John Carlos Baez on Nostr: Some animals really enjoy solving puzzles. Cognitive ecologist Lauren Stanton found ...

Some animals really enjoy solving puzzles. Cognitive ecologist Lauren Stanton found this out when she built 'smart boxes' to test the ability of raccoons to adapt to puzzles where the right answer keeps changing, and deployed them outdoors. "We had multiple raccoons just shove inside the device at the same time, like, three, four animals all trying to compete to get into it".

Similarly, when Katie Harrington used an 'innovation box' to test the Falklands raptor called a striated caracara, the big challenge was keeping other birds away while one solved the puzzles in the box!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Czx5HW6m54A