Acorn Woodpeckers Have Multi-Day Wars, and Birds Come from All Around to Watch
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Re: Acorn Woodpeckers Have Multi-Day Wars, and Birds Come from All Around to Watch
#2Not a gamer, but sounds like the makings of a game that might teach some biology too. I wonder how they'd render the fighting.
Re: Acorn Woodpeckers Have Multi-Day Wars, and Birds Come from All Around to Watch
#3At first I didn’t understand what the motivation for such complex social behaviour, and risk taking. But then they explained the acorn larders. Large static depositories of food wealth.
This makes me think of humanity and the organisation of large societies, and war, that appears to be associated with the development of agriculture.
Re: Acorn Woodpeckers Have Multi-Day Wars, and Birds Come from All Around to Watch
#4I have a bird feeder in my small back garden. Sometimes there is a lot of activity - mainly chickadees, finches and goldfinches competing for the feeder perches. When this happens, a hummingbird often shows up and seems to just be watching the activity. (I don't have a hummingbird feeder). I have no idea why it does this.
Re: Acorn Woodpeckers Have Multi-Day Wars, and Birds Come from All Around to Watch
#5From what I can tell, this is intraspecies competition.
In Southern Africa, we have a situation whereby not all woodpecker species can peck the holes from start to end.
The ones who start the holes look similar to the ones in the article, but they are black, white and yellow with red flecks [1]. Then there is a smaller orange, white and black one that either steals the former's nest or uses an old hole, after which it proceeds to do some interior decoration and expansion. This rather fashionable bird is also the emblem of the University of Johannesburg. [2] [3]
There are some other woodpecker species, but these two are quite common in places where I have lived and although I am not an ethologist, I believe the comment about their interaction is accurate. The Crested Barbet is somewhat bigger than the Hoopoe, so it would be interesting to know the full picture behind their symbiosis.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crested_barbet [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_hoopoe [3] https://www.uj.ac.za/
Re: Acorn Woodpeckers Have Multi-Day Wars, and Birds Come from All Around to Watch
#6I find these animal behavioural studies fascinating.
There is always the risk of personification clouding our understanding, when we observe similarities to human behaviour. But another angle is de-personification of our own behaviour. That seems insightful in all sorts of way.
Certain behaviours, like "war," almost certainly predate cognitive modernity... modern human consciousness. Gwynne Dyer, a historian of war, had some interesting comparisons of humans and chimps. Many interesting similarities.
In any case, the ways that we rationalize our warfare, tribalism and such cannot actually be the reason for war. The warfare predates even our ability to formulate such rationalizations. This has a lot of applicability in our personal lives. Is the reason I did X really Y, or is Y a post fact rationalization?
Re: Acorn Woodpeckers Have Multi-Day Wars, and Birds Come from All Around to Watch
#7I have a bird feeder in my small back garden. Sometimes there is a lot of activity - mainly chickadees, finches and goldfinches competing for the feeder perches. When this happens, a hummingbird often shows up and seems to just be watching the activity. (I don't have a hummingbird feeder). I have no idea why it does this.
Possibly for the same reason you watch it. It's interesting.
Re: Acorn Woodpeckers Have Multi-Day Wars, and Birds Come from All Around to Watch
#8I find these animal behavioural studies fascinating. There is always the risk of personification clouding our understanding, when we observe similarities to human behaviour. But another angle is de-personification of our own behaviour. That seems insightful in all sorts of way. Certain behaviours, like "war," almost certainly predate cognitive modernity... modern human consciousness. Gwynne Dyer, a historian of war,…
Are you saying that humans are partially automatons pre-programmed to behave in certain specific ways in certain situations?
What are the implications of a theory like that for free will?
Re: Acorn Woodpeckers Have Multi-Day Wars, and Birds Come from All Around to Watch
#9Reminds me of this comic https://goneintorapture.com/post/183584817776 and other variations I've seen of it.
Re: Acorn Woodpeckers Have Multi-Day Wars, and Birds Come from All Around to Watch
#10I find these animal behavioural studies fascinating. There is always the risk of personification clouding our understanding, when we observe similarities to human behaviour. But another angle is de-personification of our own behaviour. That seems insightful in all sorts of way. Certain behaviours, like "war," almost certainly predate cognitive modernity... modern human consciousness. Gwynne Dyer, a historian of war,…
Are you saying that humans are partially automatons pre-programmed to behave in certain specific ways in certain situations? What are the implications of a theory like that for free will?
Not GP, but my understanding is that free will is weak, not strong. You can suppress a desire to eat a donut (requires willpower) but can't prevent the thought/desire from arising on its own when presented with the stimulus.
Similarly, we can suppress the desire to go to war after a provocation. However, we can't choose to not feel furious, at least for an instant.
Thoughts and feeling tend to arise on their own, and free will is about whether we accept or reject them.