This week's science news, and a prior diarist, brought us Senengalese savannah chimpanzees observed killing bushbabies with carefully crafted spears. What I found particularly interesting in that story was the fact that it was female and juvenile chimps found using the spears; an observation that has led other researchers to re-examine the role of females and the young in early human hunting, speculating that such innovation was one way to get over on the dominant males. Oh, call me a contrarian if you must, but I just love knowledge that turns accepted theory on its head. Which is probably why I think it's such a great time to be alive. As Paul Simone sings, " ... this is the age of miracles and wonders."
For a bit of relief from the agonizing news from Iraq, follow me beanth the fold for birds with daily menu planners.
In a recent study published on the 22nd in the journal Nature, researchers at the University of Cambridge set out to see if 'future-planning' is part of a bird's repetoire. Clever scientists that they are, they divorced the observed behavior of hoarding by my favorite backyard acrobats, the grey squirrel, from the idea of planning. You should have the pleasure of reading about this exeperiment on your own at
http://www.livescience.com/...
but, I, for one, am convinced that the researchers accomplished their goal, and demonstrated that the Western Scrubjays in their lab thought about the next morning's breakfast.
I've lived long enough to have stepped from Pavlov's world of animal automatons to a new world of mammalian brains evidently hardwired for concepts like mathematics and language. Perhaps it isn't that science has developed a heart and decided to treat human hominids as animals (ourselves), but rather that the evidence just became overwhelming, through genetic science in particular, and religion loosened its grip long enough for homo sapiens to observe, review and integrate the idea of of our biological connection to the entire web of life.
Now I feast on the torrent of research identifying traits in animals such as tool use, counting, or future planning previously thought unique to humans. I suppose what I hope for is a broad-based aha! moment for us that will fundamentally shift our relationships with all animals. That willl introduce not only a sea-change in our ruthless treatment of them, but an awareness of the incredibly rich world we share together. No longer will people talk about sea gulls as 'rats with wings', or squirrels as 'vermin', or, horrors! compare Bush with chimps - but we will take each species as the small wonder that it is, including our own. For my part, I find it enlightening and joyous to know that the cardinal in my backyard is 'thinking' her way through another day of winter survival - as industrious and single-minded in her quest as I am in mine.