This is why comparative cognition rocks: sheep, not so thick after all

An article from the New Scientist about sheep being used to study Huntingtons disease. Sheep doing subtle(r than expected) discriminative learning. Relational concepts (colour of food bucket indicated by colour of cone).

Zoologger: The sharpest mind in the farmyard –environment – 09 February 2011 – New Scientist.

Disagree with the whole ranking of intelligence thing. Intelligence is not one dimension with a dot for every species. It’s a complicated spiky vague shape. No strict ordering of better and worse.

But I love identifying tasks that can and can’t be done by different species. Why these differences? All these species are surviving just fine. What makes one approach more useful than another? It jostles our assumptions about what takes smarts and what is easy.

So overall win for the article.