Rico (dog)
Rico (December 13, 1994 – 2008) was a border collie dog who made the news after being studied by animal psychologists Juliane Kaminski and colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig after his owners reported that he understood more than 200 simple words. Kaminski ''et al. ''wrote in ''Science'' that these claims were justified: Rico retrieved an average of 37 out of 40 items correctly. Rico could also remember items' names for four weeks after his last exposure. Testing and results Kaminski ''et al. ''eliminated the Clever Hans effect using a strict protocol: each of the 200 items whose names Rico knew was randomly assigned to one of 20 sets of 10 items. While the owner waited with the dog in a separate room, the experimenter arranged a set of items in the experimental room and then joined the owner and the dog. Next, the experimenter instructed the owner to request that the dog bring two randomly chosen items (one after the other) from ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Border Collie
The Border Collie is a British list of dog breeds, breed of herding dog of the collie type of medium size. It originates in the region of the Anglo-Scottish border, and descends from the traditional Sheep dog, sheepdogs once found all over the British Isles. It is kept mostly as a working sheep-herding dog or as a companion animal. It competes with success in sheepdog trials. It has been claimed that it is the canine intelligence, most intelligent breed of dog. History The Border Collie is descended from landrace collies, a type found widely in the British Isles. The name for the breed came from its probable place of origin along the Anglo-Scottish border. Mention of the "collie" or "Colley" type first appeared toward the end of the 19th century, although the word "collie" is older than this and has its origin in the Scots language. It is also thought that the word 'collie' comes from the old Celtic word for useful. Many Border Collies today can be traced back to a dog known as ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Semantics
Semantics is the study of linguistic Meaning (philosophy), meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction between sense and reference. Sense is given by the ideas and concepts associated with an expression while reference is the object to which an expression points. Semantics contrasts with syntax, which studies the rules that dictate how to create grammatically correct sentences, and pragmatics, which investigates how people use language in communication. Lexical semantics is the branch of semantics that studies word meaning. It examines whether words have one or several meanings and in what lexical relations they stand to one another. Phrasal semantics studies the meaning of sentences by exploring the phenomenon of compositionality or how new meanings can be created by arranging words. Formal semantics (natural language), Formal semantics relies o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Alex (parrot)
Alex (May 18, 1976 – September 6, 2007) was a grey parrot and the subject of a thirty-year experiment by animal psychologist Irene Pepperberg, initially at the University of Arizona and later at Harvard University and Brandeis University. When Alex was about one year old, Pepperberg bought him at a pet shop. In her book "Alex & Me", Pepperberg describes her unique relationship with Alex and how Alex helped her understand animal minds. Alex was an acronym for avian language experiment, or avian learning experiment. Before Pepperberg's work with Alex, it was widely believed in the scientific community that a large primate brain was needed to handle complex problems related to language and understanding; birds were not considered to be intelligent, as their only common use of communication was mimicking and repeating sounds to interact with each other. However, Alex's accomplishments supported the idea that birds may be able to reason on a basic level and use words creatively. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sign Language
Sign languages (also known as signed languages) are languages that use the visual-manual modality to convey meaning, instead of spoken words. Sign languages are expressed through manual articulation in combination with #Non-manual elements, non-manual markers. Sign languages are full-fledged natural languages with their own grammar and lexicon. Sign languages are not universal and are usually not mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible, although there are similarities among different sign languages. Linguists consider both spoken and signed communication to be types of natural language, meaning that both emerged through an abstract, protracted aging process and evolved over time without meticulous planning. This is supported by the fact that there is substantial overlap between the neural substrates of sign and spoken language processing, despite the obvious differences in modality. Sign language should not be confused with body language, a type of non verbal communicati ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Gorilla
Gorillas are primarily herbivorous, terrestrial great apes that inhabit the tropical forests of equatorial Africa. The genus ''Gorilla'' is divided into two species: the eastern gorilla and the western gorilla, and either four or five subspecies. The DNA of gorillas is highly similar to that of humans, from 96 to 99% depending on what is included, and they are the next closest living relatives to humans after the chimpanzees. Gorillas are the largest living primates, reaching heights between , weights between , and arm spans up to , depending on species and sex. They tend to live in troops, with the leader being called a silverback. The eastern gorilla is distinguished from the western by darker fur colour and some other minor morphological differences. Gorillas tend to live 35–40 years in the wild. Gorillas' natural habitats cover tropical or subtropical forest in Sub-Saharan Africa. Although their range covers a small percentage of Sub-Saharan Africa, gorillas c ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Koko (gorilla)
