I’ve finished two animal-related books recently, and I thought they both deserved a mention on the blog. Actually, I didn’t read either of these in the technical sense of the word. Instead, I listened to both of them as audiobooks through my Audible account. But, as they both really are books, I think the term […]
Tag Archives | super smart animals
Teaching language to dogs
Have you heard of Chaser, the dog who knows 1,000 words? There’s a neat article that was published on the Scientific American blog earlier this week about Chaser and her owner and trainer, Dr. John Pilley. You can find the full article on their site here. Most media reports about Chaser have focused on Chaser’s […]

Life with rats (is always fun!)
My four pet rats, Georgie, Amy, Izzy, and Chloe, make sure that things are always pretty interesting around here! My rats have an insatiable need to explore, so they are always getting into something. They keep me quite entertained with their acrobatics and antics. Amy especially is my little rat adventurer and she makes sure […]

Mathematical Abilities of an African Grey Parrot
These are my notes from some of the lectures I attended at the 38th annual convention of the Association for Behavior Analysis International, which I attended in May 2012. On the first day of the ABAI convention, I was able to attend a very interesting lecture by Harvard psychologist Irene Pepperberg. You might be familiar […]
Alex and Me: Our Knowledge of Animal Intelligence
I recently finished reading Irene Pepperburg’s most recent book, Alex and Me. When Irene Pepperburg first started working with Alex, many people scoffed and laughed at her. Parrots were thought of as “bird brains.” While it might be possible to teach them to repeat back answers to simple questions, the bird wasn’t actually “thinking” or […]
Commuter Dogs
Many trainers who use operant conditioning and clicker training are fond of saying that we can train an animal to do any behavior the animal is physically capable of performing. Once we figure out what motivates an animal, there’s an almost unlimited variety of behaviors that can be trained and the limiting factor is usually […]