Wild Piglet

Wild boars are ugly creatures, but their young are much more appealing. I saw this piglet that was captured and is reared as a pet.

Do Birds Commit Suicide?

The other day, I was in the office when I heard a heavy thud against the glass door. I was startled to see a flock of birds, one of which flew at great speed and smashed against the door and dropped dead. Was it suicide? Was the bird sick or injured, or disoriented? Judging by its physical appearance, it was not injured in any way. We have heard stories of animals including birds commit suicide. The most famous of course are the lemmings which reportedly committed mass suicide due to some deep rooted impulses. One story has it that it was Walt Disney that perpetrated this myth in its movie "Wild Wilderness" released in 1958 that depicted lemmings jumping off the cliff. One theory has it that sick or injured animals including birds do commit suicide to bring a quicker end to their existence. I wonder if this bird was suffering from some kind of sickness. Or was it merely an accident? It was a sad thing.

Note the globule of blood near the beak

Animals As Predictors Of Earthquakes

Many Chinese have blamed the government for not heeding the unusual movement of toads three days before the earthquake struck. However, according to Chinese scientists the unusual movement of animals as indicators of earthquakes is not reliable.

Zhang Guomin, a senior researcher at the China Earthquake Administration, said on the government's website that predictions cannot simply be based on the abnormal behaviour of animals.

Media reports blamed the forecasters for ignoring the warning signs, such as the mass migration of toads in Mianzhu, just three days before the earthquake happened, Xinhua reported.

From: newkerala.com

Mass migration of toads before the earthquake

A girl trapped in the rubble

What A Beautiful World

KKBu sent me some fantastic pictures which I felt should be shared. Each, as he said, is a shot in a million. Let’s hope I won’t be sued for copyright infringement.

The loving couple

Sleep psychologists call this the 'foetus' position

Protesting against discrimination

In suspense

Mesmerising sense

Narcissistic streak

Aerial manoeuvre

Fighting or sharing?

Mistaken identity

Catching the early fish

Clearing the respiratory channel

Contrasting emotions

Accurate aim

Exemplary leadership

Teething problem

Chimps as good as College Students

A US study revealed that chimpanzees are as good at mental math as college students! Read the report from the Straits Times Singapore:

Dec 18, 2007

Chimps and college students as good at mental math

CHICAGO - CHIMPS performed about as well as college students at mental addition, United States researchers said on Monday in a finding that suggests non-verbal math skills are not unique to humans.

The research from Duke University follows the finding by Japanese researchers earlier this month that young chimpanzees performed better than human adults at a memory game.

Prior studies have found non-human primates can match numbers of objects, compare numbers and choose the larger number of two sets of objects.

'This is the first study that looked at whether or not they could make explicit decisions that were based on mathematical types of calculations,' said Dr Jessica Cantlon, a cognitive neuroscience researcher at Duke, whose work appeared in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Biology (www.plosbiology.org).

'It shows when you take language away from a human, they end up looking just like monkeys in terms of their performance,' she said in a telephone interview.

Her study pitted the ape math team of Boxer and Feinstein - two female chimps named for US senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein of California - with 14 Duke University students.

'We had them do math on the fly,' Dr Cantlon said.

The task was to mentally add two sets of dots that were briefly flashed on a computer screen. The teams were asked to pick the correct answer from two choices on a different screen.

The humans were not allowed to count or verbalise as they worked, and they were told to answer as quickly as possible.

Both chimps and humans typically answered within 1 second.

And both groups fared about the same.

Dr Cantlon said the study was not designed to show up Duke University students. 'I think of this more as using non-human primates as a tool for discovering where the sophisticated human mind comes from,' she said.

The researchers said the findings shed light on the shared mathematical abilities in humans and non-human primates and shows the importance of language - which allows for counting and more advanced calculations - in the evolution of math in humans.

'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,' she said.

As for the teams, both were paid. Boxer and Feinstein got their favourite reward: a sip of Kool-Aid soft drink. As for the students, they got US$10 (S$15) each - enough for a beer or two. -- REUTERS

Humankind's Best Friend

Dogs are known to be humankind's best friends. You can talk to them for hours and they will listen with rapt attention and without a word of complaint. These pictures were taken from "People Who Look Like Their Pets" by Jimmy Ruska.