Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bird brains (2023)

dhanishsemar.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 230 posts

Re: Bird brains (2023)

#191

Post by mauvehaus »

emi2k01 wrote: post #158
colordrops wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We adopted three kittens that were found locked into a suitcase and thrown into the trash. Our house is in hills with coyotes so these cats would not survive for any length of time outside. They'd probably also be sent to the pound if we didn't adopt them. I feel bad for confining them in our house but I don't know if there would have been a better outcome for them. Totally agree on more rare/exotic animals though -…

My partner and I rescued Ramón, our first cat ever, from outside a convenience store near our house. He was already an adult by the time we met him. We would always see him outside running from stray dogs (I'm from Mexico, specifically from an area with a lot of stray dogs and cat) and, generally, on alert. Now, even if we leave our doors open he prefers to stay inside the house with his little brother Vicente, anoth…

I also ended up with a stray, but he had been abandoned as a kitten when I got him. He had zero interest in the outside beyond watching the squirrels through the window screens, which he did with rapt attention.

Re: Bird brains (2023)

#192

Post by yareally »

robotpepi wrote: post #180
yareally wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're referring to keeping parrots in cages outside of their natural habitats, that ship sailed when they were brought to non native locations. I'm being hyperbolic, but I assume you don't want them to be released in the wild and die, right? We have some feral colonies set up in places like Miami and San Francisco, but not all species thrive in warm locations. That said, my palm sized green cheek conure is rarely…

did you teach him the words? Mine has learned some just by context (he's still quite young though, barely 2 years old).

Surprisingly, we didn't really teach him most words and it was through context like yours. Teaching him mostly seems to backfire (i.e. "You want me to say that? Well I'm going to refuse to do it!"). The only one we might have taught him was "peek-a-boo", but even that has context, since he'll say it when we cover his head or we try to hide from him. Sometimes he'll hide behind my laptop, poke his head out and say it when he's trying to get my attention.

I guess I did teach him to say "yeah!". It became his alternative to express any excitable emotion instead of screaming. Usually comes with a little head bob at the same time for additional cuteness. He heard the song "Mi Gente" in a commercial once and when they say "yeah yeah yeah", out of nowhere he I hear him respond back with a "yeah!".

The first thing he learned was his name, "Willy", and for the longest time I thought he would just be a Pokemon...forever saying his name with different intonations depending on what he was trying to imply. I think he picked that up within his first year or so. Then he learned a few more. After 6 years he might be up to 12-16 now. Could be more, but he says a lot of gibberish that hasn't formed into words quite yet.

Perhaps my favorite is when he says he's a "good boy" and he just did something bad. Little jerk knows exactly what he's saying, but we love him anyways.

I can't really get him to do tricks yet, other than spinning in a circle. He's highly treat motivated, so anything that results in getting food will usually work if you keep at it. I'm trying to get him to try on a flight harness so we can take him out and about with us more often. He likes people, but he could be more socialized.

Guessing you have a green cheek as well? We have a cinnamon variation. I think they're a bit odd, but that could be GCCs in general as we've only had 1 and a budgie.

Re: Bird brains (2023)

#193

Post by Supercompressor »

bwv848 wrote: post #172
Supercompressor wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kiwi here. They live in alpine regions, they have adapted to alpine life - how are they not alpine parrots? Go back far enough and you could make this argument about anything.

Sure man, if 700 years is far enough for you. Meanwhile, human spent thousands of years to domesticate junglefowl into chicken.

Domestication ≠ habitat classification. Alpine refers to habitat. Kea live, feed, and breed in alpine environments and are behaviourally adapted to it. By your logic, because my ancestors ~300 years ago aren’t from New Zealand, I’m not a New Zealander.

Re: Bird brains (2023)

#194

Post by yareally »

albalus wrote: post #171
krona wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do blue tits nest in tiny boxes with tiny holes?

Tree hollow analog? Small birds worry a lot more about predators.

Plenty of small birds do not nest in tree cavities. Chipping sparrows[1] for example do not and are of similar size. Hummingbirds also do not. Meanwhile, owls live in nest cavities and most are larger than songbirds.

That said, the going theory about why some birds choose to nest in cavities is lower mortality rate in their young. Birds who nest in boxes typically have more babies per clutch than those that do not so perhaps that's it? I take that more as no one really knows why one species does while another of similar size does not.

Another random observation is most large birds walk and smaller birds hop. That's not always true either, since blue jays hop and crows will walk and sometimes hop. Hummingbirds cannot do either and just shuffle side to side on perches.

