BIOL 436 Lecture : 4 - Lefebvre - Evolution and Society.docx
22 Nov 2012
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Guest speaker 1 sept. 18 (louis lefebvre) Tests for intelligence can be done in captivity (where all the factors can be controlled), but some animals may be nervous, or the tests given to them may not even be relevant. Observations in the field are good because an animal is in its own environment, and doing things relevant to its survival, but factors cannot be controlled. In the field, we expect there to be quantitative differences. Some of the few animals that pass the mirror-test are chimpanzees, corvids, dolphins, elephants, magpies, gorillas, and orangutans. One way to measure intelligence is to track the way new behaviours are developed in the field. A crow demonstrates its intelligence by bait-fishing (holding a piece of bread in the water to attract a fish) crows do not normally do this, demonstrating that they show the most amount of innovation among birds.
