3/20/2011

Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

And as Jesus concluded the Sermon on the Mount and the multitude dispersed, one came unto Christ in appreciation:

"So long," he said, "and thanks for all the fish!"

Stan said...

A Whale of a Tale

According to ABC News, in January 2006, Michael Noonan, a professor of animal behavior at Canisius College in Buffalo, N.Y., discovered killer whales' gull-baiting strategy by accident while he was studying acoustic communications among killer whales, technically known as orcas, at Marineland of Canada in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

One day he noticed that one of the young whales spit regurgitated fish onto the water surface, then dove down and waited. When a hungry seagull landed on the water, the whale surged up to the surface and caught the seagull. Within a few months, the whale's younger brother adopted the practice, which they used repeatedly. Eventually the behavior spreaded, and five Marineland whales became very apt at supplementing their diet with fresh fowl.

"It looked liked one was watching while the other tried," said Noonan.

The capacity to come up with the gull-baiting trick and then share the technique with others - known as cultural learning - was once believed to be one of those abilities that separated humans from other animals. But nowadays biologists have discovered that certain animals, including dolphins and chimps, can also do this.