Mattias Krantz figured out, by experiment and by seeking advice, how to teach an octopus how to play with a piano. That took about half a year. Think of it, if you like, as a case of 88 keys and eight hands, kinda sorta. This video shows dramatic highlights from the mutual adventure. (Thanks to […]
Should students devote time to studying ‘useless’ subjects? The debate has been running for (at least) 127 years. The arguments often boil down to questions such as: ‘Maybe something that seems useless now, could be useful in the future?’ or ‘Who’s in a position to say what’s useless anyway?’ For an early example, see the […]
Marmosets learn skills from watching instructional videos, at least some marmosets do, provided that someone does show them instructional videos, and further provided that those videos show tasks of interest to the marmosets. Such was the conclusion drawn by humans who did an experiment described by Davide Castelvecci in Nature News: Marmoset see, marmoset do Monkeys in the wild learn skills […]
The industry devoted to “sleep learning” aside, it’s been unclear that people can learn much of anything while they are asleep. An experiment (by much the same team that later noted the phenomenon of contagious sniffing), says it has identified one kind of thing that people can indeed learn while they are asleep: “Humans can […]