Despite their small brains, ravens and crows may be much smarter than humans. A new study suggests that the size does not matter. It is not the size of the brain, but the the neuronal density and the structure of the birds’ brains that play an important role in terms of their intelligence. A study […]
SIUA is the School of Human-Animal Interaction founded in 1997 in Bologna by Roberto Marchesini and Sabrina Golfetto after many years of research within the field of human-animal relationship. Roberto Marchesini is considered a worldwide leading figure in zooanthropology and in cognitive-relational approach to dog’s pedagogy and psychology. The main aim of Siua is creating […]
The poisonous dart frogs use conspicuous color to tell predators that they are not good to eat. Similarly, a venomous coral snake sports rings of bright color to advertise that it isn’t to be messed with—by a bird considering it for lunch, for instance—while a milk snake, which isn’t poisonous and could be taken quite […]
Constantine ‘Con’ Slobodchikoff is an animal behaviorist and conservation biologist. He is a professor at Northern Arizona University where he studies referential communication, using prairie dogs (Cynomys gunnisoni) as a model species. Much of his recent research has shown a complex communicative ability of the Gunnison prairie dog alarm calls. In early 2008 he formed the Animal language Institute to create a place where people can […]
In recent article in Science, entitled “The Music of Nature and the Nature of Music“, it is suggested that not only are natural sounds such as whale and bird songs music, but that their songs may be part of a “universal music” that provides an intuitive musical concept to many animals—including humans. Our world is filled […]
The FIDO, or Facilitating Interactions for Dogs with Occupations is a device for improving communication between working dogs and the humans they assist, including canines that serve as guide, hearing, service, skilled companion, search and rescue, and police dogs. Incredibly, the FIDO works as a wearable computing device to help assistance dogs communicate more directly […]
Just as the BowLingual (バウリンガル), the No More Woof is a device designed to perceive and translate the thoughts and feelings of your dog. No More Woof aims to develop a small gadget that uses the latest technology in micro computing and EEG to analyse animal thought patterns and spell them out in Human Language* […]
There are many examples of animals that have been forced to adapt to human forms of communication. Often this is called “intelligent” behavior. Clearly there is something deeply problematic with the idea that intelligence can be measured by simililarity to human forms of thought and communication. Here are nevertheless a few interesting examples from a […]