End of Week 3 Blog: Research and Safina

This week, I was introduced to experiments relating to behavior, specifically in dogs snd similar mammals. We learned about the term, "Theory of Mind" which we come to find out has many different nuanced definitions that researchers cannot agree on. However, upon reading Safina's chapter, "Theory of Mind" I have come to agree with the definition of the author. A specific argument that the author points out is that how can humans even judge other animals theory of mind when they do not take into account the context of situations. For example, many people would assume that ducks would fly away or be scared when a predator like a wolf is in their presence. However, ducks have "understood a dog's [wolfs] limits and have learned that humans can kill at great distance". This is why they have now learned that humans shoot them and are not afraid of being attacked by a wolf. As they are figuring out who the real predator is.

Some ideas that I have for research topics are:

• lobsters and social communication or social intelligence or personality

• whales and social communication

• banana slugs and emotions

• corvids and intelligence

• cows and emotion

I am leaning towards lobsters just because I think they are fascinating creatures and don't really get a lot of attention. I have since the start of the class so far been interested in this topic. My interest in bird intelligence is also very high especially since last week when we watched the documentary about birds. My current research progress has been mainly on twitter as I have just been interested in researching sea animals. I have learned more about researchers such as Professor Jordan Peterson who is a cognitive psychologist at the University of Toronto. He has conducted studies on the personalities of lobsters as well as hierarchies among this species. Having connected key words when conducting my research was very helpful. It made the results more centered around what I was looking up. Going further I will be continuing to narrow down on choosing the topic by using google scholar and Wikipedia.