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

_______________________________ 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

_____________________________ 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

___________________________ 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