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birdienlWe probably all wondered once what an animal was thinking and wished it could speak, so we could ask it just that. Animal cognition is a fascinating field of study, which shows us time after time animals might be less thoughtless than we anticipated!
The animals which have shown the longest memory in a research setting have so far been dolphins. Research showed that after 20 years of seperation, dolphins still recalled the whistles of former companions. Dolphins use unique whistles, akin to our names to communicate. Dolphins which had been housed together 20 years ago, still reacted when the whistle of their former mate was played to them. They approached the source of sound and started responding with their own whistle. When whistles were played from dolphins they had never met, this reaction was not seen. The scientists were amazed about this, as dolphins only have a lifespan of about 20 years in the wild. They believe the long memory is important because dolphins form 'fluid' social groups, they may leave one group and join another multiple times in a lifetime. It is therefore important for them to remember identities of dolphins they encountered long ago to decide whether or not this may be someone they want to approach or avoid upon meeting them again.
Other animals with almost equally longterm memories are great apes and elephants.
In some memory tasks, animals might even top our human memory. For example, the visual memory of chimpanzees is amazingly strong. When presented with an image of randomly scattered numbers and later asked to identify the position of each number in order, chimpanzees did better than human test subjects. Chimps seem to posses a sort of photographic memory, remembering the details of an image even if just glimpsed for a view seconds!
Last weekend, I was asking myself a 'research' question about animal memory. My pony and my sister's pony, who had been housed together for 8 years and seperated for the last 1,5 years, were about to be reunited. A girl from my riding school bought my sister's pony, so 'my girls' would be together again! Beforehand, we talked about whether they would recognize each other a lot, most people I spoke thought they would. The reunion however, went a little different then I anticipated.... As soon as they stood in the paddock together, my pony, who's the eldest, put her ears back and bit my sister's pony hard in the neck. For the next hour she kept threatening my sister's pony whenever she would get close. I don't know why this exactly happened. I sure would have liked to be able to know what 'my girls' were both thinking!
Left is my sister's pony (with her new boss), right is my pony (with the girl who rides her/takes care of her). You can already see my pony is not amused....
The animals which have shown the longest memory in a research setting have so far been dolphins. Research showed that after 20 years of seperation, dolphins still recalled the whistles of former companions. Dolphins use unique whistles, akin to our names to communicate. Dolphins which had been housed together 20 years ago, still reacted when the whistle of their former mate was played to them. They approached the source of sound and started responding with their own whistle. When whistles were played from dolphins they had never met, this reaction was not seen. The scientists were amazed about this, as dolphins only have a lifespan of about 20 years in the wild. They believe the long memory is important because dolphins form 'fluid' social groups, they may leave one group and join another multiple times in a lifetime. It is therefore important for them to remember identities of dolphins they encountered long ago to decide whether or not this may be someone they want to approach or avoid upon meeting them again.
Other animals with almost equally longterm memories are great apes and elephants.
In some memory tasks, animals might even top our human memory. For example, the visual memory of chimpanzees is amazingly strong. When presented with an image of randomly scattered numbers and later asked to identify the position of each number in order, chimpanzees did better than human test subjects. Chimps seem to posses a sort of photographic memory, remembering the details of an image even if just glimpsed for a view seconds!
Last weekend, I was asking myself a 'research' question about animal memory. My pony and my sister's pony, who had been housed together for 8 years and seperated for the last 1,5 years, were about to be reunited. A girl from my riding school bought my sister's pony, so 'my girls' would be together again! Beforehand, we talked about whether they would recognize each other a lot, most people I spoke thought they would. The reunion however, went a little different then I anticipated.... As soon as they stood in the paddock together, my pony, who's the eldest, put her ears back and bit my sister's pony hard in the neck. For the next hour she kept threatening my sister's pony whenever she would get close. I don't know why this exactly happened. I sure would have liked to be able to know what 'my girls' were both thinking!
Left is my sister's pony (with her new boss), right is my pony (with the girl who rides her/takes care of her). You can already see my pony is not amused....
