Latest news with #animalbehavior
Forbes
3 days ago
- Health
- Forbes
Being Curious Might Help Keep Alzheimer's Disease At Bay: Study
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA: A chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) family enjoys Christmas treats of flavoured pine ... More cones and frozen fruit at Taronga Zoo in Sydney, 23 December 2004. The Christmas gifts form part of Taronga's on-going behavioural enrichment programme, aimed at stimulating the animals' natural curiousity. AFP PHOTO/Torsten BLACKWOOD (Photo credit should read TORSTEN BLACKWOOD/AFP via Getty Images) The secret to maintaining your brain health and staying sharp as you age might just be cultivating your sense of curiosity, a recent study found. Being curious during old age could also help in preventing or at least off-setting Alzheimer's disease. 'Curiosity is broadly defined as a desire to learn, experience, or explore new information or environments. It is a motivating influence that drives us to participate in hobbies, pursue education, and travel to experience new things,' the authors wrote in the study. 'Trait curiosity, defined as people's stable tendency to actively seek knowledge and information, has been correlated with a variety of positive traits in everyday settings. For example, in educational settings, curiosity is related to rates of student question-asking and academic performance. Additionally, medical students with higher levels of curiosity report having deeper motives for studying and engaging in deeper study strategies when learning new information,' the authors added. Psychologists measure curiosity as a state, where feeling curious is just a momentary or fleeting experience and as a trait, where it is a feature of an individual's personality and way of life. During old age, curiosity is the main factor that motivates people to engage in formal learning such as taking classes for learning a new skill. And such stimulating activities help in maintaining the brain's cognitive abilities. In a press release, senior author of the study, Alan Castel, a psychologist at UCLA said: 'You see this in the context of lifelong learning: A lot of older adults will go back to take classes or pick up hobbies or engage in bird watching. I think it shows that this level of curiosity if maintained, can really keep us sharp as we age.' To further investigate how the two forms of curiosity work in adults, the researchers collected data from 1,218 participants between the ages of 20 and 84. They completed an online questionnaire that measured their levels of curiosity. Some of the questions they answered included: 'What is added to white sugar to make brown sugar? (answer: molasses) and what is the name of the biggest constellation in the sky? (answer: hydra)." The researchers then rated each participant's curiosity level on a scale of one to 10. 'Age does not have a uniform influence on curiosity; rather, we need to consider the multifaceted nature of this construct when discussing aging effects,' they noted. 'Curiosity subsumes different levels of psychological processes (e.g., emotional processes, reinforcement, learning, attention, appraisal, etc.), each of which would be impacted differently by age.' Prior research has found that younger adults tend to be more curious about learning new topics while older adults feel more motivated to continue expanding their existing knowledge. 'It is important to consider some of the ways that older adults may maintain curiosity other than via trait curiosity measures. Specifically, older adults may be selectively curious about things that have greater self-relevance or that are relevant to their prior knowledge, which may benefit them in specific contexts. For example, if an older adult is curious about gardening, they may be more likely to read gardening magazines, join a gardening group, or to learn a new gardening skill,' the researchers highlighted in their study published in the journal PLoS One in May 2025. 'Engaging with any of these activities can be beneficial for overall well-being and cognitive outcomes in older age, for example by fostering social connections and learning complex new skills. Thus, it may be important to recognize and encourage specific domains of curiosity for older adults, rather than simply focusing on measures of trait curiosity,' they added.
