Lawrence Marsh
February 25, 2020 10:07 AM
Measuring Intelligent Creatures by Intelligent Creatures by Lawrence Marsh
Feathers blew in front of Lawrence as he waited in the Labyrinth. His eyes shifted to the wings, trying to judge if the animal was molting or perhaps something else was going on. Susan opened her beak, showing off her serrated fangs. Lawrence had come to believe this was Susan’s smile. Why this captive creature would smile was beyond him. Lawrence imagined the days of drudgery and few friends. Locked away and far from its natural place in this world. For its own good, according to the powers that be. Part of Lawrence felt a kinship with it in many ways.Susan had come here due to “issues” at the sanctuary where she had been located. The woman had not been 100% specific as to what those had been. This creature had shown up though and was on school grounds. Thus she fell under Lawrence’s care. Lawrence had worked with her for the last few months, trying to figure out what, if anything was wrong with her. She seemed nothing more than a perfect example of her genus. She was also just the thing for Advanced students to interact with.
Well, not directly. The beak and fangs could pose a number of hospital visits and howlers from parents. But that’s what always made Care so much fun to Lawrence. That and the fact that you could be outdoors. So he’d planned this lesson to do both.
Lawrence bent down and picked up the feathers. Looked like molting, but he was not sure why. He’d never heard of a Snallygaster molting before. Then again, there was a lot about this creature that people didn’t know. He was still examining them as his students began to walk up. He promptly dropped them back on the ground and genuinely smiled at them.
“Hello Advanced class. Glad to see you out and about in the weather. We sadly are not just out here to take a walk in the gardens. Though I encourage you to do so later on. No, today we have a United States special.” Turning to the side so students could see Susan better, while he could keep an eye on both.
“Susan is not from around this geographic part of the United States, but is from the US. As your textbook will point out, there are a number of creatures specific to the US, but this one is indigenous to one specific area. Can anyone tell me what Susan is and where you can normally find them?”
Lawrence called on one of the students raising their hands.
“That’s right, the Snallygaster is originally from the Maryland area but are no longer allowed there because of repeated interactions with Muggles.” He thought he saw Susan’s smile drop at the sound of Maryland, but Lawrence new the problem with anthropomorphising the creatures he worked with.
“Today you are going to be true scientists. You will break into groups of three and devise an experiment that will test the Snallygaster’s intelligence. There should be some information in your books about it, but know that Susan is her name and curiousity is her game. If your team can’t think of any and you need examples of intelligence tests for animals, you can ask me.”
“Once your team has devised the experiment, we will, one group at a time, conduct the experiment. Each team member will take notes. It’s If the experiment could involve injury I will conduct it, so I have final say on how dangerous the experiment will be. You will then be asked to write up your findings. Please remember, HAVE A HYPOTHESIS. You are testing for something to be true or not. This is important. Think through what could be the response too.”
“If you have any questions I will be here to answer any of my fellow scientists questions.”
OOC: If you’d like to know a bit more about Snallygasters you can find out here: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Snallygaster or via Wikipedia (please note the amazing photo of Teddy Roosevelt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snallygaster
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Lawrence Marsh
Measuring Intelligent Creatures by Intelligent Creatures
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Eden Manger
March 01, 2020 10:31 AM
Smarts for Susan by Eden Manger
It occurred to Eden upon returning to Sonora this semester that her time here was running up. In her final term, it was time to really start thinking ahead. College, majors, careers, the future. That sort of thing. In truth, she didn’t know what she wanted to do, but she had an inclination of where she wanted to go: somewhere in Boston, to be close to her sister, Sally. She had grown quite attached to the first-born Manger, especially after learning what an absolutely rough time she had with their father. Eden was still working through a lot of what happened, and maybe she would never fully make heads or tails of it, but she knew one thing: whatever had happened, Sally had been the one most hurt by it all.Fortunately, Brett was patient with her. Her boyfriend knew how much she had going on personally, and how it had been ongoing since they met as first years. What she didn’t know was what Brett’s plans were after graduating from Sonora. It might be nice to go to the same school, but it wasn’t also going to change her mind on schools if he wasn’t close. She just hoped he wasn’t planning on proposing or anything silly like that. Though neither of them were particularly “Society” Purebloods (anymore - his family had been once), it was something of a habit for Sonora alumni to marry young. Eden, however, was in no rush.
