Welcome to #MemoryFriday. Every Friday I have resolved to post an article about the human memory and ways to boost or improve it.
Today, I want to look at the animal world, gather one or two information on the best memory in that realm then apply it to us human beings.
Memory systems in any dimension refers to three methods of managing information or data. These are
1. Data acceptance.
2. Data storage.
3. Data retrieval.
Data processing is not really a very important aspect of memory. Processing is more in tuned if you would need analysis or derivations.
Let me first shock you by telling you that contrary to what you may have thought or known, we humans actually have poor memories compared relatively to animals. Human memory is temporal or transient, only able to accept, store and retrieve small packets of information per time. The massive amount of data and longevity of time data are stored by some animals are stunning and jaw breaking feats that we can only meet using a high tech super charged computer.
I am not going to list them by ranks or position, that is not the aim of this post. I will share the animals into two groups, namely Group A and B. Then I will bring out the lessons we need to consider.
Group A : in this group animals like the bottle nosed dolphin, Elephants, Chimpanzees and whales fall in. They are highly evolved animals with different techniques for keeping such a memory so as to survive and remain relevant themselves or against other animals. A good look at this animal group shows that they are social animals. Social animals are highly developed and intelligent animals that have good means of communication, adaptation, feeding, reproduction and all other things that make them top grade animals. For example it is well known that some elephants can even recognise the corpse of a fallen comrade, dolphins responds to the calls of friends even after ten or twenty years apart. These are the advantage of living in close nit families.
Group B: this group includes animals like sea turtles, albatross, salmons , herrings, and some migratory birds. A close look at this set shows that tho they are not social yet at one point of their lives millions of these animals all gather together to travel vast distances for issues from reproduction, territory, food to even security. These animals may not have powerful intelligence but they have evolved simple but efficient tools for charting and locating places they did not even grow in. Some of the noteworthy tools includes changes in ocean current, earths geomagnetic field, the sun, water salinity etc. Turtles travel millions of kilometer to lay eggs in islands that they were hatched some fifty years before, guess what! they lay their eggs at the same island and the same time, what a memory.
These animals don't have brains like us, no technology . some only have crude organs yet their memory is way advanced than ours.
Lessons to be learnt.
First the social animals acquire their memory during birth, some by experiences keenly observed and most of all by LISTENING. Research has proven that those who talk less but listen more have better memory. Since they are apt to accept more data, store data and the reproduction of same data later on is easier for them. Lesson ONE in memory boosting is to LISTEN MORE!
A look at our second group is that they use simple but efficient crude tools. We can learn from them by also using tools such as a NOTE. Notes are simple to make but they can be very effective in storing and reproducing info days, weeks or even years later. Lesson TWO is to use NOTES - I will write on this another time.
The final lesson I want to share is that memory boosting is not something that can be done alone. The social animals live in family units while the migratory animals never travel alone. Memory is best developed among places or people you love, respect and environments you feel welcomed in. The lesson here is that YOU CAN'T DO IT ALL BY YOURSELF. We all need somebody to lean on says the song of Michael Bolton.
I hope you have learnt something and that you found this useful. Feel free to send your questions or to SHARE with friends.
Cheers!