There are 26 posts filed in Animal Intelligence (this is page 3 of 3).
Here’s our Walnut, one of our squirrels. He’s hungry, cold, and none too happy that I continue to bother him with the camera.
Our current snowfall totals: six inches on the ground, half an inch of ice, and then another eight inches. The snow continues to fall. The forecasters expect it to stop soon, though, but I don’t know if I believe them. When I went to bed last night, they said nothing about snow of any kind today.
Remember my photographs of the famous Rosings Park Peanut Battle? This is actually an ongoing war, one which has been waged almost daily for the past four years. Thanks to new technology, I’m pleased to be able to bring you close-up footage of the action:
I realize that some of you may find this video tedious. That’s okay. For me and Kris, this is nine minutes of heaven.
Update!
I’ve joined Vimeo, where the HD videos really show up in HD — or something close to it. Here’s the same film as above:
Also, for those of you who are curious, I filmed this with the Flip Mino HD, which is an iPod-sized hi-def video camera. It’s very light. All of this was filmed with the Mino HD, though not all at the same time. This is actually two different feedings, a couple of hours apart. For one, I set the camera about fifteen feet from the feeder. For the other, I set it inside the feeder, which the birds did not like. (The little birds wouldn’t even go in while the camera was there.)
It’s come to my attention that I haven’t written enough about our cats lately. I apologize. Here, then, is a revealing look at the psychology of the beasts with whom we share Rosings Park. These are the top complaints from each animal.
Max
“Not enough birds.”
“This family is boring.”
“Simon plays too rough.”
Nemo
“Dad is scary.”
“Dad is very scary.”
“Simon plays too rough.”
Simon
“The front door is shut.”
“Dad is in my chair.”
“My brothers are pansies.”
Toto
“I want to snuggle.”
“I don’t want anyone to touch me.”
“I hate my brothers.”
The squirrels
“Too many cats.”
“Not enough pumpkin seeds.”
“Too many birds.”
The birds
“Too many cats.”
“Not enough peanuts.”
“Too many birds.”
Last fall at Animal Intelligence, I shared a two-minute video of a cat who was raised by a crow. A reader recently pointed me to a longer video with a more complete story on this unlikely friendship:
There is nothing I like more than stories of interspecies friendship. I love the idea that different kinds of animals can communicate and empathize with one another. Now if only our cats would be nice to the blue jays…
Poor Kris. How’s she going to handle this one. She loves both goats and birds, but when you combine the two, which will she root for?
To me, it looks like the eagle is just a little bit spiteful, a little gratuitous in her attacks. But man, how cool is that? She carries off the whole frickin’ goat! Mothers, don’t let your children outside! I’m sure they’re not bigger than the average goat…
When I was a boy, I loved Star Trek. For nearly twenty years, Portland’s KPTV (channel 12) broadcast the series at 4pm every Sunday afternoon. We didn’t have a television for much of my childhood, but most of my friends did. Whenever possible, I would watch Star Trek.
When the series was released on DVD a few years ago, I bought the first season, but I never watched it. It’s been gathering dust.
A few weeks ago, I decided to make some clam chowder. This is a laborious process. Though I enjoy it, the work takes a couple hours, and much of it is mindless. “I should watch something on the computer,” I thought. “I should watch Star Trek.” And so I did. I’ve been watching one episode a night ever since.
Many of the early episodes are truly awful — there are good reasons the show struggled to stay on the air. But by the middle of the first season, things began to click. The writers and producers discovered their characters and figured out how to tell their stories.
I plan to do a full review of season in about a week, but I want to take the time to mention one of my favorite episodes: The Devil in the Dark. On an important mining colony, a mysterious creature is terrorizing the workers. This mysterious beast can move through solid rock, and it dissolves anyone it touches. Fifty men have died in just a few months. The Enterprise is summoned to eliminate the problem.
Initially, Kirk and company intend to destroy the creature. But, as he is wont to do, Spock begins to suspect that there’s something deeper to the problem. He’s right, of course. First of all, the life form is silicon-based, something that is seemingly impossible. Second, it is highly intelligent. And finally, it is merely defending its nest, which has been disrupted by the mining activities.
Watching the episode tonight, it was shockingly obvious that this is where my appreciation of inter-species friendship and communication originated. It was from watching this episode of Star Trek when I was a boy that I developed an appreciation for other animals, and began to suspect that other species might harbor intelligence that we, as humans, could barely comprehend. From there, it was only a small jump to similar philosophical positions.
Many of these Star Trek episodes don’t stand up well upon re-viewing. I haven’t seen them in twenty (or thirty!) years, and what I loved as a boy is sometimes almost unwatchable as an adult. (The Corbomite Maneuver is mind-numbingly bad.) But The Devil in the Dark is as good as I remembered. Amazing that much of the framework of the adult J.D.’s belief system can be traced to one hour of television made in 1965…
