> Calling someone a "bird brain" is honestly more of a compliment.
Well no. Some birds are flat-out dumb. Chickens for example.
Bird brains (2023)
41–50 of 230 posts
Re: Bird brains (2023)
#42[flagged]
Your account has written 6 comments in 13 minutes, every one of them in AI-like pithy prose.
Re: Bird brains (2023)
#43[dead]
Re: Bird brains (2023)
#44> Calling someone a "bird brain" is honestly more of a compliment. Well no. Some birds are flat-out dumb. Chickens for example.
One fact that I find very curious is that I see all sorts of animals killed on the road, but never chickens. And I see plenty of them by the road.
Maybe they never try to cross roads?
Re: Bird brains (2023)
#45Given parrots can talk, there must be a neuron count that activates language (assuming anatomy allows it), similar to LLM parameter count.
Parrots can't "talk". They just mimick noises they've heard before
Isn't that what humans do too? We mimic noises we've heard before and we associate meaning to the noises. Parrots can do that. Our quaker parrot would bite you, then say 'not supposed to bite'. He clearly associated some kind of meaning to that phrase.
Re: Bird brains (2023)
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting... I would have thought Octopi have more total neurons than dogs, given their problem-solving capabilities. Now I wonder if the decentralized organization / hub and spoke model octopi alone exhibit offers some advantage when it comes to problem-solving
Fun fact: octopus does not come from Latin, which would give the plural an -i ending. It comes from Greek, which means that if you want to be particularly correct about your plurals, then the plural is octopodes.
That's fun. Octopii rolls off the tongue though, doesn't it? Since we have survived both the Greek and Roman cultures, and have absorbed aspects of both into languages now widely distributed, I'd like to propose that we seed the path of a true lingua franca and declare the plural of octopus to be octopii.
It's no worse than inserting greek words (octopodes) into English language.
Re: Bird brains (2023)
#47Given parrots can talk, there must be a neuron count that activates language (assuming anatomy allows it), similar to LLM parameter count.
Parrots can't "talk". They just mimick noises they've heard before
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_(parrot)
Common misconception. Parrots are much more than just mimicry machines. There is also Apollo the parrot that shows this in detail and following from Irene's research with Alex
Re: Bird brains (2023)
#48Parrot owner here. This doesn't surprise me at all. I'm actually a bit surprised they cared about the gyms!
This fits right into the ABC model of parrot psychology:
https://www.parrots.org/pdfs/all_about_parrots/reference_lib...
Re: Bird brains (2023)
#49Adding to this a chart of neuron count [1] [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_n...
Interesting... I would have thought Octopi have more total neurons than dogs, given their problem-solving capabilities. Now I wonder if the decentralized organization / hub and spoke model octopi alone exhibit offers some advantage when it comes to problem-solving
Neurons are used for more tasks than just problem-solving. Dogs have a good smell, so a big part of their brain is probably used for just this. They seem to be also much more acrobatic and reacting faster in general than an Octopus, so theses are probably also areas where additional neurons are used. Dogs have also a high social intelligence, not sure how Octopi are in that regard.
And are Octopi really better at problem-solving than a dog in general?
Re: Bird brains (2023)
#50> Calling someone a "bird brain" is honestly more of a compliment. Well no. Some birds are flat-out dumb. Chickens for example.
One fact that I find very curious is that I see all sorts of animals killed on the road, but never chickens. And I see plenty of them by the road. Maybe they never try to cross roads?
"Chicken" is also an idiomatic synonym for "frightens easily." They do have some instinct for avoiding danger.