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A girl who gets gifts from birds

bbc.com

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Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds

#131

Post by Lewton »

zzalpha wrote: post #120
Lewton wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Meme spreads among the crows. So, to be clear, you're positing an alternative theory wherein one or more crows learn a behaviour, and teach that behaviour to other crows , who learn this complex concept and repeat the feat while they, too, pass it on. And you think that's no big deal? :)

Animals learn from other animals by observing them? I don't think that's groundbreaking news.

It doesn't have to actively teach the other crows for them to catch on

Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds

#132

Post by ham »

minikites wrote: post #71

Crows are real smart. On an episode of Roderick on the Line, John Roderick recalled a story he read where a researcher was trying to round up crows for tests. He went into a parking lot and tossed a net, capturing some. The next day, he went to a different parking lot across town and the crows immediately flew away when he pulled in, because they recognized him. He went back to the same second parking lot in a differ…

Regularly, I'd walk in a park near my workplace to work out problems and I began too often to play games and tricks with the magpies (another type of Corvid like the crow). I'd do things like throwing twigs on either side of them to see how they would react (no magpies ever injured!). After a while I'm certain the magpies had a particular warning call any one would call out when I arrived in the park that would set them all of making that cawking sound until I left. After a while I needed to avoid the park for a bit and I think I was forgiven when I slowly started integrating myself in by leaving bits of food like nuts.

I was amazed too at how observant they were, keeping a different distance if they noticed I had am umbrella or something in my hand or if I was walking funny.

The magpie is the only bird to pass the mirror test: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_magpie#Intelligence

Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds

#133

Post by WickyNilliams »

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.

Another David Attenborough moment on crows [0]. Some crows in Japan have worked out how to crack nuts whose shell is too difficult for them to open themselves...

At a pedestrian crossing, drop the nuts onto road and wait for it to get run over. Then wait for light to turn red and traffic to stop, then pick up the opened nut.

How many leaps of thought would it take to arrive at such a system? Observing patterns of traffic, understanding the nut is not truly impenetrable but that they are too weak themselves, understanding that pressure/weight greater than they can apply will release the nut from the shell etc. It's incredibly clever!

[0] http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p007xvww

Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds

#134

Post by basaah »

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/

About the "Superstition in the pigeon" link:

Kind of painfull that you link to Skinner's (pretty much) only ill-done research; See J.E.R. Staddon for a nice refutation of 'the superstition in the pigeon' experiment.

Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds

#135

Post by balabaster »

zzalpha wrote: post #118
balabaster wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one's my favourite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUiGEDnf5e4 Crow keeps undoing the guys shoe laces so he can steal the frying pan while the guy's doing his shoe laces up. Classic.

To be fair, that's pretty basic reinforcement learning. The other video, on the other hand, shows adaptation of existing knowledge to solve a problem, along with multi-step planning, which is really incredible!

That may be true, but the more advanced one isn't nearly as funny :P

Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds

#136

Post by trendroid »

filoeleven wrote: post #106
trendroid wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look closely its trying to pick at something that it finds curious. Sledding could possibly be an accidental outcome of it being sitting on a thin edge, not the original purpose.

It could have been an accidental outcome the first time. But when the crow then picks up the disc and flies back up to the peak, fails to get any distance on an area with no snow, flies over to a snowy section, and sleds again...

Are you saying it figured out there was less friction with snow in matter of few seconds? All the while it's mind was occupied by something it had in its claws? It could be a genius crow(there has to be variation in intelligence amongst crows too), we will never know. I thought it got irritated with that thin edge quite quickly(being not able to stand comfortably) and hence flew away to look for a thicker one.

Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds

#137

Post by [deleted] »

filoeleven wrote: post #106
trendroid wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look closely its trying to pick at something that it finds curious. Sledding could possibly be an accidental outcome of it being sitting on a thin edge, not the original purpose.

It could have been an accidental outcome the first time. But when the crow then picks up the disc and flies back up to the peak, fails to get any distance on an area with no snow, flies over to a snowy section, and sleds again...

[deleted]

Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds

#138

Post by Oyeboten »

marincounty wrote: post #20
gadders wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 need…

I have never seen anything to suggest that the 'inner world' of a member of some other Species, would be any smaller than or less varied and interesting, than my own.

Humans tend to be occupied in neurosis, and subterfuge, more than anything else.

While other species are largely occupied with 'Nous'...and thus, would be far more elegant in their mental process and decision making and overall ontological 'poise', than people generally are.

Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds

#139

Post by balabaster »

zzalpha wrote: post #129
sk5t wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if the crow had significant experience with untying shoes as an opportunity to swipe something interesting... bit of a long shot, no?

You're over thinking it. On its own shoelaces are interesting. Pulling on the loose end may have started as curiosity. The person then puts the pan down to tie them. Crow grabs the lace again because, again, curious and playful (birds can be incredibly mischievous), and once again the pan reappears! Now we're in reinforcement territory. Now don't get me wrong, the crow learns fast . But it still could be just basic r…

It makes me want to tame a crow because it's animals with these kinds of personalities I love. They make life fun.

Re: A girl who gets gifts from birds

#140

Post by filoeleven »

trendroid wrote: post #136
filoeleven wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could have been an accidental outcome the first time. But when the crow then picks up the disc and flies back up to the peak, fails to get any distance on an area with no snow, flies over to a snowy section, and sleds again...

Are you saying it figured out there was less friction with snow in matter of few seconds? All the while it's mind was occupied by something it had in its claws? It could be a genius crow(there has to be variation in intelligence amongst crows too), we will never know. I thought it got irritated with that thin edge quite quickly(being not able to stand comfortably) and hence flew away to look for a thicker one.

No, I think it's unlikely that the person filming caught the crow the first time it began to sled, and what we see in the video is a crow enjoying playing with physics the same way that we do. By "the first time" I meant "the first time the crow slid on something it was standing on, regardless of when that was", although I wasn't very clear about it.
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