Archives: Cognition

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Brawn over brains?

There’s no question that broadly speaking, big brains are smart. Take humans, for instance: our brains weigh in at about 3 pounds on average, nearly four times the size of the brains of chimpanzees (whose brains weigh in at less than a pound apiece). What’s less clear is why. There are a number of... More

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Nest in the city

One of the most incredible things about peafowl is how well these birds thrive in the suburbs. There were hundreds in Arcadia, CA, where I studied them, and every once in a while I hear about some other town where they’ve taken over – Orange County, Palos Verdes, Miami – they even disperse and... More

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

The Owl: why kids make great science writers

I finally had a chance to watch Steven Pinker’s excellent lecture on science communication this weekend. Pinker, a psychologist, linguist and top-notch writer, argues that psychology can help us tune up our writing and become better communicators. His first point is that cognitive psychology points to the model that we should be aiming for:... More

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Is animal care due for an update?

Canadians will fiercely defend nearly any Canadian-made thing, and we have an uncanny ability to keep track. Insulin? Discovered by a Canadian. The telephone? Also Canadian. Sir Sandford Fleming and his time zones? Canadian too. Tom Cruise? Spent his childhood here. At the philosophy symposium here in September on ethics and animals, I learned... More

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Species of serendipity

Like most ideas, this one arrived in the shower. I needed to write a post for this week, but my list of topics was wearing thin and the weather is finally starting to get nice enough to distract me. Sure, I had a few promising ideas lined up, but they all need more time... More

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Monkeys draw from memory

We’re a little bit closer to understanding what it’s like to be a monkey, and it’s thanks to the same technology that powers your smartphone: the touchscreen. The latest victory for touchscreens is in the field of memory research. Scientists have been studying this ability in animals for decades – some birds, for example,... More

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

I can haz toxoplasmosis

In which you will learn why online cats are so attractive, and discover a new way to lose hours to the internet. First, the cats. Charlie and I were hashing out the finer points of Facebook, memes and internet superstars, when, in frustration, I brought up his most hated animal. “Look. Cute baby videos and LOLcats are... More

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Identity evolves

“Everyone is special.” The paradoxical refrain of baby boomer parents to their millenial offspring is true, so long as you’re a rodent living in a large, stable group of good communicators. I recently wrote about the phenomenon of identity signals in animals, where variable colours and patchy-looking patterns can provide signatures of... More

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

To kill bias, gather good data

I hate myself for this: I have the worst sense of direction. For the entire year when I was living in my first apartment in Kingston, I would take a circuitous route along King Street and then up Princess on my way home from the Kingston Yacht Club. Nearly two kilometers, when walking up... More

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Mind hacks for athletes and the rest of us

For a change of pace, I thought I’d cover two recent neuroscience findings in today’s post. It’s not all academic, either, since both of these studies might help improve your everyday life. Just sit back, suspend your disbelief and fire up the expectation and reward centers of your brain. You might be able to... More

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Groupthink

Which animal would use Facebook most, if it could? My poll in class last week was a popular one – a fact that I couldn’t properly enjoy, since Charlie came up with it for me in a fit of brain-dead incapacity. Charlie’s Facebook question elicited chirps of excitement, compliments and even a few drawings... More

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Beware of the blob

It creeps, and it might be more like us than we care to admit. That was a lesson I learned last fall when trying to choose between pigeons and slime moulds for our lab journal club. The birds, it seems, are on a different level. It started with the Monty Hall problem and a... More

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