A girl who gets gifts from birds • Hacker News Board

Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds

#31

Post by sswaner » Thu, Feb 26, 2015, 4:18 PM UTC

Lewton wrote: post #9

canjobear wrote: post #7

Earlier 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/

Kind of a weird crow cargo cult. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult#Pacific_cults_of_Wor...

Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds

#32

Post by discardorama » Thu, Feb 26, 2015, 4:19 PM UTC

A lot of people refuse to believe that animals (or birds) can show any kind of advanced thinking. "Oh, the crow was probably carrying something in its beak; it saw the peanut, and dropped the thing in its beak" is their explanation. I'm sorry, but animals are far more perceptive than they're given credit for.

Also, how do you explain this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5NuBk5_Izc

Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds

#33

Post by protonfish » Thu, Feb 26, 2015, 4:19 PM UTC

canjobear wrote: post #7

madaxe_again wrote: post #3

This 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…

Reciprocity is possibly the simplest form of cooperation. All that would be required is the ability to distinguish between individuals and this type of social behavior could appear through simple Pavlovian conditioning.

Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds

#34

Post by maxerickson » Thu, Feb 26, 2015, 4:26 PM UTC

rickdale wrote: post #13

On 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.

More here:

http://www.pbs.org/lifeofbirds/brain/

The particular bird matching that number, Clark's Nutcracker, looks well studied. This paper discusses them caching 30,000 seeds, but not in 30,000 separate locations, it concludes that they locate at least 1,000 locations by memory:

http://www.auburn.edu/academic/classes/biol/7560/folkerts/hu...

(that author seems to have done much field work studying the bird)

Another paper estimates that they might cache 90,000 seeds.

Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds

#35

Post by Varcht » Thu, Feb 26, 2015, 4:31 PM UTC

discardorama wrote: post #32

A lot of people refuse to believe that animals (or birds) can show any kind of advanced thinking. "Oh, the crow was probably carrying something in its beak; it saw the peanut, and dropped the thing in its beak" is their explanation. I'm sorry, but animals are far more perceptive than they're given credit for. Also, how do you explain this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5NuBk5_Izc

I blame this on the "DreamWorks Effect", animators have done such a good job giving animals human traits and emotions that millinials+ really can't help but be animists.

Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds

#36

Post by tbrake » Thu, Feb 26, 2015, 4:46 PM UTC

Varcht wrote: post #35

discardorama wrote: post #32

A lot of people refuse to believe that animals (or birds) can show any kind of advanced thinking. "Oh, the crow was probably carrying something in its beak; it saw the peanut, and dropped the thing in its beak" is their explanation. I'm sorry, but animals are far more perceptive than they're given credit for. Also, how do you explain this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5NuBk5_Izc

I blame this on the "DreamWorks Effect", animators have done such a good job giving animals human traits and emotions that millinials+ really can't help but be animists.

I used to have a similar theory but personification of animals has been a part of human storytelling since the beginning of time.

I'm just unsure if modern CGI is any more compelling in forming lasting notions of animism than, say, Bambi was.

Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds

#37

Post by mikeash » Thu, Feb 26, 2015, 4:49 PM UTC

tbrake wrote: post #36

Varcht wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I blame this on the "DreamWorks Effect", animators have done such a good job giving animals human traits and emotions that millinials+ really can't help but be animists.

I used to have a similar theory but personification of animals has been a part of human storytelling since the beginning of time. I'm just unsure if modern CGI is any more compelling in forming lasting notions of animism than, say, Bambi was.

Seems like a reversal of cause and effect. We don't see human traits in animals because our stories have them, our stories have them because we often see human traits in animals.

Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds

#38

Post by nsxwolf » Thu, Feb 26, 2015, 4:50 PM UTC

Varcht wrote: post #35

discardorama wrote: post #32

A lot of people refuse to believe that animals (or birds) can show any kind of advanced thinking. "Oh, the crow was probably carrying something in its beak; it saw the peanut, and dropped the thing in its beak" is their explanation. I'm sorry, but animals are far more perceptive than they're given credit for. Also, how do you explain this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5NuBk5_Izc

I blame this on the "DreamWorks Effect", animators have done such a good job giving animals human traits and emotions that millinials+ really can't help but be animists.

Confused... you're saying that the crow in the video is not playing with the object? What other interpretation is there? It's not an instinctual nest building activity to go sledding on a foreign object, is it?

I'm a Gen-Xer, and I think that crow is sledding for fun.

Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds

#39

Post by discardorama » Thu, Feb 26, 2015, 4:56 PM UTC

Varcht wrote: post #35

discardorama wrote: post #32

A lot of people refuse to believe that animals (or birds) can show any kind of advanced thinking. "Oh, the crow was probably carrying something in its beak; it saw the peanut, and dropped the thing in its beak" is their explanation. I'm sorry, but animals are far more perceptive than they're given credit for. Also, how do you explain this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5NuBk5_Izc

I blame this on the "DreamWorks Effect", animators have done such a good job giving animals human traits and emotions that millinials+ really can't help but be animists.

Conversely, I think Christians (for one) do not like the idea of animals having "human traits", because it goes against their core mythology, which says that God created man in His image. If animals also started showing human traits, then Man isn't so special anymore, is he?

Edited: I'm being downvoted, but this was the exact reasoning given to me by a rather devout Christian; and it seemed to make sense. I'm agnostic, btw.

Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds

#40

Post by codeduck » Thu, Feb 26, 2015, 4:57 PM UTC

I had a pet crow when I was about 6 years old - he was a fledgeling who'd left his nest on the hottest day of the year and was dehydrated. My brother and I were squirting eachother with water and he cawed at us until we squirted him. He decided this was the best thing ever, and basically adopted us from then onwards.

He was the terror of the local cats and dogs, but left our two siamese alone because he knew they were part of the family. He'd regularly steal visitor's keys, and hide them in the bush alongside our house purely so he could watch my dad or mum have to hunt for them. He'd play in the sprinkler, and knew the sound of my dad's motorcycle - when he heard my dad coming home in the evenings he would fly down the street and perch on my dad's shoulder for the ride home.

Crows are awesome.