DAILY QUICK READ - AUGUST 30, 2016

Dogs Brains Process Speech the Same Way as Human Brains

This is not a surprise to dog owners, but it has interesting ramifications across many species.  This capability is not a learned or evolutionary response caused by domestication. 

Dogs really can understand what we’re saying to them, according to a new study that seems to confirm the dearest wish of many a dog-lover. And yes, that does mean if you say a mean thing to a dog in a friendly tone, the dog knows.

Most importantly, dogs are smart enough not to be tricked by gibberish said in a happy voice. They can put vocabulary and tone together, and the reward areas of their brains are most active when they hear both positive words and positive tones. One reward area didn’t activate at all if positive words and positive tones weren’t used.

Domestication might have helped dogs learn to process language in both parts of the brain, but it’s unlikely that it’s the sole reason behind it, they say. This suggests that maybe it wasn’t human language that made our brains process speech with both sides. Rather, it might be that many animals — including humans and dogs — use the same areas to process language.

Plant Extinction – A Slow Process

Invasive plants crowd out native plants leading to extinction.  It’s a slow process, but it leads to less environmental diversity.

Researchers from South Africa and Australia teamed up to study how invasive plants were linked to the extinction of native species. In order to have a framework to study and discuss their observations, they developed an "extinction trajectory" that consists of six steps plant species go through during the extinction process.

Though there have been no proven plant extinctions as a result of invasive species to date, the authors of the study believe that many may already be functionally extinct. In other words, the plants do not have the means to sustain their population.

"The main reason why there is no clear evidence of extinction that can be exclusively attributed to plant invasions is that invasions have not been around long enough," co-author and professor at Stellenbosch University's Centre for Invasion Biology Dave Richardson said in a release.

“No African Benefited From That”

Kaddu Sebunya is the president of one of Africa's largest conservation groups, the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF).  Here are excerpts from an interview he give on a recent visit to Zimbabwe.

What poaching is doing to us today is what another form of poaching did to our grandmothers and grandfathers a century ago, if you remember our history well, through slavery. People came here and picked our brothers and sisters. Today, we keep asking what did our mothers and fathers, our ancestors, do to prevent slavery. People just came here, took our people and sold them off! No African benefited from that. But back to poaching; your children and your grandchildren will also ask you the same question 40 to 50 years from now. They will say: what did you do to prevent poaching? They will ask us how we lost all our elephants. Poaching is dire. I think we are under a serious crisis in Africa. Africa, for the last couple of years, has been losing 30 000 elephants annually. Many African countries have, in the last 30 years, lost all their rhino populations. All! It is now Zero! It is worrying! We have lost elephants through poaching, trafficking, not through any legal mechanism. That is the crisis we are against as AWF. Our lion population has halved globally. We need to do something about it. If we don't do anything about that, Africa will lose all its lions in the next 20 years, in your lifetime.

…let's not concentrate so much on animals as if they dwell in living rooms. The real threat is on the habitat. We need to start talking about the space. What space does Africa want to leave for wildlife? Our human population is increasing and we are urbanising fast. If the population of Zimbabwe is going to double, what space will we leave for wildlife?