Here’s a short, slow-motion clip of an owl in flight:

Not so much about animal intelligence as it is about the beauty and grace of the animal kingdom.

I first took note of this phenomena a few years ago. Around fall, it’s like all of the sudden the squirrels somehow get a lot dumber and practically throw themselves under cars. This year it seemed to have started even earlier. My suspicion was that after a few good summer months of gorging themselves on garden bounty (such as every last piece of fruit in my yard!) they go into a food coma that slows them down to something approaching light speed.

Well in short, it’s not a food coma. I found this article in The Seattle Times describing the phenomena and even speaking to biologists who have dubbed it the “fall shuffle”.  Food does play a part in the way of increasing squirrel populations if there is a good acorn harvest. If you’ve ever visited Portland in summer and fall you would know it is every greedy squirrel’s dream. More fruit and nuts than even these tiny bandits could possibly consume. Apparently while they are gorging all summer they are also engaging in more carnal delights and right about now there are a bunch of baby squirrels running around (After having read this article I did notice more babies around, their tails are much less bushy).

So the wee babes are running around (insert hilarious why did the squirrel cross the road joke here) getting picked off by cars on their quest for food. Even worse though, from the article:

Compounding the situation, squirrels are particularly active just after dawn and just before dusk, which coincides this time of year with morning and evening rush hours, a convergence that is bad news for squirrels.

That zigzag behavior, of course, is a defensive response to throw off predators.

But a car is another matter.

Though I suspect many of you have seen this by now, here’s a disturbing story from Coventry, England. Mary Bale was out for a walk when a cat jumped up to greet her. She petted the cat like any normal person would — but then she picked it up and threw it in the trash! How can we be sure? The cat’s owner got it on video:

When caught, Bale tried to play it off as a joke. Ha ha! Pretty hilarious that Lola the cat was trapped in the trash for fifteen hours. Nobody’s buying it, though, especially since the video quite clearly shows her checking to be sure nobody’s looking.

Fortunately, Lola’s owner rescued her. He then put the footage on YouTube and started a Facebook page to track down the culprit. When discovered, Bale apologized. Sort of. Here’s a bit from the Daily Mail:

Speaking yesterday at her parents’ home in Coventry, Miss Bale said: ‘I want to take this opportunity to apologise profusely for the upset and distress that my actions have caused. I cannot explain why I did this, it is completely out of character and I certainly did not intend to cause any distress to Lola or her owners. It was a split second of misjudgment that has got completely out of control.

But she claimed the outcry had been blown out of all proportion: ‘I don’t know what the fuss is about. It’s just a cat.’

No word yet on whether charges will be pressed against Bale.

I’ve been swamped at my other sites making preparations for a long vacation, so I haven’t had a chance to share any animal stories, despite the fact that people are sending me them in droves. (Thanks for that, by the way.)

However, I did want to take some time to respond to concerns raised in the true-life tale of the raccoons on my front porch. In that post, I mentioned that my 16-year-old cat Toto has been relegated from mostly indoors to mostly outdoors. Many folks are justifiably concerned that this may be causing her distress. Let me reassure you that Toto is fine.

All of our cats have always been indoor-outdoor. We currently have four cats, and the three boys spend most of their days outside, coming inside only to sleep in the laundry baskets or at the foot of the bed. Toto used to spend a lot of her time outdoors when we lived in a small town. But since we moved to this house in 2004, she’s been mainly an indoor cat. (I’m not sure what made her switch; I think maybe she was nervous after moving, and then never adjusted to outside here.)

This summer, however, Toto spent much more of her time outdoors. I brought her out one day in June, and it’s sort of like she said, “Huh. Outdoors. That’s right, I like it out here. I wonder why I forgot about it?” She’d ask to be let outside so that she could lounge on a lawn chair almost every day. (The boys go in and out a window at will, but Toto can’t make that jump.)