But if she wanted to get anywhere, she needed to think about her grades, which meant paying attention now while Professor Marsh was speaking to them. The Snallygaster seemed pretty cool, actually, so she was eager to get to work testing Susan.
“Do you want to work with me?” she asked a fellow student when the assignment was given. They would just need one more person to complete their group. “I was thinking we could do something to measure what kind of recognition Susan has of object permanence. I think she could do pretty okay with that. What do you think?”
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Eden Manger
Smarts for Susan
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Cleo James
March 15, 2020 1:02 AM
If you want by Cleo James
Cleo took a spot some distance from the creature that Professor Marsh had brought for them today. It looked bitey. Most advanced class material looked kinda bitey, and Cleo would be glad to get out of here and drop Care of Magical Creatures. It had felt like it made sense as a choice. For one, she was a nature lover. For another, she was also half convinced something about her might come up in this class. However, it had proved less useful and more hazardous to fingers, and Cleo had formed the conclusion that her love of nature really was thoroughly plant based. Of course, in advanced, those sometimes bit too, but it felt decidedly more manageable.She almost giggled slightly as the creature was introduced with the utterly innocuous to the point of incongruous name of… Susan. Behold, the fearsome beast…. Susan. It sounded like a rather drab aunt, not something that could slice your fingers off. Still, Cleo suppressed her mirth. There were plenty of magical creatures quite capable of forming opinions about you, or taking offence as to what you thought of them. Teachers, too, tended to prefer you not to giggle.
As Professor Marsh introduced the lesson plan, Cleo was both relieved and not. On the one hand, Susan didn’t have any kind of feather fleas or anything that was both gross and involved getting up close and in biting range. On the other hand, Cleo wasn’t at all sure what an intelligence test for an animal would look like. Which, she supposed, meant that being close to Susan couldn’t be ruled out. When she thought of intelligence tests, she thought of those stupid maths problems about two trains leaving different points and travelling at different speeds. She doubted Susan knew how to solve that. She doubted she would be able to verify whether Susan had done it correctly even if she did fancy having a crack at it. There was also that thing people did in movies where they got you to look at ink blots and say what you saw, but she thought that was more to check you weren’t a psychopath than anything else, and again, she wasn’t quite sure how Susan would participate in such a task.
Cleo was just preparing to dive into her textbook to look for an answer to that, when Eden Manger approached her. Eden was someone who, in spite of being in the same yeargroup, Cleo did not know particularly well. This was probably down to Cleo tending towards the quiet side, combined with all that Eden had been through pushing her away from her social life being a priority. Cleo, however, had - with the angst induced introspection of being a teenager - assumed that Eden simply didn’t see her as worth getting to know. Eden was one of those very well put together girls, in a way Cleo had never particularly been interested in but didn’t think she’d have been capable of managing even if she was. If someone placed the two blondes side by side, Cleo with her relentlessly practical gardening clothes, dirty fingernails and tendency to make eye contact with the floor, versus Eden, and asked an unfamiliar audience to pick out which one was the half veela, Cleo was pretty sure most people would guess wrong. Eden had, in Cleo’s mind, been too busy with her perfect life and nice steady relationship, to ever want to touch the broom-crash that was Cleo’s excessively messy existence.
She was surprised, therefore, that Eden approached her. Surprise which turned to confusion, with a side of suspicion, when Eden suggested a project. Cleo had no idea what that meant, or whether it was even a real thing. She wondered whether this was some mean girl attempt to put her in a position where she could be laughed at. The Teppenpaw badge on Eden’s robes suggested otherwise. Additionally, Cleo was starting to realise that she tended to be overly defensive. In her defence, the world had given her a heck of a lot of reasons to be. Most recently being pushed out and told she was unwelcome amongst the non-human community that was supposed to understand what it was like being her. It stood to reason that she was on edge when around people who weren’t tried and trusted, though she could recognise that wasn’t necessarily a fair response to Eden. After all, they’d gone six and a half years without Eden trying to do anything unpleasant. Why would she start now?
“If you’ve got a project, I’m happy to go along with it,” Cleo agreed neutrally, hoping it would become clear exactly what Eden had in mind before Cleo was expected to do anything.
