A random thread for the wildlife stuff - you know the drill

[Bledlow]

All the evidence is that there's a lot less of theirs to learn, & they don't have much to say.

They can learn to understand quite a lot of words of ours, but have failed to learn to communicate in any of our languages beyond a very basic level, despite great efforts to teach them.

Dozens of signs & gestures used by great apes for communication have been identified. Note that: dozens. Copying those isn't particularly difficult, as far as I can discover, but researchers don't find it very interesting, not like trying to teach 'em something more complicated.

With intensive & lengthy teaching, a few have learned to use a few hundred signs - but none of them have learned to use them as humans do, & they learn them very slowly indeed by human standards.

[Kim]

With intensive & lengthy teaching, a few have learned to use a few hundred signs - but none of them have learned to use them as humans do, & they learn them very slowly indeed by human standards.

Have any of those studies been done with immersive exposure to *native* signers, though?  Without that, you'd expect them to have the same problems as signing children of hearing families (who are typically learning sign one step ahead from limited resources, which isn't fast enough for a developing child, and only use it to communicate directly with the child, so the child isn't exposed to natural adult use of language).  That apes tend to learn more slowly would surely compound that effect.

[Mrs Pingu]

Poor Pumpkin. She was sitting facing the telly while we were watching Springwatch. A barn owl was facing 'out' of the telly and when it leapt to fly out of the nest (effectively out of the telly) Pumpkin totally freaked out and ran behind the sofa. Poor wee toot!

[Bledlow]

With intensive & lengthy teaching, a few have learned to use a few hundred signs - but none of them have learned to use them as humans do, & they learn them very slowly indeed by human standards.

Have any of those studies been done with immersive exposure to *native* signers, though?  Without that, you'd expect them to have the same problems as signing children of hearing families (who are typically learning sign one step ahead from limited resources, which isn't fast enough for a developing child, and only use it to communicate directly with the child, so the child isn't exposed to natural adult use of language).  That apes tend to learn more slowly would surely compound that effect.

The evidence is that they learn to understand speech (with immersive exposure) faster than they learn to use anything, & learn to understand speech orders of magnitude slower than humans. There's a hell of a lot of controversy about how much they do learn, especially in their use of language, but even those making the greatest (& highly disputed) claims aren't claiming anything anywhere near what humans learn in similar circumstances.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Still with the chimps, I read the other day that chimpanzees have learned to appreciate cooked food, prefer cooked to raw vegetables and would hoard raw veg until they had enough to hand over to their tame humans for cooking. Delayed gratification – obviously middle-class chimps!  I think I read this in the Graun – or maybe it was the Telegraph. Either way, I can't find it now.

[Mr Larrington]

Never mind that, where's my Monkey Butler?

[spesh]

Still with the chimps, I read the other day that chimpanzees have learned to appreciate cooked food, prefer cooked to raw vegetables and would hoard raw veg until they had enough to hand over to their tame humans for cooking. Delayed gratification – obviously middle-class chimps!  I think I read this in the Graun – or maybe it was the Telegraph. Either way, I can't find it now.

It's been all over the media: https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=chimps+prefer+cooked+food&tbm=nws

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/03/chimpanzees-can-cook-and-prefer-cooked-food-study-shows

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/11648482/Chimps-could-cook-if-we-gave-them-the-chance-says-research.html

[Ham]

chimps being unable to control fire was just one of the reasons they do not currently cook. The other, according to the study, is their lack of "social skills"

That really makes no sense, Gordon Ramsay can cook.

[Mr Larrington]

One very lucky cat on the Isle of Man - nearly became a Manx cat in both senses after a near miss with Keith Amor's bike.



Only eight left.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Recently I've seen a few people taking their cats for walks on leads, like dogs. This puzzles me. Then I read this about someone trapping cats in a cage and putting up 'warning' posters:
http://www.bristol247.com/channel/news-comment/daily/animals/posters-show-missing-cat-trapped-in-cage

I don't think there's any connection between the cat-walking and the trapping, because the trapping story only broke a day or two ago and is in a different part of town. Both are a bit odd.

[Wowbagger]

I had a message from my daughter this morning. She's on holiday in Singapore and/or Malaysia. During this trip she has witnessed turtles hatching on a beach and dashing down to the sea.

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

Tonight I tickled a man's ferrets.

[Ham]

Takes rather a long while about it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAkKSQXgZUA

[Ham]

Apropos of this https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=2177.msg1882068#msg1882068

There is a recent visitor to the gardens around Ham Hall, can anyone identify the bugger? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y2rwtEodi4 carries on and on and on and on and on like that

[Ruthie]

It's a bird.

[Andrij]

It's a bird.

 

[Clare]

It could be a plane...

[Ham]

No, they are bloody sycamores

[Ham]

do you think you are any good at dog training? http://www.trainingwithomar.com/ovm-video.php

(Jumpy the dog & X-Pete if you have limited time)

[Basil]

Crikey!

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

I won't be frightened of Mr Larrington invoking TEH BEAR ever again

http://www.reshareworthy.com/bear-belly-flops-into-pool/

[Basil]

I miss Wol.     It's too quiet out there.

[Wowbagger]

Apropos of this https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=2177.msg1882068#msg1882068

There is a recent visitor to the gardens around Ham Hall, can anyone identify the bugger? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y2rwtEodi4 carries on and on and on and on and on like that

I think it might be a great tit. They have quite a wide variety of very monotonous calls.

Here's another. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nDLF2fxoWQ

And here are lots more! http://www.xeno-canto.org/species/Parus-major

[Wowbagger]

Dez has just been editing some footage taken with his quadcopter over Norsey Woods, Billericay. At one point lots of insects appear and he has identified them as drone honeybees. They seem to be attracted to the quadcopter and the propellors sliced some of them up. I wondered whether he had inadvertently flown it into a mating swarm, or whether drones spend a lot of their time zooming around above woodland If it is the former, I hope his efforts didn't kill the queen.

[Ham]

Apropos of this https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=2177.msg1882068#msg1882068

There is a recent visitor to the gardens around Ham Hall, can anyone identify the bugger? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y2rwtEodi4 carries on and on and on and on and on like that

I think it might be a great tit. They have quite a wide variety of very monotonous calls.

Here's another. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nDLF2fxoWQ

And here are lots more! http://www.xeno-canto.org/species/Parus-major

Quite possibly, thanks. Might be just complaining about the removal of the catering facilities at Ham Hall (replaced a year ago with a cat)