Tag Archives: Animal Cognition

This is Ronan. She’s a California sea lion and she probably has better rhythm than you. Scientists earlier showed that Ronan, a resident of the Long Marine Laboratory at the University of California, Santa Cruz, was the first nonhuman mammal who could be trained to keep a beat, including moving in time with music. That was in 2013 when Ronan …

In 1996, Kat Albrecht was a police officer and bloodhound handler in Santa Cruz, Calif. Her dog, A.J., had been a part of many search and rescue efforts, sniffing out and locating lost people in the woods. But when A.J. escaped Ms. Albrecht’s yard, there was no team of expert animal rescuers to turn to. So she sought help from …

Parents and their children, or people who know each other well, often share some expression that is unique to them — a phrase or gesture that began by happenstance but gradually acquired a meaning that only they know. The same is true of Beryl, a chimpanzee living in Kibale National Park, in Uganda, and her young daughter, Lindsay. When Lindsay …

For Wynne, the buttons are not only entirely superfluous to the communication humans and dogs already have but also potentially a distraction from their natural barks and howls, their tail wags and tucks. “I actually think that having dogs press buttons runs the risk of obscuring dogs’ voices in the sense of dogs’ expressions of themselves,” Wynne said. Rossano disagrees …