When Toto’s urination issues became difficult for her human companions to bear, I decided to give the “mostly outside” thing a try. Yes, we did try other things first. We didn’t use a branded “piddle pad”, but I build an elaborate layered system on the floor around the litterboxes. And note that plural “litterboxes”. We have three litterboxes, each a different type. Toto now refuses to use the covered boxes, opting only for the uncovered box that she can get in and out of easily. Unfortunately, it’s still not big enough for her because she cannot squat, so she just pees out the back end. She doesn’t like it, I don’t like it, and my wife doesn’t like it.

Toto has taken the move outside without complaint — mostly. We did our best to make things comfortable for her. She has ample water (there’s a dish on the porch and a dish on the sidewalk). She has her heating pad. (Toto has had — and loved — a heating pad for three or four years now. It’s coated in black fur.) And she’s right next to a window that lets her see me working.

Plus, Toto’s not banished from inside. She’s just banished from upstairs where the bedrooms and litterboxes live. Many times each day, I let Toto in and out. (She is always shut out for bedtime and when there’s nobody home.) Unless she’s “in a state”, she doesn’t complain. (And cat owners will know what I mean by “in a state” — when a cat’s that way, they complain about everything!) In fact, she seems to prefer outside. Yes, she asks to be let in, but she asks to be let out just as often. And she sleeps on her chair contentedly for hours at a time.

To me, the best part of the whole deal is that Toto has adapted to using the outside world as her litterbox. She was reluctant at first, but now when she’s inside and needs to go, she asks to be let out, dashes down the steps, and goes to do her duty.

The only bit of woe in the system still has to do with mornings. Toto is used to being able to have a snack whenever she wants one, which generally includes when she wakes up. But since I took her food off the porch (to protect against the coons), she can’t have a snack first thing in the morning, so she wails until I let her in to get her food in the kitchen. This is unfortunate, but I don’t know a better solution.

In summary: I appreciate everyone’s concern for Toto, but I want to set your minds at ease. I love this cat, and don’t want her to be miserable. She’s not. She actually seems to be happier than she has been in a long time. And if Toto’s happy, we’re all happy!

I’ve always been fascinated by the similarities — and differences — between big animals and their domesticated counterparts. Take cats, for example. Do lions and tigers purr? (Answer: Sort of. Your neighborhood tabby purrs while inhaling and exhaling; big cats purr only when they breathe out.)

And while I’ve been reading Animals in Translation, I’ve been fascinated by the author’s continued reference to dogs as being “baby wolves” who have had their development stunted. There’s a reason, she says, that dogs and wolves seem so similar. That’s because they are similar.

Well, here’s a question I’ve always had: Do lions and tigers like catnip? While browsing YouTube the other day, I found an answer:

The folks at Big Cat Rescue, a non-profit in Florida, decided to test whether their guests liked catnip as much as a household cat. They filled bags full of the stuff and threw them in with the animals. As you can see from the video, lions and tigers do like catnip.

That cheetah is so damn cute!

(For the record, I wish I could figure out how to keep a catnip plant alive. We plant one or two every spring, and by the end of summer our cats have mauled them to death.)

My cat Toto is aging, and as she ages, her body is failing her. Mentally, she seems sharp, but after sixteen years, Toto’s hips are causing her obvious trouble. In fact, they make it so that she can’t use a litterbox effectively. She tries to squat, but mostly she just pisses out the back end of the box.

I spent the summer working with my vet to find things to help Toto, but nothing works. Since we can’t stand the smell of cat urine in the house, two weeks ago I took drastic measures. I banished Toto outside. (She gets to come in while I work, but I put her out for 80% of the day and night.)

Because Toto now lives outside, she eats and drinks outside. I’ve set up a heating pad on the porch, and given her own food and water area nearby. She seems perfectly content with this arrangement except when:

• She’s out of food, or
• She wants to be petted.

Strangely enough, she’s been out of food a lot lately. “I think another cat is eating Toto’s food,” I told Kris when I first noticed how quickly she was going through her bowl.

