A Weblog

This time I have a question for you, the kind reader: can anyone tell me (or point me to a study that suggests) whether non-human animals practice their skills outside of a group?

On many a PBS nature documentary, you can find a gathering of young, fury things play-fighting one another to hone their hunting and social skills. However, human athletes will substitute physical competitors with imagined or abstracted ones. It’s common for athletes to compete against recorded times, high scores, or a mental reincarnations of a previous or idealized self during practice in the absence of a physically present opponent. And this sort of activity isn’t confined to sports like running or cycling. Full teams can visualize a routine or match performance for positive effect. Marines are instructed to imagine their hitting a target—and this sort of practice increases accuracy. These pretend opponents have real, demonstrable, and causal power. In short, human imagination is pretty powerful aid to skill acquisition, at least.

So let’s get back to my opening question: to what extent can non-human animals imagine? Please help me out if you can.

Technorati Tags: ethology, animal behavior, imagination, practice, skill, pretending, sociobiology

Happy Independence Day! To celebrate our nation’s founding, my family and I often hit up the Cape. This year was no exception, there’s little to report. The weather has been spotty: a little rain here, a few showers there, but nothing substantial. Someone was playing bagpipes the other night. And I witnessed a gruesome car accident a few feet from my balcony during the fireworks spectacular. A mass of people immediately sprang up to help the man, direct traffic, and call 911 repeatedly until emergency vehicles could make their way here. I was genuinely impressed by the response, professional and make-shift alike. Within seconds the response team had the guy off to the hospital in no time flat. I think it prudent not to speculate on the cyclist’s health. I don’t want to jinx anything, you know.

And since it’s vacation time, I’m here, at the kitchen table, on my laptop, implementing genetic algorithms. Maybe later I’ll describe what I did. Maybe if I do, someone will be able to tell me if my results make any sense. Whether or not my programs reproduce the classical results isn’t really the point, though. Look at the evolution of strategies for playing the iterated prisoner’s dilemma: they make perfect modern art tile mosaics! I bet someone’d love to have this pattern on their pool floor or garden wall. (Don’t be alarmed that they don’t appear all that related. Each row in black represents the fittest individual from one of a number of independent runs. That is, they probably never had the chance to meet each other.) Imagine the graphic tastefully obscured by flowering vines. (Click on it for a larger image.)

I can see an upside-down raccoon in it. What can you find?