CTV News
3 days ago
- General
- CTV News
Dive-bombed or not, Vancouverites are still pro-crow, researchers say
Celina Slaght, a medical volunteer, feeds a fledgling crow at the Wildlife Rescue Association of B.C., in Burnaby, B.C., on Thursday, May 29, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck VANCOUVER — Along her journey towards understanding Vancouver's crows, psychology professor Suzanne MacDonald says she made a friend. It's a crow that brings her gifts after she set up a bird feeder at her home in the neighbourhood of Kitsilano. Once, it was a barnacle-covered shell, which MacDonald treasures. Other times, it was 'bits of garbage' that MacDonald doesn't fancy much, though she 'appreciates the sentiment.' 'I think he definitely recognizes me. When other people go out on my patio, he doesn't come to them. He knows me,' said MacDonald. Vancouver has long had a love-hate relationship with its crows, whose dive-bombing attacks on pedestrians are a sure sign of springtime in the city. But a new survey co-authored by MacDonald suggests that, on the human side at least, it's mostly love. 'I think that many people feel a deep connection to crows because they seem to see the world the way humans do: they are intelligent, excellent problem solvers, they recognize individual humans, and they are highly social, culturally complex beings,' said MacDonald, a psychology professor at York University, who divides her time between Toronto and Vancouver. MacDonald and Laura Adams, who teaches psychology at Langara College, teamed up to survey hundreds of people in B.C.'s Lower Mainland to examine their relationship with crows. They said 67 per cent of people had positive feelings about crows, compared to only five per cent with negative feelings, in findings released this month that the researchers hope will inform an academic publication later. As for the crows, many make their feelings known during the spring nesting season, when the Wildlife Rescue Association of B.C. says 'overprotective' parent birds swoop on anyone who gets too close to a nest. It's a common experience across Vancouver — an online crowdsourced map of crow attacks in Vancouver is dotted with red crow symbols marking swooping sites gathered over several years. But Adams said most people felt 'very positive' about crows, even if they had been dive-bombed. 'We were really hoping to compare the types of people who loved crows and the types of people who had very negative opinions on crows because talking to the general public, people seem to be in both camps,' said Adams. But it turns out most respondents were crow fans. 'We found that 64 per cent of people said that they'd been dive-bombed by a crow. So, when you put that in the context of 67 per cent of people feeling very positive about crows, that means there are a lot of people who've been dive-bombed but still love crows,' said Adams, 'We found that really interesting.' Many of the 468 survey respondents shared stories about their unique relationships with the birds. 'I think one of the interesting parts is just how much people wanted to talk about crows for no reward at all,' said Adams. Vancouver has even had its own celebrity crow, named Canuck, that was well known for riding the SkyTrain, stealing a knife from a crime scene in 2016, and forging an unlikely friendship with a mail carrier. Adams said the survey found 53 per cent of people felt crows were a symbol of Vancouver. Wildlife photographer Liron Gertsman has been fascinated with crows since he was five, and that obsession turned into a documentary, filmed with friend Jack Bailey. Their 10-minute production, 'The Commute,' captures the story of a massive murder of crows — up to 10,000 birds strong — that congregates at Still Creek in Burnaby at night. The huge flock is a familiar sight in Metro Vancouver skies, particularly in winter months. Gertsman called it an 'incredible phenomenon.' 'They're just so smart,' he said, as he described the challenge of locating the birds, only to turn up for more filming and 'they'd be nowhere to be seen.' 'So, they were playing games with us a little bit. They were taking us on a not a wild-goose chase, but a wild-crow chase around the city,' he said. Gertsman said that during filming he and Bailey were pooped on 'all the time,' but it didn't dampen their enthusiasm for their subjects and their 'beautiful daily commute.' He's still watching crows during the current nesting season. 'There's a crow nest that is just barely visible outside my window, tucked into the tree, which is fun to watch,' Gertsman said. 'I think it's a lovely thing to be able to look outside your window in the morning and see a crow because it represents that little bit of nature that is able to exist within even a pretty big city.' The Wildlife Rescue Association said nesting season lasts from April to July, meaning 'anxious bird parents are out in full force' to protect their young. The association said it's seeing a spike in reports of fledgling crows on the ground, and there are 11 injured and orphaned crows in Wildlife Rescue's care. The organization's co-executive director, Linda Bakker, said it's common to find young crows on the ground in late spring as they learn to fly. Not all need help, but if a grounded bird looks like it's in trouble, people should can take a photo and contact Wildlife Rescue, she said. She said the group often gets calls from people asking how to deal with crow attacks. But she said that when it happened to her, she wasn't worried. 'I was excited when it happened. I was like, oh, there's a crow, and he's protecting his nest. That's great. I will stay out of your way,' said Bakker. MacDonald said it's important for people to understand how we live with other species, particularly in an urban environment where many animals have been pushed out. 'But some of them, like crows, actually thrive with us, and that makes them very special,' she said. MacDonald says daily encounters with crows should be seen as a reminder that 'if we live in a city that has no wildlife, then we live in a dead city.' 'We want to live in a very vibrant city where nature is at our front door and our back door and everywhere, and crows remind us that is the case in the Lower Mainland.' This report by Nono Shen, The Canadian Press, was first published on May 30, 2025.
Washington Post
6 days ago
- Health
- Washington Post
Do you know your dog at all?
In today's edition: This past weekend, Post Opinions published one of the most disconcerting pronouncements I've encountered in my near-decade working here: You might not know your dog as well as you think you do. Clive D.L. Wynne and Holly Molinaro are researchers at Arizona State University; the very good, very handsome Oliver is Molinaro's dog. Oliver is also the star of the researchers' study, in which they made videos of him responding either happily or unhappily to various stimuli.