“Actually,” I said a couple of days later, “maybe it’s a dog. Whoever is eating Toto’s food keeps knocking the bowl over.”

But a few days after that, I realized that the food thief probably wasn’t even a dog. Whatever the critter was, it was messy. Every morning, Toto’s water dish was filled with mud. The food bowl was tipped over and the porch scattered with mud and debris.

“I’ll bet it’s a coon,” I told Kris. Though we live in a residential neighborhood not far from Portland, we’ve seen plenty of raccoons in the six years since we moved in.

Today I got to see the cat-food thievery first-hand. Turns out it’s not a raccoon — it’s a family of four. I was lucky enough to have my camera handy as they performed their daring raid:

My favorite part of this video is how Toto simply sits on her heating pad and watches the raccoons filch her food. She isn’t bothered at all. (After I stopped filming, one of the raccoons stepped on her, which caused her to hiss and swat, but the coon didn’t care.)

Now I’ve got to figure out what I’m going to do. I’m well aware that feeding raccoons can cause woe. Next time, for example, the raccoon might swat Toto back. Or they could become aggressive with our three other cats.

I know that I want to feed Toto outside, but I have to find a way to do that without feeding the wildlife.

Perhaps it’s because I grew up watching and re-watching ET — who resembled an overgrown deshelled turtle — that I feel such an affinity for these little dudes. For cold-blooded reptiles, turtles and tortoises are adorable. To see one helping up a buddy, as in the following video, well that just amps up the cute even more!

Hey, buddy, I’ve been there…

The most recent addition to my own house is a little green guy named Nicholi (my impetus for this post). As he squirmed and hissed around in his owner’s hand when I met him, it got me thinking:

• One, I have no idea how you’re supposed to “meet” a turtle. Clearly whatever the proper greeting is, this wasn’t it.
• Two, how intelligent are turtles? My roommate explained that Nicholi (who is now one) should live for another 79 years. That’s a long time to spend in a plastic tub with occasional jaunts out to the backyard. It kind of made me sad.

I decided to do a little digging and found this New York Times “Ask Science” piece about turtle intelligence. Basically, there isn’t definitive scientific research to suggest they’re smart, and one doctor actually calls them dumb. There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence to show that turtles and tortoises are as smart as those wise old faces would have you believe! Of course, anecdotal evidence isn’t exactly science.

There are several cute stories in the NYT article. There’s also one not-so-cute story, but it relates to my situation. A 70-pound soft shelled turtle named Pigface had lived at the National Zoo for more than 40 years. Then, one day he began mutilating himself. Researchers wondered if the poor guy was bored out of his mind and began adding toys to his tank. Slowly he learned to play with the toys; the more puppy-like he became in learning to play, the less he mutilated himself. No word, however, on whether he might be intelligent enough to be shamed by the indignity of such a cruel name as Pigface…

In the past, animals with birth defects and physical abnormalities didn’t stand a chance of survival. But modern medicine — and increased animal domestication — has given some of these critters a second leash on life.

Here’s the story of Grace, the two-legged kitten.

This local news story from April 2008 profiles Amazing Grace, a farm cat from Kansas who was born without her two front legs. This doesn’t prevent her from getting around, though. She hops around like a kangaroo, though apparently she prefers carpet to linoleum.

But Grace isn’t the only two-legged kitten walking around the world. In Denver, Lola was born without the use of her hind legs. She’s learned to walk on her front paws:

And here’s a very vocal kitten from Japan (?) who apparently had its two hind legs amputated:

The Japanese kitten actually manages to balance itself without walking in a handstand. (Or “pawstand”, if you will.)

Did you know that otters have to be taught to swim? These cute little critters aren’t born with an affinity for water. When they’re about a month old, their mother has to teach them to enter the water, to float, and then to swim.

Here’s a video from the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium in which one mother teaches her unenthusiastic youngster some otter essentials:

If you’re one of those lucky folks who live in London (I love London), look out for a free photography exhibit next week at the Royal Geographic Society. From September 6th through 10th, the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust will be displaying photos from three of the world’s best wildlife photographers: Joachim Schmeisser, Michael Nichols, and Robert Carr-Hartley.

