Steve+Wang

After sifting through mud looking for macroinvertebrates, I wanted to post up something a little bit different. While we humans view ourselves as the most intelligent creatures on Earth, There is more proof that we are not so alone as we thought. In this video, Joshua Klein shows us the first species capable of our type of learning that is not primate- related: crows, surprisingly. There was an earlier experiment with crows that involved tying a string to a tree branch with a piece of meat tied to one end. In this experiment, the birds exhibited their intelligence by learning to methodically pull the string up to them on the branch. More importantly, some crows learned by watching other crows, signs that they are capable of learning indirectly like us. This is also exhibited in a Japanese driving school, where crows learned to crack nuts by placing them on the road and waiting for cars to smash them. Coincidentally, crows' brains are proportional to those of chimpanzees. As humans are taking over the world, are animals getting smarter to catch up? Sounds like a topic worth investigating into.

[|Joshua Klein on crows]

I still don't know how to post pictures and widgets. Sorry! :(

[|David Gallo on ocean life]

Since we did research on the water and life within in Robbins Park last Thursday and Friday, I thought this would be somewhat relevant. In this video, David Gallo presents life at the very bottom of the sea floor, where there is virtually no sunlight and almost everything depends on chemosynthesis. He even shows organisms you might have never seen before, like a very wierd shaped jelly. It's kind of fascinating to see the kind of life you don't see everyday. Yeah, tube worms you've problably heard of, but there is so much more. Since it is now widely believed that life originated near undersea vents, if life on land were wiped out, could these organisms survive to start life over again? What do you think?

[|Shawn Achor on happiness]

I found this link browsing through the TED talks. I know this really doesn't have much to do with what we have learned in class, but it is still an interesting topic. Looking at our culture, it seems that we always place emphasis on the negative aspects. Everyone always hears about tsunamis, earthquakes, political troubles, celebrity scandals, celebrity deaths, etc., whereas happy news is always the odd one out. Also, is there any way to express this in a biological sense? take excercise, for example. Excercise reduces mental stress by making physical stress. could happiness perform the same function at a purely mental level In addition, from the discussion, it would seem that the future depends on the optimistic people. Makes sense, since no one likes to hear a whiner. Some more food for thought- can happiness be applied to medicine? It has already been applied to drugs, like ectasy. Why not actual medicine for, say, curing depression?

[|Hans Rosling on religion and babies]

Here's some more Hans Rosling. While religion and babies actually have little in common, his presentation notes other coincidences, such as that countries with lower income have the highest number of babies per women, following the rule of Darwin's natural selection that the best fit individual is the one that leaves the most offspring. Also, his question in the video can raise some thought. Will the population eventually level off like he stated, or experience exponential growth?