Wheels sometimes do crop up in nature, especially when a human placed them there. Humans recently did it again, as this report makes clear: “Wheel Running in the Wild,” Johanna H. (“Joke”) Meijer [pictured here] and Yuri Robbers, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, vol. 281 no. 1786, July 7, 2014. The authors, at Leiden University […]
Tag: animals
The wound-healing ape and the hydrotherapy pig
The Denver Medical Times [August 1899 vol. XIX, no. 2, pp. 65-71] was the venue for James Weir Jr.’s compendium of observations on how animals treat themselves when afflicted by diseases. Among the highlights: Several safari travelers report that elephants shot by hunters may plug their wounds with moistened clay. “In 1882 there was on […]
‘Pigness’ (Cinematic and Televisual) – a thesis
One of academia’s most prominent accounts of ‘Pigness’ in motion pictures was authored in 2010 by Dr. Mark von Schlemmer (University of Central Missouri, Department of Communication and Sociology) in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, With reference not only to leading examples of cinematic pigs (like Babe and […]
Consternation about cleverness of humans & others
Some people tie themselves in knots, mentally, when they try to be clever about whether people and other animals are clever, is the gist of a study: “Clever animals and killjoy explanations in comparative psychology,” Sara J. Shettleworth, Trends in Cognitive Science, Volume 14, Issue 11, November 2010, Pages 477-481. The author, at the university […]