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Cleo James
If you want
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Eden Manger
March 26, 2020 2:29 PM
Well, we kinda have to try something by Eden Manger
For one reason or another, Eden had never talked to Cleo much. They were in the same year, and while they were in different Houses, they sort of filled the same niche in the school. Both were relatively quiet, seemingly nice, pretty blonde girls. They were, however, pretty in different ways. Cleo didn’t have to work to be pretty. It just happened. In fact, if Cleo’s clothes, posture, and general demeanor suggested anything, she was trying not to be. Eden wasn’t like that. She was decent looking naturally, but she had learned a lot of makeup tricks from her sister and online over summers, and she read those silly teenage girl magazines like Dear Juliet and Wicked Witch Weekly. Eden was average, but she put in the time.Cleo seemed surprised that Eden asked her, but then sometimes Cleo seemed kinda surprised when anybody asked her anything, like she was surprised by her own existence. In any case, she seemed agreeable enough, and the Teppenpaw smiled. Their school days were running out, but maybe it wasn’t too late to make a friend. Other than Brett, she didn’t really have any. Sharing a room with Ivy was pleasant enough, but Ivy was a cousin of her half-siblings, so Eden sort of felt there was always an unspoken tension there. Not as bad as the distinct hatred she assumed Peyton O’Malley felt toward her for even existing, but, well, some things were better left unsaid. Unless Cleo was secretly in love with Brett or something, Eden couldn’t imagine that she had many reasons to hate her. At least, not so far.
“I don’t have exact details thought out yet,” Eden confessed, positioning her focus on the assignment, “but something simple to start out with. Maybe we put a rock under three cups and move them around slowly to see if she can keep track of where the rock is. Something like that.”
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Eden Manger
Well, we kinda have to try something
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Cleo James
March 26, 2020 6:40 PM
Yeah, sure by Cleo James
Oh. Okay, permanent objects seemed to mean playing basic Dad Games with the snallygaster. This sounded a lot safer than telling her they had got her nose or making a quarter appear from behind her ear (Did she even have ears?? Cleo checked. Yes. Small ones. But still). Cleo wondered whether there were fancy names for those practises too. She sort of hoped not. She’d always been one for just calling things plain and simple (except when it came to feelings and then she just preferred not to talk about it at all). It was her least favourite part of Herbology, memorising all the Latin names. She could tell what plants were, in everyday terms, and how to make them grow, which she thought were the most important bits. You didn’t go to the grocers and ask for ‘allium cepa’ or the florist and ask for ‘lilium navona.’ You asked for onions or lillies. Having studied some of the cross-breeding experiments to perpetuate or transfer different traits, she understood the need to classify, but she thought she was much more likely to become one of the former two things than a plant scientist, so the common names would do for her.“That sounds good,” she agreed to Eden’s plan, mostly because she had no other suggestions and because it sounded like they could keep relatively out of biting range. She turned over various scenarios of how else it might go in her mind, trying to find something to contribute. “Hey, what if she doesn’t pick any of the cups? How do we know if she doesn’t know what’s going on, or just… doesn’t care about rocks? Do snallygasters collect anything, like how dragons and nifflers like gold?” she asked, flicking through her own book, ready to answer this herself if possible. “It just says they’re naturally curious,” she shrugged, “So maybe we have to rely on her wanting to play?”
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Cleo James
Yeah, sure
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Eden Manger
March 27, 2020 11:34 AM
Not one for a hard stance, huh? by Eden Manger
“Oh, good point.” Cleo was right - what if Susan didn’t care to play? Eden couldn’t remember if snallygasters were particular hoarders like some creatures were, and unless someone was really into rocks for one reason or another, it wasn’t the most appealing item. Snallygasters were naturally curious, as Professor Marsh noted and Cleo reiterated, but even curiosity would only carry them so far for a rock.
“Maybe something more enticing than a rock, then,” Eden agreed. She glanced around to see if anything more interesting presented itself. As she stretched her fingers, she remembered she was wearing some jewelry today. “She probably wouldn’t try to eat my ring or anything if we used that, right?” the blonde posed. “Or I guess, if she did, we could count that as a strike against her intelligence,” she added jokingly.
“Do you have any better suggestions?” She opened it to Cleo. Eden had something of a vague outline for the experiment, but she wasn’t opposed to outside input. After all, this was a group project. It should be a group effort. She wanted Cleo to feel like she could contribute anything she might have to say. She tended to be pretty conscious of these things, being not only a Teppenpaw, but a Teppenpaw Prefect at that. She liked being in the House known for its niceness and cooperation. It was a bit of a confidence boost, knowing that an omniscient magical force recognized the goodness inside her and Sorted her this way. She did her best to honor that decision.
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Eden Manger
Not one for a hard stance, huh?
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