Washington Post
26-05-2025
- Science
- Washington Post
Humans believe they understand their dogs. Our research gave us pause.
Oliver, one of the researcher's dogs, is seen on a black background, as part of an experiment. (Holly Molinaro) Dog owners don't understand their pet's emotions as well as they think they do. Clive D.L. Wynne is a professor of psychology and director of the Canine Science Collaboratory at Arizona State University. Holly Molinaro has recently completed her PhD at Arizona State. Most of us have powerful intuitions about how our dog is feeling — starting with that flag attached to the rear end, the tail. Tail wagging: dog happy. Tail tucked: dog sad or scared. And yet the scientific literature is surprisingly quiet about whether we are actually good at reading a dog's emotions. If people are going to care for dogs, they need to know how their pet is really feeling — so we studied just how well they understand dogs' emotions. Our work started during the pandemic with one of us, Clive, in Arizona and the other, Holly, in Connecticut. As we struggled to master Zoom, we realized that manipulating video could help us investigate this question. First, Holly filmed her dog Oliver playing with her father in several situations. Some positive, like giving him a treat … ... and some negative, like showing his nemesis, Saffron. Holly then edited the videos, so they showed only Oliver against a black backdrop. The videos were shown to hundreds of people who were asked how Oliver was feeling. A key finding was that people couldn't say how Oliver was feeling without any context. Holly filmed her (now much-missed) dog Oliver playing with her father, Rich. Some of the time Rich set up situations that would be considered positive; such as playing with Oliver, showing him his leash or giving him a treat. Rich also created negative situations, such as showing Oliver his nemesis in the house, Saffron the cat. Holly filmed everything, and then, just as Zoom makes it possible to obscure the background, she edited the videos so that viewers only saw Oliver against a black backdrop. We then showed 400 people these videos and asked them how Oliver was feeling. First, we showed just Oliver on the black background, and then we let people see the same videos with the full context: Oliver, Rich and anything Rich had with him — like a treat or Saffron. No surprise, when given full context, an overwhelming majority of people rated Oliver as happy in positive situations and less happy in negative ones. But in videos without contextual information — no Rich, no leash, no Saffron or anything else — they couldn't tell us how Oliver was feeling. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement This was a shock. Surely people could tell a happy dog from an unhappy one? We delved deeper. Since context seemed so important, what if the context was … wrong? Holly and her dad (and Oliver!) went back to work. Holly made movies of Rich and Oliver in different scenarios and manipulated some videos to make it appear that Oliver was playing with Rich when the unedited footage was actually of Oliver being reprimanded. In others, Oliver appeared to be responding to a reprimand, when in reality he had been shown his leash which promised a fun walk. We sent this second survey to 500 people and found that when they saw Rich doing something fun, such as offering Oliver a treat, they responded consistently that Oliver was feeling good, regardless of whether the footage they saw was of Oliver actually reacting to a positive or a negative situation. When people saw Rich doing something a little mean to Oliver, they thought the dog was more sad and anxious, regardless of what Oliver was actually reacting to. Our participants rated how Oliver was feeling based solely on what Rich was doing. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement You might think, 'Okay, well, that's someone else's dog. I surely know my own dog the best.' Holly showed her dad the edited videos as well. When Rich watched, even he was stumped as to what his dog was really feeling. 'Oh, that video was definitely the one where I showed Oliver some cheese. He loves cheese!' 'Actually, no, Dad. That is the one where he is being shown the cat.' 'Well, then — ' So what is going on here? Are we truly just terrible at understanding if our dog is happy or not? Can you guess Oliver's emotion? Happy Sad The owner is playing with Oliver, asking him to roll over. Happy Sad Oliver is being reprimanded, with the owner pointing a finger at him. Happy Sad Oliver is facing an enemy – a cat named Saffron. A pair of studies in Italy a decade ago helps fill out this picture. A team at the Universities of Bari and Trieste put dogs one by one in a wooden box with cameras above them and a window in front. The cameras were trained on the dogs' wagging tails while the researchers presented things to look at through the window. The researchers showed the dogs their owner, an unfamiliar person and an unfamiliar dog. The dogs showed a strong, consistent bias to wag their tails to the right when shown their owner or an unfamiliar human but a left bias toward the unfamiliar dog, indicating that dogs' wagging tails show their emotional state not simply by how much they wag them but also the side of the body they wag their tails toward. This likely is connected to how the left side of the brain is more specialized for approach and the right side for withdrawal. In the dog these signals cross over on their way from brain to tail, leading to more rightward wagging for something the dog would like to approach and more leftward wagging for something it would rather retreat from. This is a striking finding, because in all the millennia people have been watching dogs and writing about them, nobody had ever noticed that the direction a tail wags makes any