Researchers have made a fascinating observation: a polar bear used a diving hunting technique, never before reported, to capture large moulting snow geese.
First published in 1975, Animal Liberation opened our eyes to the exploitation of animals. At a time of ‘ag-gag’ laws and ‘skyscraper’ farms, a new edition assesses the state of animal rights today.
Giraffes are the latest animals to show they can solve tasks using statistical reasoning – and the only one to do this with a small brain relative to body size.
Using urine and signature whistles from other dolphins, a team of scientists has shown that dolphins use signature whistles like names and hold mental representations of other dolphins in their minds.
The miniature brains of honeybees were able to understand the concepts of odd and even, despite only having 960,000 neurons (compared to 86 billion in humans).
Vera Weisbecker, Flinders University and Jeroen Smaers, Stony Brook University (The State University of New York)
Some animals, such as California sea lions, have small brains relative to their body size, but are still impressively intelligent, showing brain evolution is even more complex than it appears.