By far my favorite aspect of animal intelligence are the stories of interspecies friendships. A goat that hangs out with tiger cubs? A pig that befriends a bear? A moose and a tern who are inseparable? These sorts of things make my day. I want to believe that on some level, all animals are capable of empathy with other animals. (I realize that I may be stretching things there, but that’s okay. I’m aware of my weakness in this area.)
Therefor, I love this video:
Here we have a dog. And a cat. And a rat. The three of them live in what seems to be perfect harmony. “The dog raised the cat,” says Greg, the animals’ owner. “That’s her puppy.”
I love how these animals seem to want to be around each other. They huddle together (probably out of fear, it’s true — they’re in a downtown area), they groom each other.
It’d be great to find more videos like this…
Cute, although the dog does look a little spooked.
Re interspecies friendships, have you seen this one? Although I’m not sure it’s an example of animal intelligence, exactly …
That’s pretty cute.
Have you seen these?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/06/science/06dumb.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/opinion/07wed4.html
Have you read the cover story of the March 2008 National Geographic? Three guesses for the subject. Also, see the May 12, 2008 issue of the New Yorker. There’s an article focusing on Irene Pepperberg’s research on page 64, titled Birdbrain. I don’t know if you can find these online, but I certainly recommend possibly trying to find them at your local library. They’re seriously in-depth articles, especially the National Geographic one. Thank you for being such a good source.
In reference to Mary’s post, here’s a link to the NatGeo article. It’s a very good read, beautiful photography by Vincent Musi (if you can, watch the videos of him explaining what happened behind the scenes as he photographed the animals).
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/03/animal-minds/virginia-morell-text
Great to see this video. I have 2 shih tzus and an angora rabbit. They all live under 1 roof.