Hanabiko, nicknamed "Koko" (July 4, 1971 – June 19, 2018) was a female western lowland gorilla born in the San Francisco Zoo and cross-fostered by Francine Patterson for use in ape language experiments. Koko gained public attention as the subject of two National Geographic cover stories and, in 1985, the best-selling children's picture book, ''Koko's Kitten''. Koko became the world's most famous representative of her critically endangered species. Koko's communication skills were hotly debated. Koko used many signs adapted from American Sign Language, but the scientific consensus to date remains that she did not demonstrate the syntax or grammar required of true language. Patterson has been widely criticized for misrepresenting Koko's skills, providing insufficient care for Koko and her companion gorillas, and inappropriate treatment of Gorilla Foundation staff members. Despite such controversies, Koko's story changed the public image of gorillas, previously assumed to be bra ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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List Of Individual Dogs
The following is a list of individual dogs. Actors Advertising * Alex the dog, Banjo, portrayed Carlos, an Irish Setter-Golden Retriever mix and star of Stroh Brewery Company, Stroh's beer advertising in the 1980s. Also mentioned in the 1989 Tone Lōc song "Funky Cold Medina". * Cheeka (dog), Cheeka, a Pug who appeared in the popular "You & I" advertising campaign of Hutch (mobile phone network), Hutch's cellular service in India, along with the child actor Jayaram. * Taco Bell chihuahua, Gidget, a female Chihuahua (dog), Chihuahua, was featured in a Taco Bell advertising campaign as the "Taco Bell Chihuahua". She also played the role of Bruiser's mother in the 2003 film ''Legally Blonde 2''. * Spuds MacKenzie, Honey Tree Evil Eye, a female Bull Terrier, was known as Spuds MacKenzie in her role as the Budweiser spokes-dog. * Nipper, the dog with the gramophone in the 1901 His Master's Voice logo. * Bush Brothers and Company, Sam, a Golden Retriever "professional stand-in, a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Chaser (dog)
Chaser (April 28, 2004 – July 23, 2019) was a Border Collie with the largest tested memory of any non-human animal. Chaser worked with Professor John W. Pilley, at his home in Spartanburg, South Carolina, from eight weeks old, until Pilley's death in June 2018. Pilley spent that time training her in a formal research project. Chaser could identify and retrieve 1,022 toys by name. Pilley's wife, Sally, had given Chaser to him as a 76th birthday present. "She came to me when she was eight weeks old and had been with us ever since", she said. "We were playing with her out in the front yard one day, and a red Jeep came flying past us and she went flying out after the car, so we decided to name her Chaser." In November 2021, Chaser was named the official mascot of Spartanburg Community College, the first mascot in the college's history. Background Chaser had the largest tested memory of any non-human animal. She was bred by Wayne West at his Flint Hill Farms in Pauline, South Caro ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Betsy (dog)
Betsy (born 2002) is a black and white longhaired Border Collie, credited with being one of the world's most intelligent dogs. Biography Betsy lives in Vienna, Austria with her owner, who goes by the pseudonym "''Schäfer''" (). Betsy is also a pseudonym given to her by animal cognition researchers. At ten weeks of age, Betsy was able to sit on command and knew numerous objects, such as a ball and set of keys, by their name and would fetch them on verbal command. Betsy was discovered after her owner answered a request by ''National Geographic Magazine'' to submit intelligent animals for study. Betsy was one of two dogs (both of which were Border Collies) whose intelligence was beyond that of Rico, also a Border Collie, who knows over 200 words. Betsy was featured on the cover of the March 2008 edition of ''National Geographic''. Intelligence Betsy has a vocabulary of more than 340 words, which rivals that of the great apes in terms of intelligence and lateral thinking. After ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nonlinguistic Sounds
Paralanguage, also known as vocalics, is a component of meta-communication that may modify meaning, give nuanced meaning, or convey emotion, by using suprasegmental techniques such as prosody, pitch, volume, intonation, etc. It is sometimes defined as relating to nonphonemic properties only. Paralanguage may be expressed consciously or unconsciously. The study of paralanguage is known as paralinguistics and was invented by George L. Trager in the 1950s, while he was working at the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. Department of State. His colleagues at the time included Henry Lee Smith, Charles F. Hockett (working with him on using descriptive linguistics as a model for paralanguage), Edward T. Hall developing proxemics, and Ray Birdwhistell developing kinesics. Trager published his conclusions in 1958, 1960 and 1961. His work has served as a basis for all later research, especially those investigating the relationship between paralanguage and culture (since paralanguag ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Understanding
Understanding is a cognitive process related to an abstract or physical object, such as a person, situation, or message whereby one is able to use concepts to model that object. Understanding is a relation between the knower and an object of understanding. Understanding implies abilities and dispositions with respect to an object of knowledge that are sufficient to support intelligent behavior. Understanding is often, though not always, related to learning concepts, and sometimes also the theory or theories associated with those concepts. However, a person may have a good ability to predict the behavior of an object, animal or system—and therefore may, in some sense, understand it—without necessarily being familiar with the concepts or theories associated with that object, animal, or system in their culture. They may have developed their own distinct concepts and theories, which may be equivalent, better or worse than the recognized standard concepts and theories of their c ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |