Shettleworth 1&2
I couldn't find my book this morning before I left my house so the post is coming to you late, but I really enjoyed these chapters. The first one seemed to sum up all the important bits of comparative cognition which was cool. It talked about Darwin and how the study of all this began, and then it reviewed the importance of studying learning in comparative cognition and talked about Tinbergen's 4 questions, followed up by some research. It even had a phylogenetic tree. I do love a good review, but I think my favorite part was the discussion on how tool use evolved separately in birds and mammals because I don't remember going over that much. We did talk about evolutionary trees, and about traits evolving separately but I don't remember one of them being tool use. Although, to be honest we might have. I start to turn to mush usually around this point in the semester. Also can I just say how much I prefer this smaller book simply because I can fit it in one hand to read so my dog can still sit in my lap? Because points for that.
One of the things I didn't like from chapter 1 was that I didn't really understand what it was saying about human cognition being modular. I felt like the explanation was lacking, so feel free to pop into the comments and explain that if you understood it.
In chapter two I got excited because it was talking about umwelt and I just had a conversation with my husband the other day explaining something about our dog's behavior with the concept of umwelt. I don't remember what it was, but I got to sound super smart which was cool. It did make me wonder what it would be like to smell the way a dog can though. I have always felt sorry for my dog because I've heard they can't really see colors like we can (and let's be honest, my outfits are hella cute so she's missing out) but I wonder if she would feel the same about me not being able to smell the way she can if she knew. God I wish dogs could talk.
Also, I had no idea that platypodes hunted underwater at night by feeling electric signals from its prey's movement, but I think it might be my new favorite animal. I do tend to say that anytime I learn something new about an animal, so I doubt it'll stick but ask me tomorrow. In the mean time I'm going to call up the writers of Phineas and Ferb because they are missing some seriously great content.
When the book talked about comparing memory across species I thought of how people talk about different breeds of dogs as being smart and dumb. I've never heard anyone cite research saying one breed of dog could remember things for longer than another. It's always things that have no apparent usefulness to us like "My German shepherd is so dumb. She carries rocks around all day" with no attempt to understand why the dog does what she does. I would like to see more research comparing breeds of dogs. I always hear about dogs being man's best friend, but I see surprisingly little research trying to understand them. Maybe i'm looking in the wrong places.
One of the things I didn't like from chapter 1 was that I didn't really understand what it was saying about human cognition being modular. I felt like the explanation was lacking, so feel free to pop into the comments and explain that if you understood it.In chapter two I got excited because it was talking about umwelt and I just had a conversation with my husband the other day explaining something about our dog's behavior with the concept of umwelt. I don't remember what it was, but I got to sound super smart which was cool. It did make me wonder what it would be like to smell the way a dog can though. I have always felt sorry for my dog because I've heard they can't really see colors like we can (and let's be honest, my outfits are hella cute so she's missing out) but I wonder if she would feel the same about me not being able to smell the way she can if she knew. God I wish dogs could talk.
Also, I had no idea that platypodes hunted underwater at night by feeling electric signals from its prey's movement, but I think it might be my new favorite animal. I do tend to say that anytime I learn something new about an animal, so I doubt it'll stick but ask me tomorrow. In the mean time I'm going to call up the writers of Phineas and Ferb because they are missing some seriously great content.
When the book talked about comparing memory across species I thought of how people talk about different breeds of dogs as being smart and dumb. I've never heard anyone cite research saying one breed of dog could remember things for longer than another. It's always things that have no apparent usefulness to us like "My German shepherd is so dumb. She carries rocks around all day" with no attempt to understand why the dog does what she does. I would like to see more research comparing breeds of dogs. I always hear about dogs being man's best friend, but I see surprisingly little research trying to understand them. Maybe i'm looking in the wrong places.
I love your explanations of the chapters. Nothing is quite as fun as getting to sound super smart in ordinary conversation because you actually learned something in your class. I got to sprinkle in the concept of parthenogenesis in a conversation about Legend of Zelda, so I get where you're coming from. I can't recall how in depth we were about tool use either, but if you're digging that kind of info, I think intro to anthropology classes talk about it more in depth. Mine did anyway. Figured that'd be a snazzy thing to hop into if you need the extra class.
ReplyDeleteI think that the bit on cognition being modular was just talking about how some of our thought processes work better when implemented to a particular task or ideal. Like the spacial awareness of birds remembering where that seed was, but not being able to differentiate color (that could have been on the post buried by that seed) in a laboratory test.
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