Chimps Have a Built-In GPS
destinyland writes "European researchers have discovered that chimpanzees have a built-in mental GPS, keeping 'a geometric mental map of their home range, moving from point to point in nearly straight lines.' Using GPS, two primatologists followed 15 chimpanzees for 217 days, and determined that the apes were 'using a mental map built around geometric coordinates.' They're not just identifying landmarks in their surroundings, and in fact, even when swinging through trees, the chimps planned out their route several trees in advance. Here's the paper in the journal Animal Behavior."
From the 2nd link: "Price: US $ 31.50". Sounds like another slashvertorial. No thanks, chimps.
... in Texas!
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
Does it run Linux?
Obama Policies Will Bankrupt the US Tsarkon Reports
- This just in, March 23 2009 Chinas central bank on Monday proposed replacing the US dollar as the international reserve currency with a new global system controlled by the International Monetary Fund
- Russia too: It is necessary to work out and adopt internationally recognized standards for macroeconomic and budget policy, which are binding for the leading world economies, including the countries issuing reserve currencies - the Kremlin proposals read.
- President Barak "The Teleprompter" Obama is deeply connected to corruption, Rahm Emanuel (Radical authoritarian Statist whose father was part of the Murderous Civilian Killing Israeli Terrorist Organization known as IRGUN), Connected to Rod Blagojevich (Rahm inherited Rod's federal-congress seat), Connected to Ayers, a man who promotes the concept that civilian collateral damage is ok in a war against freedom, Preacher Jeremiah Wright, who is himself a black-elitist who wants all the people who largely "pay the freight" to suffer, 31 million on food stamps, more blacks are in prison and on food-stamps per capita than anyone else. The problem with Wright is simply this: the facts are "racist."
- Obama: Racist, AIPAC-bootlicker, Corrupted to the bone Chicago style and a Traitor to the US Constitution and a Liar who can't even produce a valid birth certificate (which is not a certificate of live birth)
- Raytheon lobbyist in Pentagon, lots lobbyists getting exemptions even though he promised not to have them.
- Goldman Sachs insider second in command at Treasury. Bumbling tax cheat idiot in "command" of Treasury with 17 positions unfilled as of late March 2009.
- Cabinet has had several nominees and appointees with multiple tax fraud issues.
- Lied about having a new degree of accountability and a SUNSHINE period of new laws, he has signed bills with little or no review at whitehouse.gov as promised.
- Appointed a second amendment violating Rich-pardoning treasonist Eric Holder as AG, the top cop of the USA, a man who helped a fugitive evade justice.
- Has not put a dime in for a single new nuclear power plant but wants to help bridges and roads to promote more driving.
- Obama, Blagojevich and Rahm Emanuel have a LOT to hide. They literally lived next to each other, Rahm had (until being Chairman Obama's Chief of staff) Blagojevich's old federal congressional seat. Blagojevich helped Chairman "The Teleprompter" Obama cheat his way to the Illinois senate by getting other candidates thrown off the ballot in Illinois. Why do you think Blagojevich was so mad? Obama DID owe him, big time. Rahm and Obama are using Blagojevich and trying to cut his head off to keep him away.
- Tony Rezko, Iraqi Arms Dealer Nahdmi Auchi, and of course Aiham Alsammarae. Chairman "The Teleprompter" Hussein Obama is so corrupted its a joke.
- Fools and "useful idiots" twist the pie charts by leaving welfare, workfare, interest on debt, social security, Medicare and Medicaid out and focusing only on non-whole "discretionary" pie charts.
2007 high level pie chart, Federal Budget, USA
2009 Pie chart, detailed, Federal Budget, USA
- Chairman Obama is drastically increasing spending and creating more entitlements that will make the US less competitive (especially against China, India, East Europe/Russia). This will be a huge disaster and change you can believe in will strap you and your grandkids with more debt. No taxation without representation? Obama is spending money for the next two-three generations and they can't even vote yet, or even have been born.
- An alternative to the dollar and a forex and a reserve currency came up at the last G20 meeting. The
The ability to sense one's position on this blue marble is not a physical sense possesed by any animal. Now if you were a ring laser gyro and were left sitting in one position for a day or two, perhaps...
Calling it GPS implies they are using external signals to locate. The article says the chimps are creating and using internal distance transform maps.
Hey now, I don't care what you think about his politics - there's no need to call Obama a chimp.
duh.
they sh*t everywhere and you'd have to feed it bananas for directions.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
No they don't. Drop them somewhere they've never been before and ask them to go somewhere else they've never been before and they'll either pull funny faces at you or initiate a poo barrage.
