Tag Archives: intelligence

Crazy Smart Crows and Migrating Animals

Skeptically Speaking #198 is now available for your listening pleasure. The main part of the show has Desiree Schell interviewing James Gould, co-author of Nature’s Compass: The Mystery of Animal Navigation.

Nature's Compass book
Great book on animal migration
The 15 minute side bar has Desiree interviewing me about recent research on the New Caledonian crows (this research).

Visit the Skeptically Speaking site to download or listen to the podcast.

This week, we’re looking at some of the amazing abilities exhibited by our animal cousins. We’ll speak to James Gould, co-author of Nature’s Compass: The Mystery of Animal Navigation, about the varying strategies animals use to find their way across all kinds of distances. And biological anthropologist Greg Laden discusses new research on the surprising reasoning abilities of some extremely intelligent crows.

Women are smarter than men (well, duh!) UPDATED

Note: First Woman Michele Obama confirms my suspicion

Added: Proof

Who is smarter, men or women?


Any college teacher (at least in the social sciences and life sciences) who has ever paid attention to their own stats know that women do better than men in college classes.

OK, women are smarter. But why?

There are all kinds of post hoc explanations given for this like “Girls get better grades because professors are men, nod nod wink wink” and so on. What a load of crap. Women are smarter than men on average, among the smartest people there is no emperical evidence that women are underrepresented, and among the dumbest people in the world …. well, those are mostly guys.

The reasons are obvious and straight forward. The hormones that give some men an evolutionary advantage over some other men also make you stoopid. Any questions? Ask a girl, she’ll explain it to you.

And now, finally (or shall I say, “once again”) there’s proof:

Female students are ahead of men in almost every measure of UK university achievement, according to a report from higher education researchers.

A Higher Education Policy Institute report shows that women are more likely to get places in the top universities and go on to get better grades.

Women also outnumber men in high status subjects, such as law and medicine.

bbc

UPDATE: This interesting piece appeared the other day in the New York Times: Girls Lead in Science Exam, but Not in the United States . A graphic from that piece is now the featured image for this post (above). So there you go.

So, there you go. Comments?

Yet Another Gene for Intelligence

Obviously, I have to work this both into tonight’s talk in Grand Rapids, and blog about it:

Gene governs IQ boost from breastfeeding from PhysOrg.com
The known association between breast feeding and slightly higher IQ in children has been shown to relate to a particular gene in the babies, according to a report this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.[]

But for now, I’ll just say this… Continue reading Yet Another Gene for Intelligence