Crafty little goats

Crafty little goats –

watching humans solve problems.

See, they learn faster!

 

Many animals can learn how to solve tasks by watching how members of their own species solve the problem. Learning by observing other species is less common and few species have been shown to learn from watching humans. Goats struggle to learn how to solve a detour task (navigating around a ‘V’ shaped hurdle) by themselves but observing a human solve the task just once enables goats are able to solve the task much faster. Nawroth et al, 2016.

Road-safety

Road-safety crucial:

Engine noises distract from

predator odours.

 

Noise pollution can have a number of effects on wild animals. Morris-Drake et al (2016) found that road noises meant that dwarf mongooses were slower to detect a predator odour and did not increase vigilance in response to the odour (whilst mongooses exposed to normal ambient noise found the odour faster and showed increased vigilance).