Nova Science Now: Smart Marine Mammals: Smart Sea Lions

In this video, meet Rio, a captive California sea lion who has helped research biologists to better understand the cognitive abilities of this species. See how Rio has learned that certain sounds are associated with certain letters or numbers, and observe how she demonstrates the higher order reasoning skill of logic. Biologist Colleen Reichmuth explains how Rio has learned that all letters can be grouped together and is able to use a logic rule to solve a new problem. Consider how this reasoning ability is related to language. [4:42]