difference. While humans may be blind to this aspect of emotional expression in dogs, our canine friends certainly notice. In a follow-up study, the researchers connected dogs to heart rate monitors and showed them videos of other dogs wagging their tails. If the dogs saw a left-wagging tail, their heart rate revealed they were more anxious than when they watched a right-wagging tail. People and dogs have been living together for more than 15,000 years. In that time, what have we learned? Our study along with the research from Italy, shows that, despite intense intuitions, people are poor at recognizing the emotional state of dogs. Instead, we look at everything around the dog to guess what our pet must be feeling but fail to look closely at the animal itself. This might not seem so surprising. After all, we don't have tails to wag, and we don't sniff our friends' backsides to learn how they're feeling. But it's crucial to the success of our lives together because the world we share with our dogs has changed dramatically over recent decades. Our dogs no longer live in kennels in the backyard, as their great-grandparents did. More than three-quarters of dogs in America today curl up each night in bed with people who consider them family members. Highly trained hounds console patients in hospitals, and there are even churches that involve dogs as part of their ministry. This increased intimacy requires us to accurately gauge our dogs' moods. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement Meanwhile, at the other end of the leash, several studies have shown that dogs are remarkably good at recognizing human emotional expressions. They can tell what emotion a human face is showing or respond with empathetic concern to a weeping person. Where our comprehension of dogs' emotions is so weak, their understanding of us is remarkably strong. We need to confront our biases and be more modest in our assessment of canine emotions. We have to recognize that it isn't easy to know how a dog is feeling, but with careful attention to each individual dog we might be able to learn what their happiness looks like. Post Opinions wants to know: How did your relationship with your dog evolve over time? Share your responses and they might be published as letters to the editor.
The Guardian
23-05-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Like a Tom Cruise stunt: hawk uses traffic patterns to target prey
It is a tactic worthy of Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt: wait until a beeping pedestrian crossing indicates a traffic queue has formed then use the line of cars as cover to reach your target. But this isn't a scene from Mission: Impossible – it's the behaviour of a young hawk. The discovery is not the first time birds have been found to make use of an urban environment. Crows, for example, are known to drop foods such as walnuts on to roads for cars to crush them open. However, the researcher behind a new study says it is the most advanced case so far of raptors making use of traffic patterns. 'When I figured out what was going on, I was really impressed. I didn't expect that,' said Vladimir Dinets, a zoologist at the University of Tennessee and author of the study. 'On the other hand, every time I study some animal species it proves smarter than I expect.' Dinets made the discovery during the school run in West Orange, New Jersey, when he spotted a young Cooper's hawk emerge from a tree near a road junction. The bird flew close to the pavement behind a queue of traffic that had stopped at a red light before crossing the road and taking a dive near one of the houses. After seeing the behaviour for a second time, Dinets realised the hawk was pouncing on a flock of birds that had gathered in front of a house where a family often ate dinner outdoors. Writing in the journal Frontiers in Ethology, Dinets describes how he then carried out 12 hours of observations from his car over 18 days during the winter of 2021-22. These were made on weekday mornings and only when the flock was present and there was no rain or snow the day before – weather that would prevent the residents of the house from eating alfresco. Dinets recorded six attempted attacks by the same hawk, identifiable by its plumage, and on one occasion saw it fly away with a house sparrow in its grip. He found the hawk only emerged from the tree when a long queue of traffic had built up, offering sufficient cover for its approach – something that depended on the pedestrian crossing being activated. Dinets also noticed the bird took up its position in the tree when the crossing's sound signal began, suggesting the hawk used the sound as an indication that a longer traffic queue was to form and that it was time to prepare for attack. 'This behaviour required having a mental map of the area and understanding the connection between the sound signals and the change in traffic pattern – a remarkable intellectual feat for a young bird that likely had just moved into the city,' Dinets writes, noting Cooper's hawks tend to be winter visitors to urban areas. Sign up to Down to Earth The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential after newsletter promotion The following winter he twice saw an adult hawk, possibly the same bird, hunting in the same way. But the following summer the sound signals stopped working and the residents that ate alfresco moved out of their house. 'No hawks were ever observed at the intersection after that,' he wrote. Dinets added that while it is known social birds such as crows and parrots can be very clever, intelligence in more solitary species is more difficult for humans to recognise and so probably underestimated. 'Cities are extremely dangerous places for wild animals,' he added. 'Anything that can survive here must have some special abilities and deserves our respect.'
