Jon's LiveJournal

: omgitscookies; August 21st, 2008

This news from New Scientist magazine:

""I even get confused when I'm dropping the bait," says Naoko Irie, a researcher at the University of Tokyo, Japan, who uncovered the elephant's inner genius. She presented her findings last week at the International Society for Behavioral Ecology's annual meeting in Ithaca, New York.

Moreover, Irie found that as well as summing small numbers with almost 90% accuracy, elephants can discriminate between small numbers."

Frigging amazing. Monkeys, dolphins and now elephants have these basic skills down. It will only be a matter of time until the animals are in college.

Read the full article & watch the video at: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14569

Tags: biology, elephants, international, japan, mathematics, science, zoo

Everything is bigger in Texas, even spider webs

: omgitscookies; September 3rd, 2007

If you hate creepy-crawlies, you might want to avoid Lake Tawakoni State Park, where a 200-yard stretch along a nature trail has been blanketed by a sprawling spider web that has engulfed seven large trees, dozens of bushes and the weedy ground.
If you hate mosquitoes, you might just love this bizarre web.
"At first, it was so white it looked like fairyland," said Donna Garde, superintendent at the park about 45 miles east of Dallas. "Now it's filled with so many mosquitoes that it's turned a little brown. There are times you can literally hear the screech of millions of mosquitoes caught in those webs." (Read More...)

Tags: biology, nature, spiders, texas