Tag: Prairie Dogs

Collective Intelligence: Some species of animals have learned how to put their heads together in order to solve problems that no individual member can solve by themselves.

‘Let’s put our heads together and see if we can’t come up with a solution,’ is a very human method of coming together, tossing out ideas and taking advantage of multiple points of view in an effort to solve very difficult problems. This idea of ‘Collective Intelligence’ is something uniquely human, one of the greatest advantages that we have over the mere animals with which we share our world.

Our ability to communicate ideas effectively makes us as a group smarter than any individual! (Credit: Istock)

Or maybe not! Turns out that there are many known cases of animals who work collectively in order to survive the dangers and difficulties life throws at them. Consider the prairie dog, a species of squirrel that inhabit the treeless plains of central North America and who live in ‘towns’ that can number several hundred individuals.

Just a small part of a typical prairie dog town. (Credit: Pinterest)

Whenever the town’s inhabitants go out to forage for food several of the older adults position themselves around the group standing watch, keeping an eye out for predators instead of finding food for themselves. Whenever a threat is detected the guards will sound the alarum, a series of calls so sophisticated not only do the other prairie dogs know whether the menace is coming from the ground, a coyote, or the air, an eagle, but the calls tell them from what direction! In fact the whole prairie dog system is so well arranged that those adults who are feeding know when it is their turn to stand watch so that their fellows who have been on guard duty can grab a bite. Numerous other examples in nature can be cited and now naturalists have uncovered another, similar type of collective intelligence in animals that are individually much less intelligent than a prairie dog.

Prairie Dog ob guard duty, center, signaling the approach of danger! (Credit: Treehugger)

It’s well known that ant colonies send out forager ants to search for sources of food. These foragers lay down a sent trail as they search both to enable them to find their way home but also to enable the other ants in the colony to find the food source they’ve discovered. Once the forger has alerted the colony to the presence of the food an entire army of worker ants will follow the sent trail and begin the process of bringing the food back to the nest.

If you ever spot a single ant far from its colony it’s probably a forger ant searching for a food supply. (Credit: EurekAlert)

What if however, something should happen to destroy the sent trail, a branch of a tree could fall across it or you might actually step on it. In that case, how do the ants find their way back home? Now naturalists at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel have set up an experiment in the lab to study just how, and how well ants solve such dilemmas. As Aviram Gelblum the lead author of the study put it. “We addressed this question by studying the cooperative transport of ants as they attempted to transport large loads through semi-natural environments.”

Using Longhorn crazy ants as their test subjects the researchers set up a labyrinth using cubes of the same size randomly spread across a surface separating the ant’s nest from a food source. The cubes were used to block the ant’s direct path home and force them into searching for an alternate route. The movements of the ants were tracked by image processing and compared to a computer program that mimicked a random walk in the direction of the nest.

By making the food source an object to large to move easily through the maze the researchers forced the ants to find a new path home, other than the one they took to find the food. (Credit: Aviram Gelblum et al)
Test setup used in Weizmann Institute experiment to test ant navigation. The random setting of the blocks made it impossible for the ants to return with the food to their nest by a straight line. (Credit: Aviram Gelblum et al)

What the biologists found was that the ants consistently outperformed the random method, and they did so by cooperating. You see in addition to the large number of worker ants who are carrying the loads there are a smaller number of leader ants who fan out from the column as far as a maximum distance of 10cm.

When faced with a blocked path the leader ants act as scouts searching for possible alternative paths and then coordinate with each other to steer the worker ants into the new chosen path. This process is repeated until the obstacle has been bypassed and the way back to the nest is clear. Having the leaders acting as scouts at a distance from the main group allowed the ants as a whole to significantly reduce the time spent searching for another way back home when their original path becomes blocked.

By putting our heads together in order to solve problems we humans have succeeded in building our civilizations. It’s hardly surprising therefore that other animals have also discovered the advantages of collective intelligence.

Scientists hope to use Artificial Intelligence to develop a Computerized Doctor Dolittle!

Nowadays computer programs that are capable of translating from one language to another are commonplace. You can be visiting France and whenever you have difficulty making yourself understood you can always use your smartphone to translate what you’re trying to say into perfect French. Or if you want to read a scientific paper that’s written in German you just have to click  a key of your computer and you’ll have an English version in seconds. What’s next, are computers going to translate what our pets are saying into English.

Yep! In about ten years we’ll all be able to know just what our pets are saying according to Professor Con Slobodchikoff of Northern Arizona University. Professor Slobodchikoff should know, he spend 30 years expanding our knowledge of animal communications through his study of the complex language system prairie dogs use to alert each other to potential threats from predators.

It’s been recognized for a long time that when a group of prairie dogs is foraging for food, one or two members of the group will stand on guard, ready to chirp a warning whenever they sight a coyote or eagle. What Professor Slobodchikoff has learned in 30 years of study is that those warning signals are actually very complex messages with the size, type and distance to possible threats contained in the various chirps and whistles. Indeed some of the messages can be as detailed as “there are some bison off in the distance, no danger” to “an eagle is swooping down on us, run!!!”

Prairie Dog giving the ‘All Clear’ signal (Credit: Montana State Parks)

Slobodchikoff has even written a book “Chasing Doctor Dolittle: Learning the Language of Animals”. The book, published in 2013, details his many years, and many successes in understanding the ways animals communicate. Slobodchikoff now says that. “If we can do this with prairie dogs, we can certainly do it with dogs and cats.”

So Professor Slobodchikoff is now studying hours of film of dogs engaged in a wide variety of activities and behaviors. He is hoping to use Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to understand what all of the different barks, growls and tail positions mean in order to translate just what man’s best friend is trying to tell us.

Once Slobodchikoff has deciphered fido’s language it will be comparatively simple process to develop an app that we can put on our cell phones so that we will all finally know: does that wagging tail mean ‘I love you” or ‘Feed me’.

Actually we’ll use our phones to understand what they say

This kind of technology could help humans better understand dogs and their behavior.” Professor Slobodchikoff says. “You could use that information and instead of backing a dog into a corner, give the dog more space.”

After dogs will come cats of course, then other pets. I don’t know if tropical fish will be worth the trouble, I’m quite certain that all mine are capable of signaling is ‘Feed Me’.

If you’d like to learn more about Professor Slobodchikoff’s research, or even buy his book, click on the link below to be taken to his website.

About Con’s Work