Tell me again, what does the G in GPS stand for? It sure doesn't stand for "having a reasonable memory of your surroundings and a rough sense of direction". And neither do the P or the S.
Bullshit summary again. Or maybe bullshit article. Who cares? After a while, you don't bother.
At the bottom of the
I must have missed all the Chimp satellite launches, when did they happen?
Haven't you seen "Planet of the Apes"?
Does having a sense of direction and knowing the surroundings you have spent your entire life in really qualify as having GPS? or is this just an attempt to make a natural ability in an animal something more than it really is. I know i can easily plan and navigate a route to the bathroom in the dark while drunk off my ass. Nothing special there.
Test me and I will chronicle your pain - The Archivist (Diablo 3)
Few people know this, but he actually knows what the next three days of Slashdot articles are going to be. Even breaking news articles, he's already taken it into account and written it up ahead of time. He knows what you are going to submit before you do.
...a fancy way of saying "remembering where stuff is relative to other stuff"?
My cat can do that. If she wants to come upstairs in my house, she'll walk in a straight line to the bottom of the staircase from wherever she is, up the stairs, and in a straight line from there to wherever she wants to be.
I guess she's got "cat GPS" and/or is "using internal distance transform maps"... I never knew she was so talented.
I would think most semi-complex animals have this ability.
Read Pynchon.
People have this too - although it has to be trained. Most of our extra senses are so underused, that we need to kickstart them somehow, before we become consciously aware of them.
http://hackaday.com/2009/02/05/haptic-compass/
After using his vibrating belt for a while, he knew exactly where he was and what direction he was going, even with it taken off.
Brains are amazing. If you provide them with more info, they figure out how to use it.
So can someone please explain to me our cousin species can manage to navigate such dense forest with such high precision while many of my highly-intelligent ex girlfriends managed to get lost so easily on short walks.
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
chimpanzees have a built-in mental GPS
"All the better to eat your face and hands off with my dear!"
Yes, chimps are dirty, vicious, murdering animals who will eat your face and hands.
Now with GPS!
Maybe their brains could form a good basis for organic computer autopilots. But last I heard, they had no satellite antennas built in.
If your only tool is a hammer, every problem becomes a nail.
Yeah - TFA says the chimps kept mental maps of their surroundings, and it was the researchers that used GPS because it all looked like jungle to them. That's different from migratory birds or insects which apparently use magnetic fields or sunlight angles for navigation.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
(Sorry, had to be said)
Why, they used to call Bush that all the time. Now you see the problem with Reverse Racism and Political Correctness.
Calling the president a chimp is so 2000-2008ish.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Johnny Rebel - Still Lookin' For A Handout
Not so long ago I wrote a little song and much to my suprise before very long, Lookin' For A Handout was sittin' on top of the segregation hit parade. So the nigger population keeps gettin' bigger and since I got my first break by singin' about niggers, I'll just sing two or three more verses and see if I can double up on the friends I've made. Now we've all heard of the NAACP. They say they're gonna make all them niggers free. What they mean is they're lookin' for someone to earn it, bring it in their house, put it on the table, and feed 'em. 'Cause their idea of freedom ain't bein' free. It seems they're more interested in gettin' it free. And me and my family and every other white man and his family could go for that kind of freedom., Still lookin' for a handout, Things are still the same, Still lookin' for a handout, Not a thing has changed, While they're on welfare, They haven't got a care, 'Cause they like it that way, They like it that way, My mother used to say, "Son, a livin' comes hard, and you ain't gonna make it by sittin' in the yard. You just can't sit around like a nigger, you had to get up off and hustled yourself a job." And after all these years I find this true, and I sit and wonder like most white men do. Who in the world is feedin' them jungle bunnies while they're demonstratin', causin' riots, and formin' mobs?, Still lookin' for a handout, Things are still the same, Still lookin' for a handout, Not a thing has changed, While they're on welfare, They haven't got a care, They like it that way, They like it that way, Now my suggestion to their problem of bein' free is goin' back to Africa and be cannibals like they used to be. And they can spend the rest of their lives eatin' each other, throwin' coconuts, and swingin' from a tree. Or they can stay here and be our friends, and still be free like they've always been. And start earnin' their own way of life, and stop dependin' on you and me, Still lookin' for a handout, Things are still the same, Still lookin' for a handout, They outta be ashamed, But like I said before, They keep-a-wantin' more, They like it that way, They like it that way, They like it that way-ay-ay-ay-a-a-ay-a-a-ay-ay
Artist: Johnny Rebel Song: who likes a nigger
L.B.J. was a-flyin' one morn', Over south Louisiana...feeling for alarm, When he looks down below, and what does he see?, Two cajuns pullin' a nigger on ski's!, So he lands, and says, "Thanks for helping your black brother!", And them two cajuns just looked at each other, And said, "He might be smart, but I'll tell you something...", "He don't know a thing about alligator huntin'!", O-wop-bop-bam-bam, Who likes a nigger?, o-wop-bop-bam-bam
(CHORUS), Who likes a nigger?, o-wop-bop-bam-bam, Who likes a nigger?, And the hatin', everybody, is a-gettin' much bigger, Rich man travelin' down thru the South, Stopped in Mississippi to get a tooth pulled out, When he paid the doctor the charges due, He said "My nigger chauffer's got a bad tooth, too", "Well, I'll pull it...", said the doc, "but you'd better not holler!, Cause I'll have to charge you $200.00, Cause here in Mississippi he can't open his mouth, We'll have to go thru his bottom, to get the thing out!"
