Posts Tagged "animal"
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A Chimp, a Congressional Rep, and a Mirror
Election day photo: chimp art. (Or … holding your Congressional Rep up to a mirror.) No, we didn’t really buy into the old (and false) urban legend that some group of baboons is called a congress. (They’re not. A group of baboons is a troop.) However, Congress is up for election today (when this was originally posted on our IG feed). We’ve done several articles discussing the science around why democracy is important (not everyone in the world believes it is), and are likely to do more in the future. So, if you’re in the US, don’t let the urban legend make a monkey out of you: vote if you’re eligible! (Political science and economics are important applications of data science. This is Hugo Rheinhold’s famous 19th century sculpture of a politician’s closest living relative, the common chimpanzee. That chimp has political skills! He shares 99% of this DNA with members of Congress — and also all the rest of us.… Read the restConsciousness: vampire mirror reflections?
Halloween photo: Is this classic silent film vampire conscious or not? Can he pass the mirror test of animal intelligence? Or does he fail the test because he cannot see himself in a mirror and therefore lacks consciousness? 🙂 We originally did this as a series of Halloween (and mirror) themed photos on our IG feed. However, thanks to True Blue, Vampire Diaries, Interview with a Vampire, and Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight, vamps are so chic these days this is practically evergreen content. This is actor Max Schreck from the 1922 silent horror movie Nosferatu, said to be a then-popular German knock-off of the US Dracula silent film. (The plot was in fact based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula book, with a different name for the vampire.) Since Nosferatu is a fictional vamp, he lacks a soul, and cannot recognize or see himself in a mirror. So, continuing on our theme these last few photos, perhaps this means Nosferatu is not self-aware or conscious?… Read the restAnimal intelligence & consciousness: the mirror test
Analytics and mirrors: While the ability to recognize ones reflection in a mirror appears to be an excellent test of animal intelligence (and perhaps a hint about machine intelligence), with very few animals passing the test, humans have appreciated mirrors for millennia. Sacred objects in some cultures (e.g., ancient Japan), mirrors have been cherished for at least 6000 years, since at least the beginning of the Bronze Age. Shown here is an ancient Etruscan Bronze mirror #handle from the 4th–3rd century BC on display in the Lourve museum collection near Paris in France. The piece is titled, appropriately enough, “The Judgement of Paris.” It’s easy enough to see where humans got the idea for mirrors, as we’ll show in our next photo. This is also a great segue into our Halloween posts. (This was originally posted on our IG feed as part of a series of Halloween posts.) Other than smoke and mirrors, or a room full of mirrors, what do mirrors have to do with Halloween?… Read the restAnimal consciousness: is this bird human-like?
Does this bird have levels of animal consciousness comparable to a human? Unlike the ‘bird brained’ giant chicken we featured in our last post (aka the dinosaur T-rex), this Eurasian magpie has one of the highest brain/body ratios, comparable to a gorilla. Magpies are reputed for their intelligence. (They taunt other animals and are so famed for stealing shiny objects the Italian composer Rossini wrote an opera about them, “The Thieving Magpie.”) The Ted talk linked from our post on the singularity talks about brain/body ratios. Metabolism slows down in larger organisms to reduce heat dissipation, which is why it is the brain/body ratio that determines intelligence, not the size of the brain. (T-rex had a huge brain but there are all sorts of indications it was incredibly stupid despite being one of the smarter dinosaurs. It’s brain/body ratio was incredibly tiny.) Magpies are one of only about ten animals know for certain to be able to recognize themselves in a mirror (Wikipedia: mirror test).… Read the restRecent Posts
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