Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Thu, 8 Dec 2011 17:00:00 PST Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101229/04102912449/dailydirt-animals-are-getting-smarter.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101229/04102912449/dailydirt-animals-are-getting-smarter.shtml

Chimps are the only other species, besides humans, that regularly throws things. It's presumably a pre-cursor to speech and communication. Chimps in captivity even throw things without any training, as the researchers say, "I've never in my life seen a chimp be given a banana for throwing shit at someone." [url]

Until someone actually invents a dog collar that can translate dog barks into English, we'll have to study dog behavior and guess at how dogs think. Animal behaviorist John Bradshaw discusses his behavior guidebook for dogs and tips for training dogs. [url]

Researchers have observed ravens in the wild using pointing gestures. "It's over there!" quoth the Raven. [url]

To discover more interesting articles on the mind, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101229/04102912449 Mon, 7 Jun 2010 18:28:00 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100607/0116339708.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100607/0116339708.shtml re-affirmed) wasn't enough, Slashdot points us to the news that Amazon is seeking a patent on ordering via human gestures, such as nodding or smiling. You can read the application for a patent on "movement recognition as input mechanism" here. Here's the thing, though. Movement recognition isn't new. All this is trying to do is claim a patent on movement recognition in specific circumstances. This is one of the big problems that people have with these types of patents. There's no invention here. It's just using existing technology to do stuff that plenty of others are working on.

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