Chorus
There ain't much difference 'tween a nigger and a donkey, 'Bout as much between an ape and a monkey, Ones a little bigger, but you gotta agree, There's not very much more that you can see., But a mule earns his livin' by the sweat of his neck, While a nigger sits down and draws a gov't check, The nigger should be smarter, as a general rule, But in a spelling contest, I'd pick the mule!
Artist: Johnny Rebel Song: nigger hating me
I like sugar, and I like tea, But I don't like niggers...no siree!, There's two known things that'll make me puke, And that's a hog eatin' slop, and a big, black spook!, You know it...cause I show it, Like a barn-yard rooster I crow it!, And the NAACP, Would sure like to get a-hold of nigger-hatin' me!, Roses are red, and viole
If these chimps are using the FAT32 file system, I would like to know.
- Steve Ballmer.
With this built-in GPS, would chimp-mounted lasers be more accurate than shark-mounted ones?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
I already knew this. Why do we spend such money on research? Think about it, have you ever had a chimp ask you for directions?
This is typical kdawson editing failure.
The chimps didn't launch their own satellites - they got the dolphins and orcas to do it while they were still on the planet.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
At least only one of those apply to my tomtom
So chimps are smarter than niggers. I thought everyone knew that.
Microsoft suing every chimp in the world. More at eleven.
But they'll train me in Monkey Kombat for defeating LeChuck. I'll feed them bananas gladly in exchange for Elaine Marley.
They have JPS: Jungle Positioning System
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
"... even when swinging through trees, the chimps planned out their route several trees in advance"?
That would be like me going to the store and actually having an efficient route, instead of randomly zig-zagging my way through the streets for hours until I found the stop&go 3 miles from my house.
(Drive a block)... is this it? No
(Drive a block)... is this it? No
(Drive a block)... is this it? Maybe
Which way? Thataway? Okay!
(Drive a block)... is this it? No
(Drive a block)... is this it? Maybe
Which way? Thisaway? Sure!
(Drive a block)... is this it? No
(Drive a block)... is this it? No
What's that??? Store. SCORE!
You mean, before the dolphins left?
to navigate their jungle habitat, are the waypoints bananas?
I've got your sig, right here.
tl;dr
...a fancy way of saying "remembering where stuff is relative to other stuff"?
Yeah, I was thinking that this is just a bit of "dead reckoning," combined with old salty pirate skills:
"Arrrgh, when yee see the rock, that looks like the skull of a monkey, turn left, take twenty paces, and the treasure is buried below. But beware the curse . . ."
I guess she's got "cat GPS" and/or is "using internal distance transform maps"...
Just to be on the safe side, see if your cat can perform the same trick, while wearing a tinfoil hat. And please get back to us if she can. Maybe those felines are up to something behind our backs.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Turn Right.
Merge Left.
Throw Poo.
chee-eek-oop
Bullshit summary again. Or maybe bullshit article. Who cares? After a while, you don't bother.
Exactly! That's why those folks who say RTFA are a bunch of fucking pedantic assholes! I don't need to Read The Fucking Article because it is bullshit anyway!
Therefore, I just post with some two bit opinion based on the title - alright, even then, I don't read the title. I basically just post two bit opinions on Slashdot with an attitude that it's actually based on fact. Fuck yeah! Why, I've gotten +5 "Insightful"s by just skimming over the headline, some posts, and some funny shit, and BINGO! +5! Damn, I'm so fucking good at Karma whoring, I'm thinking of starting a school: Make millions by Karma Whoring on Slashdot! Yes you too can stay at home and only work a couple of hours a day and Karma Whore on Slashdot and make $10,000 a week! There's a kink though....the part where you get the Karma and actually get money....but that's OK! I'll just put in the mice type at the bottom of the screen "Results may vary." or "Nontypical outcome." or "Spurious money making scheme.". Anyway, off to work.
