Rio the sea lion

by: Diana PavónAlexa Lozano Marialina plasencia norjul lara

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Rio The Sea Lion

Sea lions are particularly intelligent, can be trained to perform various tasks and display limited fear of humans if accustomed to them

sea lions intelligence

Rio, a Californian sea lion living at the University of California at Santa Cruz, thinks like a human. After learning to pair the silhouette of a crab with that of a tulip, and then the tulip with a radio, Rio makes a logical leap: she matches the crab with the radio.

Who is Rio?

Experiments

Schusterman decided to test Rio for reasoning ability in a different way. He and his graduate students created a repertoire of 90 objects for Rio to learn. Some were three-dimensional objects, such as a spatula, but most were simply black-on-white drawings. The researchers divided the objects into three categories (A, B, and C) and grouped them in 30 trios consisting of one object from each category.

Rio's performance

shook

No other animal has yet matched Rio’s performance, according to Schusterman. But that doesn’t mean sea lions are smarter than dolphins or chimpanzees. I’m convinced that many animals have this ability, says Schusterman. They just haven’t been tested along these lines.

Thank you!