Photo by Michael Nichols/David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust

This “Protector of the Giants” exhibit documents wild and orphan elephants as they’re re-introduced to their natural habitat.

You can catch a preview of the exhibit in a slideshow at the Guardian website.

Though Animal Intelligence will generally feature fun and interesting stories about animals and their behavior, not all of them will be quite so positive. Recently for Time magazine, Ishaan Tharoor compiled a list of animals that had been pressed into service for human wars.

The Time article was spurred in part by reports that in Afghanistan, the Taliban may be training monkeys to use automatic weapons. Apparently these rumors are unsubstantiated, but that hasn’t stopped a Taiwanese outfit from producing digital animation of what training monkeys for war might look like:

I’m skeptical that the report of monkeys with machine guns is accurate. For the sake of completeness, here’s the complete list from Time:

• Monkeys
• Horses (the most obvious example of animals being used for war, I think)
• Elephants
• Dolphins (the U.S. Navy has a Marine Mammal Program which uses dolphins for finding mines)
• Dogs
• Pigs (which are apparently a good counter for war elephants — who knew?)
• Pigeons
• Cows
• Bats
• Camels

Mostly, humans have used animals in supporting roles during war. They serve as pack animals and transportation, or as tools to find enemies or weapons. Sometimes — as in the case of cows — the animals are the weapons themselves. (In this case, the cows were dead and diseased.) But recruiting actual animals do to your fighting for you? Aside from the science-fictional possibilities (Planet of the Apes!), this seems ethically wrong on many levels.

But then, one could argue that war is ethically wrong on many levels, too, I suppose.

Yesterday we shared the story of Tara the elephant whose best friend is Bella the dog. Here’s another animal odd couple:

As unlikely friendships go, this one’s a doozy. Surya the orangutan was out for her daily walk with her human companions (atop a freaking elephant of course!) when she spotted a lost hound dog. The two instantly fell in love and became BFFs on the spot.

The dog followed them home and found Surya who eagerly began feeding his hungry new friend some monkey snacks. Now they’re all living happily ever after!

(Note that this clip is from the National Geographic Channel‘s program, “Unlikely Animal Friends“)

The San Jose Mercury News reports that a marmalade cat named Christopher seems to have a sixth sense. Christopher lives at the Nine Lives Foundation’s Feline Well-Care Clinic (that’s a mouthful!) and has the uncanny ability to sense when other cats are sick and hurting.

From the article:

[Christopher] will sit outside the cages of sick felines until someone lets him in, and last month, the clinic says, he saved the life of a kitten in need of a blood transfusion.

“It’s weird, it’s really true that he seems to understand things,” said Monica Thompson, Nine Lives’ chief veterinarian and founder. “He knows when he can help. He alerts us when things aren’t right about a cat.”

[...]

“He’ll often paw at a cage door to be let in so he can clean and comfort a cat in there,” said Robert Lowery, a San Ramon resident and volunteer at Nine Lives.

But Christopher doesn’t just alert staff to ailing cats. He can also apparently tame wild strays. Last month, he asked to be let into a cage with two feral kittens who were unhandleable. The article says he “taught the kittens all about being a cat”, and within a couple of weeks they were tame and adoptable.

You can read more about Christopher (and other cats from the Nine Lives Foundation) at the Nine Lives Foundation blog.

[San Jose Mercury News: Nine lives, sixth sense: Cat at veterinary clinic seeks out ailing cats]

What better way to kick off the re-launch of Animal Intelligence than a story of inter-species friendship?

As long-time readers know (if there are still any long-time readers remaining), and as new readers will soon learn, I have a soft spot for stories about animal odd couples. A cat who is raised by a crow? Check. Chickens who are friends with cats and monkeys? Love it. A duck and a chicken raising a family together? Perfect.

