A girl who gets gifts from birds
1–10 of 140 posts
Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds
#2I had a gift this morning, from a pigeon, onto my shoulder whilst waiting for the train to pull into the platform for work.
Supposed to be lucky - not sure for me or the pigeon though!
Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds
#3This is cool, but isn't that surprising, if you think about the behaviours of other species, and that corvids as a whole are highly intelligent and use tools in a fashion akin to primates.
I mean, primates give gifts to each other and humans, and my cat loves nothing more than to leave the most succulent bits of viscera of whatever her prey was for me on Persian rugs, for me to enjoy, by which I mean tread on while heading to the shower in the morning.
Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds
#4There already exists an automated exploit for this behavior:
Joshua Klein's Crow Machine: https://www.josh.is/crow-machine/
Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds
#5Thought it read 'get lifts from birds' - disappointed.
Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds
#6There already exists an automated exploit for this behavior: Joshua Klein's Crow Machine: https://www.josh.is/crow-machine/ see also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=470840
I think there is a big difference between gift and payment.
Your article is on skinnerian conditioning to train crows to pay for peanuts.
In this article the crows got peanuts whether they gave gifts or not. They just decided to give gifts. No training occured.
Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds
#7This is cool, but isn't that surprising, if you think about the behaviours of other species, and that corvids as a whole are highly intelligent and use tools in a fashion akin to primates. I mean, primates give gifts to each other and humans, and my cat loves nothing more than to leave the most succulent bits of viscera of whatever her prey was for me on Persian rugs, for me to enjoy, by which I mean tread on while h…
I think it is very surprising even given findings about corvid intelligence.
I know of studies showing crows can count, but that kind of intelligence does not at all imply that a creature will spontaneously give gifts in exchange for food. This requires either some kind of ethics including reciprocity, or it requires that the crows reason that giving gifts will make someone more likely to give more food. The latter reasoning requires that the crows are able to model the behavior of an intelligent agent under hypothetical circumstances.
Bird brains are very different from mammal brains; they don't have a neocortex. So it's very interesting that they have developed similar gift-giving behavior to mammals and primates.
Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds
#8This is cool, but isn't that surprising, if you think about the behaviours of other species, and that corvids as a whole are highly intelligent and use tools in a fashion akin to primates. I mean, primates give gifts to each other and humans, and my cat loves nothing more than to leave the most succulent bits of viscera of whatever her prey was for me on Persian rugs, for me to enjoy, by which I mean tread on while h…
I think it is very surprising even given findings about corvid intelligence. I know of studies showing crows can count, but that kind of intelligence does not at all imply that a creature will spontaneously give gifts in exchange for food. This requires either some kind of ethics including reciprocity, or it requires that the crows reason that giving gifts will make someone more likely to give more food. The latter r…
I think a lot of our intelligence research is mammal-biassed. When we think of intelligent animals we think primates, dolphins, dogs and maybe pigs.
We ignore birds and octopus.
Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds
#9This is cool, but isn't that surprising, if you think about the behaviours of other species, and that corvids as a whole are highly intelligent and use tools in a fashion akin to primates. I mean, primates give gifts to each other and humans, and my cat loves nothing more than to leave the most succulent bits of viscera of whatever her prey was for me on Persian rugs, for me to enjoy, by which I mean tread on while h…
I think it is very surprising even given findings about corvid intelligence. I know of studies showing crows can count, but that kind of intelligence does not at all imply that a creature will spontaneously give gifts in exchange for food. This requires either some kind of ethics including reciprocity, or it requires that the crows reason that giving gifts will make someone more likely to give more food. The latter r…
Crow flies with thing in its beak. Sees food, drops thing, grabs food. Comes back later, sees more food! Assumes food came from dropping thing (See "Superstition in the pigeon" [0]). Meme spreads among the crows.
No ethics or deep reasoning required. Random rewards lead to irrational behavior.
Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it is very surprising even given findings about corvid intelligence. I know of studies showing crows can count, but that kind of intelligence does not at all imply that a creature will spontaneously give gifts in exchange for food. This requires either some kind of ethics including reciprocity, or it requires that the crows reason that giving gifts will make someone more likely to give more food. The latter r…
I think a lot of our intelligence research is mammal-biassed. When we think of intelligent animals we think primates, dolphins, dogs and maybe pigs. We ignore birds and octopus.
Side-note: octopuses enjoy a position as the only invertebrate protected by animal testing laws in the UK (as of 1993):