posts:



The beagle's owner succumbed to a diabetic seizure.
Belle his pet saved his life.

She had been trained to assess a potentially fatal attack by licking and sniffing her owner's nose. Dogs have super-sensityive sense of smell, and they can detect blood-sugar levels in exhaled air.

But that is not all. Belle seized her owner's cellphone and bit on the number 9 on the keypad. The phone had been programmed to dial 911( which is the emergency number) when the digit 9 is entered.
Emergency workers heard Belle bark and sent help.

Belle received an award for saving her owner's life.

This information comes from Maclean's magazine,
July 1, 06

Yes, those humans are smart sometimes.... mmmmrrrrrooooowwww!!! I mean... well, yes, they are the cruelest animals too....

quote:

Originally posted by dear yoko:
Thank you for sharing. Animals are much more clever than we think, and sometimes a lot nicer than humans.

Well said, Bird!



Personally? I think it insults animals to call humans animals!

No animal would destroy it's environment, genocidal tendencies and suicidal stupidities... boyo!

I agree with you Margherita, animals have souls, and sometimes I wonder about some of our fellow humans...

Some of us are kind though... mostly us here in Givnology! he he..

Love and light being, Teo Do (a dear, a female dear...)

Thank you everyone for your wonderful replies.


The finding of a parrot with an almost unparalleled power to communicate with people has brought scientists up short.

The bird, a captive African grey called N'kisi, has a vocabulary of 950 words, and shows signs of a sense of humour. raw food
He invents his own words and phrases if he is confronted with novel ideas with which his existing repertoire cannot cope - just as a human child would do.

N'kisi's remarkable abilities, which are said to include telepathy, feature in the latest BBC Wildlife Magazine.

N'kisi is believed to be one of the most advanced users of human language in the animal world.

About 100 words are needed for half of all reading in English, so if N'kisi could read he would be able to cope with a wide range of material.

I'm going to try and attach the Real Audio file ".ram" of N'kisi's conversation, or just go to the page it's from:

http://www.sheldrake.org/nkisi/nkisi1_text.html

I don't know if it was the parrot, or human, who came up with this idea, but singing "Old Macdonald" with "Old Madonna" is just tooooo hilarious!

Hey this is pretty fun! I always wanted to be on top of Madonna... he he... just kidding! Just kidding! he he..

I wonder if N'kisi surfs the internet? If so, Hey N'kisi! View the folder of those Old Madonna images above, lots of Old Madonna songs to sing there! he he..

Love and *LIGHT**BRAINS*, Teo Do (Re, Me....)

nkisi1.ram (42 Bytes, 52 downloads) hope this works!!!

I love your images and comments Teo

Evidence of the typically human emotions, grief, parental love and joy, as well as the existence of complex social interactions and structures, are further indicators of the highly developed intelligence of whales and dolphins. In one example, despite the risk of dehydration, stranding and shark attack, a group of false killer whales floated for 3 days in the shallows of the straits of Florida, USA to protect an injured male. Such was their cohesion and reliance upon the group, individuals became agitated when rescuers tried to separate them, calming only when reunited.

Chimps got first crack at Stone Age, study finds
ANNE MCILROY

SCIENCE REPORTER

Chimpanzees had their own prehistoric Stone Age, a Canadian archeologist has found, and were using rocks to open nuts 4,300 years ago.The primitive nut crackers found in the Ivory Coast rain forest challenge the widely held belief that early humans invented stone tools, University of Calgary researcher Julio Mercader and his colleagues say. It may have been a common ancestor to both humans and chimps that first started bashing nuts with rocks.


4,300-year old rocks were found with patterns of wear and traces of ancient nut starch on them. Proof, Dr.Mercader says, that the ancient chimps were using the technology. They were similar to the kinds of nut-cracking rocks the modern chimps use.
At that time humans had not settled in the region, the scientists say. When people did start farming in the area, they ate different kinds of nuts than the ones found on the stone tool.


This means, Dr.Mercader says, that chimps had their own Stone Age that started at least 4,300 years ago and possibly much earlyer. West african chimps may have passed the skill on for more than 200 generations, he says.

From the Globe and Mail,
February 13, 2007