Tay (Antonio J. Osuna Mascaró)

2/2 It's important to note that these photos might give people the impression that monkeys are cute pets. Please don't make that mistake. Macaques need complex social lives, which can only be found in a healthy macaque society.
We should respect monkeys instead of owning them

1/2 You've probably heard of Punch, the little Japanese macaque who went viral after being abandoned by his mother.

I was interviewed by Indian Express to explain why this can happen and what the future holds for him.
indianexpress.com/article/expl...

4/4 The authors believe that this species is unique. While other sea lions reproduce annually, Australian sea lions only reproduce every 18 months. This gives their offspring extra time to learn from their mothers.

They are somewhat more "K specialists"

3/4 The mother sacrifices her hunting ability so that her young can learn. Alone, she would go out to sea for 3 days; accompanied, the sessions lasted 8h. She attempted to hunt alone 172 times; accompanied only 3 times, on one of which she caught a giant cuttlefish before the eyes of her young.

2/4 The differences between hunting alone and hunting with her calf were enormous. She took her calf to macroalgae meadows, while she hunted in deep reefs. These meadows do not require calves to dive very deep and allow them to learn complex hunting techniques.

1/4 Australian sea lions do something very similar to teaching their pups

They studied the behaviour of a mother in detail using video, GPS and accelerometers, and compared her trips alone with those when she was hunting with her young.

(paper) connectsci.au/zo/article/7...

Yes, I have read it!
It's another reminder never to say "exclusive to humans" when something is not found in other apes. Chickens could be out there waiting to be tested : )

haha yes, I have it in my collection :D
What a weird world

9/9 If a chicken benefits from immediately associating the sound 'Bouba' with rounded objects and 'Kiki' with pointed shapes (even the letters comply with this!), then this is because the world behaves this way, and this information eventually filters into the genes.

This is worth contemplating.

8/9 In my opinion, the implications of all this are much more profound. These results reveal something very deep about how genetics encodes not only information about our ancestors' bodies and minds, but also about the world in which they lived.

7/9 It was once believed that language had to be arbitrary (with no relationship between words and their meanings). We now know that this is not the case, as it appears to have an crossmodal origin (crossing between the senses), so that the word “snake” has properties of the animal.

6/9 This isn't the first time I've talked about Bouba and Kiki. There has been much debate about why this occurs in humans across all cultures. V.S. Ramachandran has played an important role in popularizing it and linking it to the origin of language (and synaesthesia).

5/9 Since the results were good, the researchers decided to try with day-old chicks and expose them to the figures and words “Bouba” and “Kiki” without prior training or rewards!

As before, the chicks approached the correct figure

4/9 Surprisingly, despite the fact that there was no reward to be found during the test, the association remained constant, showing no effects of learning or extinction of what had been learned.

3/9 They were then confronted with both figures while a speaker played the words “Bouba” or “Kiki” (there was no food hidden in the test).

Surprisingly, just like adult humans, the chickens approached Bouba or Kiki to look for food depending on the sound.

2/9 First, they trained chickens only 3 days old (n = 42) to find food behind a figure that was a mixture between Bouba and Kiki.

The drawings of the chickens deserve a special mention. I noted this when the preprint was published : )
(preprint, 2024) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

1/9 The Bouba and Kiki effect is confirmed in newborn chicks

Chicks just one day old already associate the rounded shape with the sound “Bouba” and the pointed shape with “Kiki,” and the implications are profound.

(paper) www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

2/2 Although the evidence is strong, the study faces the challenge of not being able to distinguish whether whales spend a lot of time together because they know how to do this already, or if they learned the technique by spending a lot of time together. I would say that one leads to the other.

1/2 Humpback whales learn the bubble net technique through social learning

This study found very strong evidence of this, observing over 500 whales and 4,000 interactions over 20 years. They learn from the whales with whom they spend the most time

(paper) royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

Tay (Antonio J. Osuna Mascaró) (@biotay.bsky.social) 1/2 To experience an 'aha' moment, it is best to reach the second phase of NREM sleep. In this experiment, 90 participants took a test, then slept for 20 minutes. Of those who reached light N2 sleep,…

Related:

bsky.app/profile/biot...

4/4 The Remote Associations Test, for those who are unfamiliar with it, is typical in insight studies. It involves being given three words and having to find another word that relates them. For example:

Widow, Bite, Monkey

and the solution is:
Spider

3/4 According to the authors, ADHD is associated with greater reliance on Kahneman's System 1, while strong executive function is associated with System 2.

Interestingly, they found that those in the middle were somewhat worse than those who had “a lot” of ADHD or none at all.

2/4 Those with strong executive function solved problems analytically. If, on the other hand, executive function was weak (high ADHD), they used insight more.

1/4 ADHD and creativity

The more severe a person's ADHD symptoms are, the more likely they are to solve problems through insight.

They used the Remote Associations Test (n 299 students).

(paper) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Buena pregunta, Miguel! I don't think they can distinguish the effects of leisure and exercise separately. They don't fully control for it, so it's likely a combination of both. In their favor, they also analyzed many experimental studies, and the effect was stronger in these studies.

8/8 In short, as suggested in previous studies that focused on the physical benefits of exercise

(paper, 2013) bjsm.bmj.com/content/52/3...

The mental benefits of exercise depend on whether we do it voluntarily and stress-free.

7/8 Finally, physical education has neither positive nor negative effects. The benefits of exercise would be offset by the compulsory nature and stress involved. Team sports in schools and colleges are more free and are correlated with fewer mental health problems.

6/8 It is also important to note that people suffering from depression tend to be less active in household tasks, and this may result in a weak positive correlation that appears to benefit those who are not depressed.

5/8 This could be because exercising at home includes gardening (which has proven benefits), but also because, since the COVID pandemic, habits have changed and more people are exercising to stay fit at home.

4/8 Exercise performed at home (e.g., household chores), like commuting, is associated with benefits, but not with a reduction in problems. However, it is important to note that this contrasts with the previous review in 2017, where no benefits were found.