Time to load up some popular games: new research indicates pigs possess the mental capability to play video games. The study, published in Frontiers In Psychology, tested the ability of four pigs（Hamlet, Omelette, Ebony and Ivory)to play a simple joystick(操纵杆）game with their noses, moving a cursor(光标）to four targets on the screen. Although the animals didn’t demonstrate the skills to win a round any time soon, they did show an understanding of some elementary games.

Performing well above chance, the pigs appeared to recognize the movement of the cursor was controlled by the joystick. The fact that they did so well despite a lack of flexible fingers is “extraordinary”, according to the researchers.

“It is no small achievement for an animal, to grasp the concept that the behaviour they are performing is having an effect elsewhere. That pigs can do this to any degree should give us pause as to what else they are capable of learning and how such learning may impact them,” said Purdue University’s Dr Candace Croney, the study’s lead author.

Researchers also noted that while the pigs could be taught to play the game using food as positive motivation, they also responded well to social interaction. In fact, when the game was made more challenging and the pigs became unwilling to participate in, “only oral encouragement by the experimenter” would see training continue.

These findings are the latest to highlight the intelligence of pigs. Not only have they been shown to use mirrors to find hidden food, but studies have also demonstrated how pigs can be taught to “come” and “sit” after oral commands.

“As with any sentient(有感觉力的）beings, how we interact with pigs and what we do to them impacts and matters to them,” Croney said. “We therefore have a moral duty to understand how pigs acquire information, and what they are capable of leaning and remembering, because it ultimately offers the potential for how they understand their interactions with us and their environments.”

Scientists researching climate change in Antarctica are studying penguins in an effort to better understand the area’s environmental health. The scientists are measuring the growth and development of the penguin population on the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula.“We are counting penguin nests to understand how many penguins are in a colony, producing young every year, and whether that number is going up or down with the environmental conditions,“ said Alex Borowicz. He is an ecology researcher at New York’s Stony Brook University.

The work is not easy for climate researchers in the icy,faraway reaches of Antarctica. But penguins are easier to follow than some other kinds of animals because they nest on land. Their black bodies and wastedroppings can also be identified against the area’s white background.

Michael Wethington,another researcher from Stony Brook,told Reuters the penguin population can represent overall climate conditions and the health of the area’s whole ecosystem.The researchers say countsof individual penguins can be combined with data from satellite images to get a more complete picture of how the animals are progressing.

Gentoo penguins-with bright orange beaks and white markings on their heads-prefer open water without broken pieces of ice floating around. So when temperatures on the Antarctic Peninsula began rising during the latter half of the 20th century,gentoo populations moved south.Gentoo penguins don’t like sea ice. They mostly forage(觅食)over the continental shelf and don＇t go far out to sea. As sea ice has decreased along the western side of the peninsula,gentoos seem to have gotten used to the changed conditions. But those same conditions have been worse for the Adelie penguin species. This is because the Adelies depend on sea ice for feeding and reproduction.

“When we find Adelie penguins, we typically know that sea ice is nearby,”Stony Brook’s Wethington said. He added that whenever researchers see sea ice decreasing or disappearing,they also see Adelie penguin populations plunge.Even though Adelie penguins are increasing in number overall, some populations have fallen by more than 65 percent,researchers say.

In the 1950s and 60s, scientists around the world launched many creatures into space. The idea was to calculate the effects of spaceflight on living creatures in the hopes that humans could follow.

The Soviet Union sent a stray Moscow dog named Laika into space, and subsequently, it was honored as a national hero. Ham the chimpanzee was famously buried at the International Space Hall of Fame in New Mexico following his contributions to the U. S. space program. And then there was France, which sent the first and so far only cat into space. So, who was this hero cat, anyway?

Félicette was one of 14 cats cited to the French space program. Each cat had electrodes implanted into their brain, and all were subjected to many of the same activities included in human astronaut training. French scientists decided to use cats as they already had a lot of neurological data on them. At the conclusion of training, the petite tuxedo Félicette got the green light.

On Oct. 18, 1963, Félicette, was strapped into a Véronique rocket and blasted from Algeria to nearly 100 miles above Earth. She experienced about five minutes of weightlessness followed by the terror of a turbulent, spinning descent via parachute.

Just 15 minutes later, the flight was complete. A helicopter crew dashed to the landing site, threw open the cabin, and found Félicette alive and well.

Two months later, scientists rewarded her heroism with euthanasia (安乐死) — they wanted to examine her body. Then, Félicette was all but forgotten.

So forgotten that in the 90s, when three former French colonies celebrated her story by issuing stamps with the cat’s likeness, they mistakenly turned her into a boy by using the wrong name — Felix.

But thanks to Londoner Matt Guy who came across the tale of Félicette that she wasn’t already properly recognized for her accomplishments, the story’s finally been set straight. His online pleas netted around $57,000 enough to fund a 5-foot tall bronze statue. On Dec. 18, 2019, the statue was finally unveiled at the International Space University in Strasbourg, France.