The Lab With Brad

Monkey brain business

Primates, from the littlest monkeys to the largest apes, have rather large brains for their size. They also have high neural density, meaning that they pack a large number of neurons into whatever size brain they have. With culture, tool use, and even the beginnings of language, we take a bit of time to visit with monkeys and their amazing minds.

Here are a couple of articles about the cotton top tamarin.

Primate Factsheets: Cotton-top tamarin

Cotton-Top Tamarins: Cooperative, Pacifist And Close to Extinct

Here’s an article about chimpanzees playing with sticks as though they were dolls.

Young Female Chimpanzees Play Out Motherly Role

Here’s a video of one monkey who seemingly revived another monkey after electrocution—monkey CPR?

Monkey Saves Monkey

Here’s a short article about the above video, and whether or not the one monkey was really attempting to revive the other.

Was Monkey Actually Trying to Revive Shocked Companion?

That’s a good dog

Alright, I agree, some dogs are smarter than others. Some dogs are downright dumb—but we still love them. Still, depending on the dog, they can show language and memory abilities as good as those shown by two year old human children. And yet, there’s nothing special about the dog brain. It is the size expected, and has the number of neurons expected for a non-primate mammal of their size. How does their average brain make some dogs so smart?

Here’s an article about how smart dogs are.

Dogs as intelligent as two-year-old children

Here’s an article about how dumb dogs are.

Dog intelligence 'not exceptional'

Here’s a bit about where dogs came from.

Origin of modern dog has a single geographic origin, study reveals

And here’s an article about the fox breeding experiment that sheds light on the domestication of the dog.

A Soviet scientist created the only tame foxes

Raccoons, brains, hands, and clever disguise

Raccoons have surprisingly crowded little heads. With as many neurons as a similar sized monkey, these furry little bandits have nimble hands, and a knack for cheating on intelligence tests.

Here are two videos of Raccoons doing their thing.

Racoon Demonstrates Problem Solving Skills

Meet the raccoons that solved an ancient puzzle

Here's an article about the way some raccoons "cheated" on an intelligence test.

Raccoons Pass Famous Aesop's Fable Test—By Upending It

Here’s an article about how many neurons raccoons have.

Dogs (and raccoons) have the most neurons

And here’s a thing on the evolution of the raccoon.

Biogeography of Raccoon (Procyon lotor)

Brains on the wing

If you compare brain size to body size, some animals have much more brain per pound than others. That includes the primates, who climb and swing through the trees. It also includes parrots and ravens and crows, who fly through the trees. Join us as we talk about some surprisingly sophisticated bird brains.

Here are a few talks about some smart birds, and some of the smart things they do.

Crows, smarter than you think

The fascinating intelligence of birds

Ravens and the evolution of intelligence

Here’s a page on crows, ravens, and how to tell them apart.

Similar Species: Crows and Ravens

Here’s a page on the evolution of intelligence in birds.

Cognitive ornithology: the evolution of avian intelligence

And here’s an article about the comet Phil told us about in his somewhat intermittent news segment.

Newly discovered comet is likely interstellar visitor

Elephants, their big brains and handy faces

The largest animal on land also has the largest brain. With complex social lives, cooperative problem solving, self-awareness and tool use, the elephants also have brains that have three times the number of neurons that our brains do. Join us as we take a look at elephants.

Here’s a paper on the size of elephant brains, and the number of neurons they have.

The elephant brain in numbers

Here’s a paper on some unique things about elephant brains.

What elephants' unique brain structures suggest about their mental abilities

And here are a couple of articles about the evolution of these large and intelligent animals..

Elephant Evolution

The ins and outs of elephant evolution

Seals and sea otters

Last time we talked about the whales, and how some of them turn out to be rather clever. The whales and dolphins aren’t the only mammals who have returned to the sea. We’ve also got things like seals and sea otters. Some of them are rather clever as well. In fact the sea otter is a tool user. Does going back to the ocean make a species smarter?

