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This extraordinary photograph published in the 2008 book “Thinkers of the Jungle: The Orangutan Report” by Schuster, Smits, and Ullal shows the first recorded instance of an orangutan attempting to use tools to hunt.
According to the authors “…a male orangutan, clinging precariously to overhanging branches, flails the water with a pole, trying desperately to spear a passing fish…The extraordinary image, a world exclusive, was taken in Borneo on the island of Kaja… This individual had seen locals fishing with spears on the Gohong River. Although the method required too much skill for him to master, he was later able to improvise by using the pole to catch fish already trapped in the locals’ fishing lines.”
Debunked? They have been studied scientifically, and confirmed repeatedly! The violence of attacks Spitzer is getting is particularly illuminating…See on Scoop.it - Cyborg LivesTwitter, Facebook, Google… we know the internet is driving us to distraction. But could sitting at your computer actually calm you down? Oliver Burkeman investigates the slow web movement-
Back in the summer of 2008 – a long time ago, in internet terms, two years before Instagram, and around the time of Twitter’s second birthday – the US writer Nicholas Carr published a now famous essay in the Atlantic magazine entitled Is Google Making Us Stupid? The more time he spent online, Carr reported, the more he experienced the sensation that something was eating away at his brain. “I’m not thinking the way I used to think,” he wrote. Increasingly, he’d sit down with a book, but then find himself unable to focus for more than two or three pages: “I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text.” Reading, he recalled, used to feel like scuba diving in a sea of words. But now “I zip along the surface like a guy on a jetski.”
In the half-decade since Carr’s essay appeared, we’ve endured countless scare stories about the life-destroying effects of the internet, and by and large they’ve been debunked. No, the web probably isn’t addictive in the sense that nicotine or heroin are; no, Facebook and Twitter aren’t guilty of “killing conversation” or corroding real-life friendship or making children autistic. Yes, the internet is “changing our brains”, but then so does everything – and, contrary to the claims of one especially panicky Newsweek cover story, it certainly isn’t “driving us mad”.
See on guardian.co.uk
Fact or fiction? Stained glass found in medieval cathedrals becomes thicker at the bottom because glass moves over time. For years researchers have had their doubts, now a team at Texas Tech University has further evidence that the glass is not going anywhere.
See on Scoop.it - The future of medicine and healthFor nearly a decade, doctors have used an implanted electronic stimulator to treat severe depression in people who don’t respond to standard antidepressant therapy.
Now, preliminary brain scan studies conducted by researchers at…
See on Scoop.it - Philosophy everywhere everywhenThat is the claim made by the iron ladies to justify their political agendas. Can a scientific theory also be supported by such an argument? Michael Krämer discusses a new philosophical proof-
While most scientists do not care much…