Well, here’s a two-year-old story from CBS News about another sort of animal odd couple:

On an elephant sanctuary in Tennessee, female elephants come to retire. And when they do, they form lasting friendships. They pair off with a favorite companion. But Tara’s best friend isn’t an elephant — it’s a dog.

The elephant sanctuary isn’t just home to elephants; it’s also home to more than a dozen stray dogs, most of which have no interest in the elephants. But Tara and Bella have become best friends. They eat, sleep, and play together.

Don’t believe it? Watch til the end of the video where it becomes very clear that Tara has a real and lasting bond with her dog.

As I say, I’m quite fond of stories about inter-species relationships. You’re sure to see many more in the months ahead. (And if you have one of your own, please send it in!)

After two days of hard work, I’ve managed to massage Animal Intelligence into shape, I think. If you visit the site (as opposed to reading via e-mail or RSS), you’ll see that Animal Intelligence sports a new layout and a few new features in the sidebar. What you see here is just the start, and I hope to add more in the future. If you have feedback or suggestions, please let me know. My goal is to make Animal Intelligence a fun, usable source for information on the animal kingdom.

Starting tomorrow (or possibly later this afternoon), I’ll begin what I hope will be daily updates to this site. My goal is to post any interesting animal-related stories I find when I find them (instead of waiting several days, as I usually do, which usually results in me forgetting the story…) I’ll be joined by a couple of other contributors on this journey. In fact, one — Gabby Francis — has already submitted a couple of stories to be posted.

As always, I welcome your contributions. If you have an amazing animal story that you’d like to share with readers of Animal Intelligence, please drop me a line. (For now, you can just leave a comment. I’ll get e-mail operational in a few days.) And if you want to contribute a guest article, I’m open to that, too.

I look forward to having you along as we learn more about the creatures around us.

It’s been a couple of years since I posted anything new here at Animal Intelligence. It’s not that my interest in the subject has waned — if anything, I’m more convinced than ever about the intelligence of our non-human friends — but that my other blogs have taken all of my time.

Lately, though, I’ve decided that it’d be a heck of a lot of fun to post here again. To make this easier, I’m going to broaden the blog’s scope. While I’ll still cover stories about animal emotion and intelligence, I’ll also include general-interest animal stories. What do I mean by that? Let’s start with this report from CNN about a cat with bionic feet:

If cats have nine lives, they may have just acquired a 10th — thanks to a groundbreaking surgery that saved the life of a feline double amputee. A British cat, Oscar, has made a full recovery after being fitted with a pair of prosthetic feet in November. The cat’s hind paws were severed by a combine harvester.

The three-hour procedure, performed at an animal hospital in Surrey, England, by neuro-orthopaedic veterinary surgeon Dr. Noel Fitzpatrick, could serve as a model for human amputees.

Oscar’s custom-made implants, ITAPs (Intraosseous transcutaneous amputation prosthetics), were modeled after deer antlers, which have a honeycomb structure that bones can grow through and skin can grow over. By using computer-generated technology, a team of veterinarians and scientists designed a feline foot that mimics the way a cat walks and runs.

That’s a bunch of jargon, right? What it boils down to is this: Oscar the cat got run over by a tractor. A group of vets attached a pair of bionic feet to Oscar’s hind legs. The results are amazing! Here’s a BBC video that shows Oscar getting his new bionic body parts:

The best part of this story? Dr. Fitzpatrick donated much of his work with Oscar for free. The CNN story concludes: “He may not chase mice like he used to, but he can still scratch up the furniture.” Oscar is a cat, after all.

p.s. Yes, I know the formatting is goofy. As I resume posting here, I’ll implement a new template, one with wider columns. For now, things will be a little off, though, when I post wide photos or video. Sorry.

Gorillas and humans use similar body language to communicate, reports the U.K. Daily Mail. Researchers at the University of Sussex studied a family of gorillas in a British animal park.

Psychologist Dr Gillian Sebestyen said: “We shared 23 million years of evolution with great apes and then diverged approximately six million years ago. Gorillas have highly complex forms of non-verbal communication. I think we are looking back at what sort of communications skills we may have once had.”

