Raccoons solve an ancient puzzle, but do they really understand it?
September 29, 2017
Scientists have been using an ancient Greek fable written by Aesop as inspiration to test whether birds and small children understand cause and effect relationships. In "The Crow and the Pitcher," a thirsty crow realises it should drop stones into a pitcher in order to raise the water level high enough so that the bird is able to drink it. A group of US scientists led by Lauren Stanton of the University of Wyoming have now extended this body of work to study raccoon intelligence. Their research in Springer's journal Animal Cognition is the first to use the Aesop's Fable paradigm to assess if mammalian carnivores understand the principles of water displacement.
Read more at:
https://phys.org/news/2017-09-raccoons-ancient-puzzle.html#jCp