Ya know, I thought of deleting this post, but it's so fucking outrageous and I think it's really funny and satirical that I can't do it. Fuck it! I'll take whatever Karma that comes. Creativity can be a bitch.
they sh*t everywhere and you'd have to feed it bananas for directions.
Well, if you run out of bananas, the chimp might be happy to eat your face and hands as a substitute, as recently happened in Connecticut. Those tomtoms are looking like a better deal all the time.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Doesn't any one remember INS (inertial navigation system), LORAN (LOng RAnge Navagation), Dead Reckoning, Celestial Navigation, Pilotage, ADF (Automatic Direction Finding), VOR (VHF Omnidirectional Range), or any of a number that I've forgotten?
un-ALTERED reproduction and dissimination of this IMPORTANT information is ENCOURAGED
Maybe they happen to like traveling in straight lines, and researchers are assuming that "point B" was the intended destination.
"built-in GPS"
Well I guess they were right fucked until humans came along and put the GPS satellites in orbit.
It's not global, it doesn't use satellites, and it's a positioning system that humans also use.
Added to the growing list of "studies with fucking obvious conclusions"
of course they have a built in gps. i put it there.
You mean TrunkMonkey has a navigation option now? Sweet!
http://www.trunkmonkeyad.com/
Since GPS is illegal in Egypt, this means that Chimps now are too!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I wonder where their satellite constellations are.
they sh*t everywhere and you'd have to feed it bananas for directions.
Hmmm, almost applies to politicians....
BM3
No wonder so many chimps around white girls.
There is no such thing as reverse racism, its either racism or its not. The reverse of racism is still racism (ie favouring a race vs denigration a race are both examples of racism). Plz discontinue usage k thnx.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
You would be angry and frustrated too, if you heard voices saying "Turn left here! Turn left here!" 24x7x365.
A cat will remember how to get from A to Z via P, but if you block that path they will not automatically know that they can also get from A to Z via Q. That's why they do that annoying thing of walking in one door and then standing at another door asking to be let out.
I remember reading a thing about how women give directions versus men and apparently women have a similar way of dealing with spacial relationships. Directions are remembered as a sequence of landmarks for women rather than a map as in men, which is why, statistically anyway, men tend to be better at using maps upside down or sideways thanks to mental rotation.
Cats navigate like women, chimps navigate like men.
I don't therefore I'm not.
"Fixed that for you" - the cry of the most pretentious assholes on slashdot.
just die now
"I LOVE YOU"
*rips my face off*
Amazing. Looks like we've moved on?
Camping on quad since 1996.
That's what happens when you touch the monolith.
Obama Policies Will Bankrupt USA Tsarkon Reports
- This just in, March 23 2009 Chinas central bank on Monday proposed replacing the US dollar as the international reserve currency with a new global system controlled by the International Monetary Fund
- Russia too: It is necessary to work out and adopt internationally recognized standards for macroeconomic and budget policy, which are binding for the leading world economies, including the countries issuing reserve currencies - the Kremlin proposals read.
- President Barak "The Teleprompter" Obama is deeply connected to corruption, Rahm Emanuel (Radical authoritarian Statist whose father was part of the Murderous Civilian Killing Israeli Terrorist Organization known as IRGUN), Connected to Rod Blagojevich (Rahm inherited Rod's federal-congress seat), Connected to Ayers, a man who promotes the concept that civilian collateral damage is ok in a war against freedom, Preacher Jeremiah Wright, who is himself a black-elitist who wants all the people who largely "pay the freight" to suffer, 31 million on food stamps, more blacks are in prison and on food-stamps per capita than anyone else. The problem with Wright is simply this: the facts are "racist."
- Obama: Racist, AIPAC-bootlicker, Corrupted to the bone Chicago style and a Traitor to the US Constitution and a Liar whose real "legal" name could very well be Barry Sotero and an Indonesian citizen (The US does not allow plural citizenship) (If you care, not that it matters anymore under a Lawless Authoritarian Totalitarian Regime, you can see more here at an aggregator; obamacrimes.info )
- Raytheon lobbyist in Pentagon, lots lobbyists getting exemptions even though he promised not to have them.