[...]

She told Science Daily: “Apes, like humans, use a range of non-verbal communicative social skills such as facial expression, eye gaze and manual gestures, and tactile signals, such as grooming and huddling, which are used for social cohesion.”

The Daily Mail article is rather vague. I’d like to know more information about the types of body language that are similar. I’ll have to do more digging online…

I never understand those crazy Japanese television shows. But here’s a clip from one in which a chimpanzee learns to ride a Segway:

I especially like how, after crashing into the bushes a couple times, the chimp learns to steer. Neat.

When I was a boy, we had a Saint Bernard. Like all Saint Bernards, Charlie was a big, slobbery dork of a dog. Charlie was a good dog. We also had several cats, one of which was named Batman. (We named all of our cats after comic book characters.)

Charlie and Batman were best friends. Everywhere Charlie went, Batman went too. At night — especially on cold winter nights — Batman would climb onto Charlie’s side and curl up in his thick fur. They’d sleep contentedly for hours, best buds.

Here’s a YouTube video featuring other cat and dog friendships:

I know that cat-dog friendships are common, but just how common? And why do they occur? What are the dogs thinking? What are the cats thinking? What about friendships between other species?

Lynn sent me an item that’s been making the rounds as an e-mail forward. Though I’m reluctant to post something that I cannot properly credit, I’m going to do so. I like it that much.

Terry Burns from Middleburg, Pennsylvania shared this photograph and caption with an unknown magazine:

The text reads:

Cashew, my 14-year-old yellow Lab, is blind and deaf. Her best friend is Libby, 7, her seeing-eye cat. Libby steers Cashew away from obstacles and leads her to her food. Every night she sleeps next to her. The only time they’re apart is when we take Cashew out for a walk. Without this cat, we know Cashew would be lost and very, very lonely indeed. It’s amazing but true: This is one animal who knows what needs to be done and does it day in and day out for her friend.

If you know where this originated, please let me know so that I can offer proper credit!

This summer, my wife and I have made friends with the blue jays that live in our yard. We have been shocked by how brave they are, and by how much personality they possess.

I grew up with birds in the house, but they were parrots and macaws and parakeets. I know that these birds are intelligent, and have just as much personality as any other animal (or person). But I’ve always clumped wild birds into a nebulous “dumb bird” category in my head. (Except for crows, that is. I know crows are smart.)

Turns out blue jays aren’t dumb birds. And they have plenty of individual personality.

Our “main” bird is called Sammy, and he’s the boldest and most aggressive of the group. We lure the jays with peanuts, and Sammy is willing to come down within arm’s reach to get his treats. (My goal is to get him to eat out of my hand. He’s considered it before, but never acted upon it.)

If we go outside, Sammy will sometimes fly down to where we are — the rose garden, the blueberries, wherever — and squawk at us. “Give me peanuts,” he says. If we are in the process of feeding him and another jay comes nearby, Sammy will scold the interloper and try to scare it away. (This often fails, though. He can’t keep away three or four jays at a time.)

Last month, I was going a project at the picnic table. I set a pile of peanuts on a nearby bench. Despite the fact I was moving around the table (and often within just feet of the bench), Sammy continued to fly down, grab a peanut, and then fly away with the treasure.

Sammy used to fly far away to hide his peanuts and then return for more. Now he realizes that’s too much work. When we give him a peanut, he simply hides it wherever he found it in the lawn, even if that’s just a few feet from us. He tap tap taps the nut into the ground, eyes it to be sure it’s hidden, then covers it with a leaf or two. Then he turns around for more peanuts.

He’s even losing his fear of our four cats (and they are losing interest in him). If a cat is at the picnic table, Sammy will still fly down to pick a peanut off the other end.

We’ve been trying to decide what has made this bird so bold. We believe that Sammy is a youngster, one of last year’s juvenile jays. We believe he’s never had reason to fear us. One of this year’s juveniles is almost as bold, too (maybe bolder), and we expect it to join Sammy’s antics next year.

