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Scientists Discover That Horses Can Use Symbols To Talk To Us (sciencemag.org)
sciencehabit writes from a report via Science Magazine: Scientists have discovered that horses can learn to use another human tool for communicating: pointing to symbols. They join a short list of other species, including some primates, dolphins, and pigeons, with this talent. Scientists taught 23 riding horses of various breeds to look at a display board with three icons, representing wearing or not wearing a blanket. Horses could choose between a "no change" symbol or symbols for "blanket on" or "blanket off." The horses did not touch the symbols randomly, but made their choices based on the weather. If it was wet, cold, and windy, they touched the blanket-on icon; horses that were already wearing a blanket nosed the "no change" image. But when the weather was sunny, the animals touched the blanket-off symbol; those that weren't blanketed pressed the "no change" icon. The study's strong results show that the horses understood the consequences of their choices, say the scientists, who hope that other researchers will use their method to ask horses more questions. The report has been published in Applied Animal Behaviour Science.
When you staggered out of the saloon wasted, your horse would get you home safely. Long before Siri and Tesla, a lot of intelligent navigation must have been done that way.
Horse:
Many Muslims (like some Christian sects) consider pictorial representations of the human figure as violating the prohibition on graven images. As with those iconoclastic Christian sects that prohibition is most strictly observed when it comes to religious figures, possibly because of the quasi-worship of Christian saints Muslims witnessed among German knights in the Holy Land, which must have struck them (as it would later Protestants) as a kind of polytheism.
That's why when you look at the massive, elaborately decorated mosques you won't see a single human or animal figure. Instead you'll see elaborate geometrical figures and highly stylized calligraphy, which are the main visual form of Sunni artistic expression. To find any sort of art depicting people one must look to Shia dominated areas, such as Persia (Iran), which boasts many fine examples.
The universe is large, little man, and full of endless wonders; the time you have to fill your mind with those wonders is short.
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While your examples could be simple aggressive behavior in cat culture, they are amusing.
However, cats indeed use symbolic reasoning. Mine, a mature shelter animal when I got her, loved to play with a boot lace tied off with feathers which I "flew" near her until she realiized it was only a toy controlled by me, at which time she lost interest and did not play anymore.
However, when she wants my company, she fetches the feathered lace and brings it to me. She does not want to play with it -- she uses it as a symbol to say she wants some face time at the places she hangs out in (the porch or the back room with the sunny exposure.)
Am I surprised? At first I was, but it looks like Noam Chomsky was right -- we (many creatures) are "hard-wired" for language.