The cooperative pulling paradigm is an experimental design in which
animals cooperate to pull food towards themselves. Researchers use these
experiments to try to understand how cooperation works and how and when
it may have evolved. Meredith Crawford ran the first such experiment in
1937, attaching two ropes to a rolling platform that was too heavy to be
pulled by a single chimpanzee. In another design, a rope comes loose if
only one animal pulls it, and the platform can no longer be retrieved.
Researchers look for signs of cooperation, such as when an animal waits
for another animal's actions before pulling the rope. Chimpanzees,
bonobos, orangutans, capuchins, tamarins, wolves, elephants, ravens, and
keas appear to understand the requirements of the task, and other
animals sometimes manage to retrieve the food. The superior scale and
range of human cooperation comes mainly from the ability to use language
to exchange social information.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_pulling_paradigm>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1887:
L. L. Zamenhof published Unua Libro, the first publication to
describe Esperanto, a constructed international language.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unua_Libro>
1918:
Emmy Noether introduced what became known as Noether's theorem,
from which conservation laws are deduced for symmetries of angular
momentum, linear momentum, and energy, at Göttingen, Germany
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmy_Noether>
1968:
After coming second to Nguyễn Văn Thiệu in a rigged
presidential election in 1967, Trương Đình Dzu was jailed by a
military court for illicit currency transactions.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tr%C6%B0%C6%A1ng_%C4%90%C3%ACnh_Dzu>
2016:
In one of the worst crimes committed in modern Japanese
history, a former employee went on a knife rampage at a care home for
disabled people in Sagamihara, killing 19 people and wounding 26 others.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagamihara_stabbings>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
sassywood:
1. A form of trial by ordeal in Liberia, typically involving a suspect
drinking a poisonous concoction made from the bark of the ordeal tree
Erythrophleum guineense, Erythrophleum ivorense, or Erythrophleum
suaveolens (called sassy bark); by extension, other forms of trial by
ordeal such as applying a heated machete to the suspect's legs, or
dipping the suspect's hand into hot oil.
2. The ordeal tree itself, the bark of which is used in the sassywood
procedure.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sassywood>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is
hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with
this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the
boundaries of death — however mutable man may be able to make them —
our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment.
However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.
--Stanley Kubrick
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stanley_Kubrick>