My favorite time with Sammy, though, is in the midst of “the grove”, a small clearing in the middle of a flower bed. It’s an enclosed space maybe twelve feet in diameter. Sammy feels perfectly safe there, and he comes even closer than he does on the lawn. He and I like to sit in the grove and chat, sharing peanuts.

Can you jump over 100 feet in the air? Neither can I. But trap-jaw ants can perform the equivalent feat. With their mouths. This video (complete with protractor!) demonstrates these amazing insects in action, using their jaws to propel themselves great distances.

From the YouTube post:

This has to be one of the oddest (and strangely mesmerizing) things on the net: ants flying through the air in extreme slow motion propelled by the rapid closing of their jaws. All set to a very peculiar sound track. The ant at the top of the image above is cart-wheeling its way over the other two.

What are the other ants thinking while they watch this? Does this hurt the ant? I’m convinced that many animals have cognition. But insects? Is this all reflex? What’s going on here?

(Read more about trap-jaw ants in this article.)

Last fall I shared a two-minute video of the cat who was raised by a crow. Diane recently left a comment pointing to a longer video with a more complete story on this unlikely friendship:

There is nothing I like more than stories of interspecies friendship. I love the idea that different kinds of animals can communicate and empathize with one another. Great stuff.

It has been a long time since I posted here. It’s not for lack of material. Animal Intelligence doesn’t have a lot of readers, but you few brave souls continue to send me good stories.

For example, here’s a story about Yosuke the Japanese parrort. When Yosuke escaped from his cage, he was able to return home because he knew his address. From the CNN story:

“I’m Mr. Yosuke Nakamura,” the bird told the veterinarian, according to Uemura. The parrot also provided his full home address, down to the street number, and even entertained the hospital staff by singing songs.

“We checked the address, and what do you know, a Nakamura family really lived there. So we told them we’ve found Yosuke,” Uemura said.

The Nakamura family told police they had been teaching the bird its name and address for about two years.

This instance may or may not be indicative of animal intelligence, but it’s still a fun story. I grew up around birds, and I know they’re smart. Once our yellow-naped Amazon flew from one end of the house to the other and crashed into the piture window at full speed, falling to the ground stunned. I rushed over to see him stand up, shake his feathers, and announce, “That was fun.” To this day I have no idea if he had any idea what he was saying. (I had also taught him to say “I’m Superman” but that phrase wasn’t appropriate to the situation.)

[CNN: Lost parrot gives vet his name and address]

When I was a kid, we used to try to fool our dog, Hairy. We’d make a stuffed dog “growl” and “bark” at him. Hairy was always game, responding to the play with growls and barks of his own, but I’ve always wondered just what his thought process was. Did he understand it was play? (And it’s obvious that animals enjoy play.) Did he on some level believe the stuffed dog was a real dog?

Modern technology makes such questions even trickier. Here, via Boing Boing, is a video of a real dog reacting to a $15 battery-operated toy.

I find it unlikely that the real dog — Isabel — would believe she were encountering another animal. For one thing, the toy isn’t going to possess the scent of a living creature. For another, its “bark” sounds artificial. But what does Isabel think? She’s fascinated by the interloper, but what is her perception of it?

On a similar note, my wife gave me a fake crow for Christmas last year. (Yes, I’m serious.) It’s not a real crow, and it doesn’t even have real feathers, but it certainly looks real. Its wings are spread wide, and if I swoop it around the room, the cats get tense. “Why is there a crow in the house?” they seem to say. One of the cats runs like hell. The others wonder if they might not be able to catch the crow.

When its not tormenting my animals, the fake crow lives on one of our windows. One of our cats — Max — periodically attempts to examine the crow. He’s very curious about it, but since it’s out of his reach, he feels thwarted.

How does this fake crow affect my cats’ views of the real crows outside?

I wish there were a way to get deeper inside animal minds.