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A girl who gets gifts from birds
11–20 of 140 posts
Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds
#12This 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…
Good heavens. My cats sometimes do things like that, but I always thought that it was all about passing down hunting wisdom and not much about gifts or gratitude.
Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds
#13On one of David Attenborough's recent shows, he said that crows can store up 30,000 pieces of food in various locations in the ground. They not only know where each piece of food is, but they know which ones are perishable and to get the food before it spoils. Pretty remarkable if you ask me.
Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds
#14There 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.
Clearly, they're the same crows.
Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds
#15Earlier 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…
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. [0] http://psychclassics.asu.edu/Skinner/Pigeon/
The final example though, where a Crow returns the camera-lens cap to the family requires some pretty advanced thinking. We know that Crows recognize human faces and expressions, and communicate these facts amongst each other.
Crows / Ravens are the only creature aside from Humans who perform meta-tool use. They can use tools to grab tools to accomplish a goal. In many ways, they're smarter than (non-human) primates, and are probably the 2nd smartest animals on earth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Caledonian_crow#Meta-tool_...
Birds in general are pretty smart (see Pidgeons, Parrots, etc. etc.) However crows / ravens are on a completely different intelligence level. Crows break nuts by dropping them on the asphalt... timing their drops during red lights so that traffic doesn't hit them.
Besides, gift-giving is seen in far dumber animals than crows. Dogs, Cats, Penguins... they don't have the intelligence of Crows but they understand gifts and social situations.
Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds
#16Crows are incredibly smart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY8-gP3Sw_8
Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds
#17There's an old 4Chan thread where a user starts 'World War Crow' by favoring a certain group of crows over another.
Allegedly, after some time, the two groups of crows have an all out battle over which group gets french fries.
http://usvsth3m.com/post/69700674556/has-an-anonymous-4chan-...
Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds
#18[deleted]
Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds
#19I was disappointed that this article didn't include a definite scientific opinion on whether the crows saw this as an exchange for food, or if for some reason they bring objects to a feeding area.
Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds
#20Earlier 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.
I have a weird feeling most animals think a lot; it's not just instinct, or Behaviorism. I also have a weird feeling as humans we attribute too much of our actions to thinking, and not enough to instinct and Behaviorism? I still have
huge issues with strict Behaviorists though. My Psychiatrist practices subtle reinforcement techniques, and they never worked, but I just can't tell him; he's a nice guy. I think he needs to validate his fees, in order to keep his own sanity?
Can I prove it--no! I just never bought those philosophy/psychology instructors who really tried to teach me animals don't think.
The older I get the more humans look like apes. I think my decline in testosterone is playing a part in the way I look at the world? The mystery of it all is fading--sadly--in humans and humanity. But the animal world is more fascinating than ever!
I am happily waiting for the first mammal to speak it's mind! I wish I could be around when it happens.