Here’s an article about marine mammal intelligence in general.

Intelligence and Cognition (marine mammals)

Here’s a fossil of a seal, before they were seals.

Puijila, the walking seal – a beautiful transitional fossil

Here’s an article about seals and their memory.

Seals remember what they just did

Here’s a blog post about the large and dangerous leopard seal.

Danger Beneath the Water: 10 Facts About Leopard Seals

And, more or less for fun, here’s a video of a sea otter playing basketball.

Sea Otter Hoop Dreams

Whales, songs and cerebrum

The largest creatures on the planet also have some good-sized brains. Why? What do they do with such large brains and how did they get them in the first place?

Here’s a video about the evolution of whales.

The Evolution Of Whales

Here are a couple of articles about the ichthyosaurs, reptiles that returned to the ocean like the ancestor of the whales did for mammals.

The Evolutionary History of Ichthyosaurs

Brain of ancient sea creature reconstructed by undergraduate researcher

Here’s a bit about whale songs.

Whale Songs in the South Pacific

And here’s a short sample of whale song.

Humpback whale song from Monterey Bay

Here’s a talk about dolphin language.

on dolphin talk

Octo smarts!

It’s a rough life. With no shell, octopuses are a delicious boneless morsel, just waiting for some big something or another to gobble them up. This bite-size snack uses its ability to hide, squeeze into the tiniest of hiding places, and its brains to find something to eat, and avoid being someone’s dinner. Join us as we consider the octopus, along with its relatives the squid and cuttlefish; their intelligence; and where they came from.

We talked a bit about the vOICe today. So here’s a link to the website, where you can learn more about it, or download a copy to play with.

seeingwithsound.com

Here are a couple of articles about octopus and their intelligence.

Why Are Octopuses So Smart?

Octopus shows unique hunting, social and sexual behavior

Here’s an article about cephalopod vision.

Cephalopods - Comparative Physiology of Vision

Here’s an article about the cephalopod brain.

Cephalopod Brains

Here’s something on an octopus fossil find.

Rare Fossil Octopuses Found

And just because it’s nifty, here are a couple of things on squid that will shoot out of the water, and then glide just above the surface.

Scientists Unravel Mystery of Flying Squid

Can a Squid Fly out of Water?

Here’s Phil’s news link.

Across the Universe, a star exploded so violently that it *completely* annihilated itself

And here’s the news bit I found.

It's 2019, And Astronomers Just Discovered a New Type of Strange, Pulsing Star

Intelligent insects?

Building homes, farming crops, herding animals for milk and meat, and using tools—some of the insects do some impressively clever things. Join us as we examine the smartest of the bugs, and what might have made them that way.

Here’s an interview with someone who studies insects and their intelligence.

Uncovering the intelligence of insects

Here’s a link about how ants have domesticated other species.

Ant Farm: These Insect Cowboys Harvest, Herd and Milk

And here’s an article about ants using tools.

Ants craft tiny sponges to dip into honey and carry it home

Here’s an article about the evolution of eusocial organization.

Eusocial Insect Evolution

And here’s a video about the naked mole rat, one of only two known eusocial mammals.

Why Is the Naked Mole Rat So Weird?

Here are links to Phil’s news stories.

Blinking eye-on-a-chip used for disease modeling and drug testing

Fear of predators causes PTSD-like changes in brains of wild animals

In search of intelligent animals

We spent nine months looking at the human brain, and one episode looking at the cognitive abilities of plants. Today, we try and figure out how to figure out whether or not an animal is intelligent.

Here are a couple of articles about Clever Hans, the classic example of how researchers can be tricked by their own bad self.

Clever Hans: cueing and the observer effect

The “Clever Hans Phenomenon” revisited

And here are a couple of links about intelligence in animals and how it’s studied.

Measuring animal intelligence

This is How You Study The Evolution of Animal Intelligence