Researchers from St Andrews University, in Scotland, believe they have identified intelligent communication modification habits by Orangutans. Although great apes have already been shown to be capable of using sign language to communicate with humans, the researchers have proven that Orangutans will modify their signals if the human involved does not appear to understand.
This approach shows intelligence, the researchers have stated in their study published by the journal Current Biology.
One of the authors, Richard Byrne, stated “We were interested in the intentions behind communication. When humans communicate, we routinely use our knowledge of what our audience knows and what they don’t know automatically. We wanted to find out whether the great apes, that have so much flexibility with their communication, do the same thing.”
To test their theory, the researchers carried out tests with six orangutans; their keeper would display a range of food items, such as a banana, and also more boring food, like a leek. The Orangutan would attract the keeper’s attention, hoping for the banana. At this point the keeper would either hand over the banana, pretend to not notice the request for the banana and give them the leek, or only give them a piece of the banana.
At this point, the Orangutan would react to the keeper’s actions; if the whole banana had been given, they would simply consume the food, and communication would often end, when a leek was offered, they would appear to comprehend that they had been mis-understood, and so change the signals they had originally given, hoping to get the banana this time, and where only a piece of banana had been given, the same signal would be used, but more emphatically.
This communication behaviour modification indicates some intelligence was applied by the Orangutans, and was repeatedly observed with different Orangutans in different locations.
Aug 02 2007
One Word, Sounds Like…
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Jul 23 2007
Balzhan’s Birthday Meal
We (Me, Irina, Balzhan, Ildar (Balzhan’s son), Dr. Natalya, Sveta (Dr. Natalya’s daughter)) all went out Saturday evening to celebrate Balzhan’s birthday, and also because we had not all been out together for a long time. (Sidenote: it was also Sasha’s (Dr. Natalya’s husband – nice man) Birthday… his present was to be allowed the night of from social duties and to go fishing 🙂 )
We decided to go to the barrel restaurant again. I don’t know the real name for the place, but if you are lucky, you can sit outside inside one of their huge barrels. Anyway, I had Mexican steak apparently – meat, tomatoes, Pringles and cheese, along with chips, some coke & apple juice and a little vodka. The food was delicious, and the company was great.
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Jul 17 2007
Good Company – Bad Food
Serves me right really, I decided to stray from the menu items I knew I liked. I decided to try a sausage (I think it may have been a Georgian type). It was supposed to be a mix of two types of meat, with spices and some garlic. Given the lack of proper British bangers in this country, I thought I would try it out.
The chips, vodka, coke, sauce & Ira’s company were lovely. The sausage was a skin full of flavourless meat, with large chunks of fat mixed in. It required a good smothering of sauce to be finished. However, I now at least know what not to eat at that restaurant next time. They offer turkey sashliq on the menu, however you need to pre-order it, so they can buy the meat, so in the last three or four years, I have never managed to sample it.
Hi ho, Hi Ho its back to blogging I go 🙂
Jul 11 2007
In-Laws Meet Alex
Just noticed I appear to be posting these pictures in reverse order – the earlier posts have the most recent piccies, and this post has photos from towards the beginning of Alex’s stay here. I have deliberately left out quite a few days and subjects, as I want Alex to have them on her blog, especially as most are from her camera!
Anyway, that is a shot of the three of us in the back garden, probably just having being fed a lot of nice food, with a little to drink.
Here we have the ferocious guard dog, poised to rip out Alex’s throat, as she is unknown to Aynak. Well, OK, it might look like she is just licking us there, but I am sure she would have been prepared to defend her master’s property at the drop of a hat…
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Jul 03 2007
Oleg Is Back In Astana :)
He has been away in Moscow studying for almost a year now, so it is really good to have him back around, if only for a couple of weeks. We (Ira, myself, AlexC and Oleg himself), all went out for a meal this evening. We headed over to where Irina works (KMG), as she was called in on her day off (quel surprise), and once we were all together, headed to the Uzbek restaurant near there. It turns out they now have a outdoor section, shared with the Samovar restaurant (Russian food) next door, which was based on the roof. For once, the food was tasty and hot, the service was incredibly good by Kazakh standards, with smiles and a few English phrases thrown in by the waitress. Hopefully have a few pictures to follow soon 🙂 .
