Help with Animal Cognition!
I brainstormed with my girlfriend some ideas for observing animals for
her Animal Cognition course. Tell me, what do you think is the
best idea? All the ideas were mine btw. I’m so
modest. Some of the jokes are lame and I’ll take them out.
If you have a better idea- please leave it!
First Idea:
Observing How Pigeons respond to feeding (situational dominance)
Second Idea:
Go to zoo tomorrow and watch chimps (dominance/child care)
Third Idea:
Mow
lawns in Kendall counting the number of birds that come to eat the
worms after the grass is cut. Try and “trick” the birds by driving
around with the lawnmower’s blade up! Do the birds come because of the
sound or the smell of the cut grass? Repeat 10 times and charge the
neighbors each time (30 dollars). Make 300 dollars and be happY!
Fourth Idea:STUPID JOKE
Fifth Idea:
Observe coots in Florida Bay off Flamingo. How do they respond to air horns.
Sixth Idea:
Count
the number of alligators along Shark Valley at three different times of
day. See how the alligators respond to crowds of people on the trail.
Seventh Idea:
Go to Seaquarium and talk to my old buddy. Do an interview with him about training dolphins.
Idea number Eight:
STUPID JOKE.
Ninth Idea:
Different
bird sounds at different times of day. Have a symbol for each bird
sound. Use a recorder to record the sound and then count the number of
audible calls. Call an ornithologist to determine which birds make
which sound. Have a chart.
Tenth Idea:
Count the number of fish that eat the bread thrown in the canal. Note the quantity of the fish surfacing.
Eleventh Idea:
Survey the number of manatees on the Miami River. Restrictions against such an idea?
Twelvth Idea:
STUPID JOKE ABOUT RELEASING PIRANAHS INTO CANALS (IT’S HAPPENED)
Thirteenth Idea:
Variation
on number 1- Tempt pigeons/seagulls (pajaros baratos) with food. Play
easy listening music- see how many pajaros like it. Play heavy metal –
see how pajaros respond. WIll the “offensive” music keep away
birds?
Fourteenth Idea:
Go out on the bay around dusk. Throw lots of blood into the water and count the number of sharks you see!
Fifteenth Idea:
YOU
TELL ME!! I need YOUR input. Please leave me comments or vote for
your project. Personally I like the idea of counting sharks…
We had a lovely time watching the sunset on the bay. We jumped
into the water but I kept scaring her that sharks were coming. Oh
it was fun.
I really liked the one about mowing yards… you could actually set that up a good experimental design, but you’d have to make it time sensitive to account for learning… (Get other people to mow lawns several blocks away from one another at the same time… something like that.) You’d want to research how birds communicate; is it just proximity or do they have a more advanced method? etc.
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You could even do a three intervention design! First is your base… where you just mow normally and count birds. The next week, you just distribute grass clippings (mysteriously arrived from… Somewhere Else) to see if it’s the grass. Third week you run the mower, no blade/no clippings, and see how the birds respond. I don’t know, there are a lot of extraneous variables here… good luck!
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