The new Canine Cognition Lab at Harvard University is studying how dogs behave and how they comprehend the world around them. (Note: if you live in the area, they’re also recruiting subjects.)
Also in today’s links: deafened dolphins, tailing elephants, and Paul Rudd.
- Two things that will guarantee that any science/environment story — or heck, any how-to-scour-your-pots story — will get seen: reference dogs, or include Paul Rudd. This one has the latter. I can already hear my sister squealing.
- A new study indicates that elephants in Kenya compete with cattle for grazing land, and that the rate of conception increases as resources are more available. But more interesting than those findings are the way the research was conducted: tracking individuals’ dietary history by studying their tail hairs.
- Even before they can talk, babies exposed to two languages have a cognitive advantage over infants raised in monolingual households.
- A study found that dolphins exposed to sonar at close range for an extended period (by which they mean several minutes) can experience temporary deafness. Although sonar has been implicated in cases where whales and dolphins have been stranded, the researchers suggested that the prolonged exposure needed to cause temporary deafness would indicate that sonar is not a factor in strandings.