Jul 02 2007
Big Brother Plays A Joke
Sam and Amanda (contestants on the current UK series of Big Brother) had their birthday recently (they are twins). Big Brother organized a party for them (as they are twins, it was on the same day 🙂 ) In itself, I did not find this too surprising, nor that only the twins and two other house mates were invited to it, as this follows the same formula as previous years. In previous series, the party (often held when the house mates were on limited rations) not only served to raise the morale of some, it also helped to ferment discord and form isolated groups.
However, this time, BB did not follow the expected script…
Soon after entering the party room, the four house mates discovered that all the cakes, sweets and other sweet looking food was FAKE! Under a thin veneer of cream, pastries and sugar icing, the food was all just the same basic rations underneath. In the case f the sweets on display, which were too small to have anything hidden within, they had been covered with curry powder. Which reminds me of Matt Phillips back at Pates – he gave me a trick boiled sweet that was supposed to be curry flavoured. Except it tasted nice.
One of the contestants showed good fortitude however – he found corned beef within the cake, and told the others just how much he likes it 🙂
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Jun 16 2007
Humans Prove Too Temperamental To Be Good SpamBots!
I recently have received a lot of spammy comments on this blog, particularly on my sponsored posts.
Anything that is an advert for another company is not approved on sponsored posts – otherwise I won’t get paid.
However for both reasons of courtesy, and an attempt to increase my income, I e-mail each company to inform them why there comment will not be published, and that they can always sponsor their own post here if they would like some coverage.
I have had a couple of people responding, who have taken me up on the offer, the rest I never heard back from, and a few are most definitely spam bots, fully automated, as they try and repeat the same spam comments two or three times a week.
Most of these sorts of comments are caught by the Akismet plug in, and so are all stored in the spam area of the comments admin section. Actually, most spam bots are now blocked by the Bad Behaviour plug in, so I’ve seen a large reduction in the rubbish to empty recently. (See the Extras page, linked at the top for links to all plug ins used on this blog).
So, I recently received a rather insulting response to my explanation of why a particular comment was not published, and it intrigued me. I spoke to a couple of colleagues, to ensure I was not just mis-reading the language, and eventually decided to make this post.
OK, his comments are in red, mine are in blue. I’ve changed his name, identifying details and the site he was ‘plugging’, as he does not want to take part in this post at all (see last section).
Other than that, no editing has taken place, all typos from both sides were left as is.
Continue reading “Humans Prove Too Temperamental To Be Good SpamBots!”
Jun 13 2007
Picnic In The Park
We recently went to a restaurant in the park near us (named, with some unique inspiration, Astana Park) with Walton and Assel. The place is based around the theme of a famous Russian film set in the desert, hopefully Ira will be able to inform me of its name in the morning.
Ira and I had not been there before, so we didn’t know what to expect. The food was good, the vodka must have been OK, as I forgot I took the following picture 🙂
When Alex gets over here in a week and a half, I’m hoping we can return the restaurant again. The service was a little slow, and it was yet another example of a place in Kazakhstan where ‘starters’ and ‘main courses’ arrive in a random pattern, but the waitress was pleasant in her attitude, when Ira and I went back there last week.
By the way, the post title is a reference to an annual event back in Cheltenham, where people went to Pitville park, with a picnic, and listened to some bands play…
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Jun 04 2007
Smokers Unite
If you remember I recently posted on New Curbs On Smokers In The UK, and how it is not such a one sided argument.
It would appear that hundreds of bars & inns are to symbolically flout the ban this 1 July – see the Telegraph’s article here. The normal arguments have been wheeled out for the debate in the comments section at the bottom of the page. The one that particularly caught my attention was someone called James who posted ‘If I break the law on July 1st, I might go to jail….good food, satTV,
personal trainer and I can SMOKE!’ 🙂
I just hope Kazakhstan does not decide to do anything similar. At least not until I’ve given up…
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Jun 02 2007
The Call of the Wild
The Call of the Wild – Jack London
Set amongst the heady times of the American gold rushes, the main character in this book is a dog. We see the dog well looked after, and enjoying his position as alpha male dog in his vicinity, and all seems well. Very quickly things take a turn for the worst – he is dognapped! (Hmm is that one word or two?)
Taken for his power, Buck soon discovers that many humans are not as king and well meaning as his old master. Slowly he begins to return to his most base instincts – he could afford to share food back in his comfy original home; when he ends up pulling sledges through harsh environments, he must use all his cunning, as well as his strength, to stay alive.
Without giving away too much, life does improve for Buck, as he is sold from one person to another, and eventually he settles down to a more sedate life with his new master. Until the indians arrive on the scene that is!
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