- Goldman Sachs insider second in command at Treasury. Bumbling tax cheat idiot in "command" of Treasury with 17 positions unfilled as of late March 2009.
- Cabinet has had several nominees and appointees with multiple tax fraud issues.
- Lied about having a new degree of accountability and a SUNSHINE period of new laws, he has signed bills with little or no review at whitehouse.gov as promised.
- Appointed a second amendment violating Rich-pardoning treasonist Eric Holder as AG, the top cop of the USA, a man who helped a fugitive evade justice.
- Has not put a dime in for a single new nuclear power plant but wants to help bridges and roads to promote more driving.
- Obama, Blagojevich and Rahm Emanuel have a LOT to hide. They literally lived next to each other, Rahm had (until being Chairman Obama's Chief of staff) Blagojevich's old federal congressional seat. Blagojevich helped Chairman "The Teleprompter" Obama cheat his way to the Illinois senate by getting other candidates thrown off the ballot in Illinois. Why do you think Blagojevich was so mad? Obama DID owe him, big time. Rahm and Obama are using Blagojevich and trying to cut his head off to keep him away.
- Tony Rezko, Iraqi Arms Dealer Nahdmi Auchi, and of course Aiham Alsammarae. Chairman "The Teleprompter" Hussein Obama is so corrupted its a joke.
- Fools and "useful idiots" twist the pie charts by leaving welfare, workfare, interest on debt, social security, Medicare and Medicaid out and focusing only on non-whole "discretionary" pie charts.
2007 high level pie chart, Federal Budget, USA
2009 Pie chart, detailed, Federal Budget, USA
- Chairman Obama is drastically increasing spending and creating more entitlements that will make the US less competitive (especially against China, India, East Europe/Russia). This will be a huge disaster and change you can believe in will strap you and your grandkids with more debt. No taxation without re
So if you put a tin foil hat on a chimps head it will be completely lost?
sorry for my comments, I'm drunk
My daughter is 19 months old. Almost as soon as she could walk at 13 months she was navigating the house on her own. She knew how to get back to her room from the kitchen, three doors, two rooms and a hallway away. Heck, she couldn't even open the doors on her own, but she sure could toddle over to them and squeak until we did it for her. :)
It's not like we taught her how to remember 2d layouts and navigate them. She just did it.
She's my first kid, and I'm learning more about intelligence and learning from watching her than I ever did in all of my AI classes.
Another example: she loves sitting in the driver's seat of our car, playing with the steering wheel and the keys. The first time she did it she was holding the keys in her left hand, but the ignition is on the right side of the steering column. She tried reaching over to put the keys in, but immediately realized she couldn't reach, so she switched the keys to her right hand. Do you know how difficult it would be to code up that kind of coordination and reasoning process in a robot? Frikkin' hard! But she just did it.
It's helped me realize just how much behavior and intelligence is hard coded in our brains. There's a lot that my wife and I are teaching my daughter, but there's no way we could have taught her everything she now knows, and I seriously doubt she's figured it all out by mimicry. (Especially the complex skills and problem solving behavior.) So the idea that a primate could have a "built in" mental mapping ability makes perfect sense now that I've seen such a thing in action.
does have one to perfectly aim the chairs he thows ?
Slashdot ya no es que lo era!
This research is glorified as if it's somehow an isolated trait specific to chimps. It's not.
Humans are fully capable of navigation and they do it every day. Even dogs can find their way back home. I'd be surprised if chimps couldn't.
...any one else worry that this implied Chimp controlled, orbiting satellites?
Damn you, bloody apes!
--
$tar -xvf
I always thought head shrinkers were comitting atrocious crime. Now I see they were just carrying portable GPS devices.
chee-eek-oop (monkey see monkey do)
Does the chimp GPS provide automatic traffic avoidance? It must be the same implanted GPS as featured in London Taxi Driver 1.0?
What a load of bollocks.
This message was scanned by European governments and contains no terrorism.
What is scary is that this piece of science without the hype would have stayed unknown to /. behind the paywall, and it would still be the same piece of science (without the GPS thingy).
Hey look at that - a "Fixed that for you" asshole has Mod Points.
... but in a way we are all monkeys ... so .. the apple sure didn't fall far from the tree...
Intelligence isn't measurable but discoverable ...
We should be happy to know our own evolution as primate; it shows intelligence has gone a far ride ... (with lots of obstacles) ..
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
How would you feel when you are lost?
Evolution found a way to not feel so bad as before, when yelling ... I'M LOOOSTTT!!!!
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Amazing.
And if you piss it off, it eats your face.
---- Booth was a patriot ----