And pigs can and do "fly"
And pigs can and do "fly"
We can learn a lot from observing animal behaviour deeply
If you are confused why the caption says pig and the title picture has a dog, I can assure you one thing, it is not a bait and switch of any sort. I love learning from animal behavior and I keenly learn from my dog, cats, squirrels, rabbits, robins, cardinals, and the bluejays about whom I have written before. And I continue that with pigs today.
Pictured is our dog “Kobe” who turned 9 years old today. It is a wonderful ride with him in the house and a story of how well he has adapted to us and we to him. He has trained us to be better humans in a variety of ways. When he was 4 years old, he was affected by IVDD and lost movement of his hind legs with required extensive surgery followed by a six-month recovery and rehabilitation process. In spite of his low survival chances, he pulled through. And in future articles, I shall write about various things I learned from and through him. But not today. Since today is about pigs.
I read a wonderful BBC article about ongoing research on how pigs were able to play video games (for an award) and also that when the award system broke, they still were able to enjoy continue playing the game, just for the joy of playing the game. I have always argued that humans are similarly creative and we create for just the joy of creating. You can see similar cognitive traits in animal brains too. If animals can put such limited cognitive abilities to use, then we humans can do a lot more with our cognitive capabilities, if only we know how to put ourselves to better use in our unique contexts.
This requires us to step back sufficiently away from our experienced selves and critically look at our learning processes aptly and then applying it as described by this simple Edward Deming quote that provides enormous insight - Learning and practice changes everything!
What do you think? Are we as capable as animals in leveraging our cognitive abilities?
And how does this help me?
This helps me continue in the metamodelling of my hypothesis which is “Humans are extremely creative, and when they create something successfully they are more in a state of flow. And this human creativity is enhanced by the social recognition they receive for that work which perpetuates them to do even better creative work, a self-perpetuating virtuous positive benefit spiral”
Source:
BBC article - Pigs can play video games with their snouts, scientists find