I guess I'm trying to say there's exceptions to the rules in bird behavior, but they're more outliers.

[1] https://brighamstephen.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018...

Re: Bird brains (2023)

#195

Post by vlovich123 »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #17
vlovich123 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the speed of change is also related to lifespan. The longer lives you have (technically how long it takes to start reproducing and how many offspring you have), the less time you have to adapt. This means that for a given unit of time, shorter reproduction cycles and more offspring results in faster adaptation which is what OP meant and what the unhelpful pedantry doesn’t describe.

It's unclear what you're saying or how it responds to the OP and his critics. If birds and primates today belong to equally long evolutionary lineages, then they have both had the same amount of time to adapt. Now, speciation is what makes things interesting, because species diversify the subjects of adaptation. So, if we say some bird species has been around for longer than the human species, then you can say that t…

If the lineage that led to humans had fewer reproductive cycles that fit within a given time frame, then the faster reproducing animals and the animals that generated more offspring had more time to evolve because evolution is primarily driven through reproduction cycles and how many offspring you have (when there’s selection pressure). There’s epigentics to tweak things but the major driver is still a full reproductive generation. It’s obviously more complicated than such a simple model (eg crocodiles and sharks have been largely unchanged for a long time) but it’s a good rough first order approximation that satisfies the original statement. It’s more interesting to take a stronger intent of the author than nitpicking them being technically wrong with the idea they expressed.

Re: Bird brains (2023)

#196

Post by farkanoid »

stronglikedan wrote: post #74
awsanswers wrote: post #69

If you're in tune with animals and spend time around a parrot, it's obvious there is a lot going on in their minds. They have incredible memories and their own understanding of their world. It looks simple to us but they are not simple creatures. That being said, I don't know how a bird lover can keep a bird in a cage.

> I don't know how a bird lover can keep a bird in a cage I'm convinced that people that keep (uninjured) birds in cages are narcissistic sociopaths. This is based on the conversations that I've had with them about it. Life's too short to deal with people like that. I'm thankful for the indicator to avoid them, but I'm sad that it's at the expense of a bird.

That seems a bit harsh. I have two rescue parrots that live in large cages (indoors). I let them out every night when I get home from work, and they're given plenty of toys and material (including native blooms) to interact with every day while I'm gone.

I buy a couple of pinewood storage crates for them to play in and destroy every month. I also spend over half an hour every morning cleaning all their food and water containers, and cooking them breakfast (sweet potato, corn, fresh apple, assorted greens), I don't even make myself breakfast!

Re: Bird brains (2023)

#198

Post by nandomrumber »

vgivanovic wrote: post #177
ertian wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And generally just tear through native populations of birds and small mammals. I honestly think it's irresponsible to have outdoor cats in places where they're not native (which is effectively everywhere).

It depends. My indoor-outdoor cat only catches small animals if they run between her paws. But she did chase a rather large raccoon around the house once, as I did. In my suburban neighborhood, we occasionally have coyotes. They are known to prey on fat cats (the feline kind). My feeling is that predation by domesticated outdoor cats is overblown. I also feel that small wild cats were likely native everywhere. Birds…

> My feeling is that predation by domesticated outdoor cats is overblown.

It’s just something we’ve all been told all our lives, with the people doing the telling never point to any evidence to back it up.

Even when cats are wild and native, their hunts aren’t particularly successful, except the desert sand cat[1] which is so small it would perish if its hunts were low rate success.

And if you watch videos of collar cameras on cats, they seem to spent all their time doing a perimeter check, having a quick social interaction with other cats doing the same, and maybe brushing up against a frigidly neighbour human.

The idea that a house cat that has warmth, food, water, bedding, would bother to waste time killing small birds and mammals that have hardly any meat on them anyway is fairly unbelievable.

Feral cats are a different story. But don’t blame responsible cat owners for that problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_cat

Re: Bird brains (2023)

#199

Post by nandomrumber »

bob1029 wrote: post #189
CalRobert wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s for the best, house cats torture the birds and frogs around here and I hate it. I never knew frogs could scream.

Cats have completely deleted the rabbit populations in a lot of suburbia. I feel like it got worse around 2020 for some reason. I had to move to the middle of the woods to start seeing them again.

Is there somewhere rabbits aren’t a problem for humans?

They’ll devastate anything farmers intend to do.

They’re public enemy number one here in Australia.

Post reply on HN