Flash Post 256!

Button, here are some tidbits for your consumption.

Isn’t that a rat?

That’s an artist’s illustration of a rat that grows to more than a foot and a half long sometimes and  is known as Uromys Vika. It lives in the thick rain forests of the Solomon Islands and can crack full coconuts with its teeth.

That’s huge for a rat!

They are much bigger than the rats you see in our compound.

That’s scary, to say the least.

Now I’ll tell you why dogs bark when they stand in front of a mirror.

Tell me but I think I know why they do.

Tell us.

Dogs sniff out everything and don’t pay attention to what things look like. Their sense of smell is superior to their sense of sight. When they stand in front of a mirror, they either don’t recognise themselves or bark because they think they are looking at another dog. I’m told they are also colour blind.

Scientists using mirrors to find out if different animals recognise themselves discovered that chimpanzees, for instance, will hold up a mirror to remove a foreign object from their faces. Other animals who have passed the test of sight are dolphins, elephants and magpies.

Is there another sense that dogs make use of to recognise themselves?

Alexandra Horowitz, a psychologist at Barnard College, found out after doing certain tests that dogs were least interested in the smell of their own urine,  somewhat interested in the smell of urine of other dogs and most interested in the smell of their own urine mixed with another unfamiliar smell!

You mean to say that there are researchers out there testing out stuff like these?

Absolutely. The are biologists, psychologists as well as animal behaviour specialists carrying out tests all the time to provide us with answers to our questions.

Pretty cool, I must admit.