[HN Gopher] Wild birds learn to avoid distasteful prey by watchi...
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Wild birds learn to avoid distasteful prey by watching others
Author : hhs
Score : 54 points
Date : 2021-07-07 16:05 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.helsinki.fi)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.helsinki.fi)
| titzer wrote:
| Birds watch everything. That's a huge part of the advantage of
| flight; you can roost high up and get an overview of any
| situation. Crows are extremely intelligent and have developed a
| heightened ability to do "systems thinking"--working out the
| elements of any situation, how they interact, what causality
| there is, etc.
|
| It's great that they keep finding these new behaviors, but this
| shouldn't be surprising when you work out the implications of
| having a good brain, a high perch, and a lot of time and
| curiosity (a crow's lifespan could be 30 years or more). Add
| social learning aspects and an as-yet-undeciphered language of
| calls, and there's a lot of intelligence there.
| taneq wrote:
| I find it fascinating how many deeply embedded tactical
| considerations that we just take for granted come from the fact
| that our ecosystem lives in a gravity well. I wonder how
| differently an alien that had evolved for millennia in zero G
| would think?
| delecti wrote:
| Practically speaking, aquatic life moves around pretty freely
| in three dimensions. It's not perfectly equivalent to zero G,
| but it's at least illustrative.
| jstanley wrote:
| It's pretty likely that most life arises in gravity wells,
| simply because life requires a concentration of matter
| somewhat higher than that in empty space (otherwise what is
| it made out of?), and a concentration of matter is equal to a
| gravity well.
| milansm wrote:
| Life as we know it.
| dmos62 wrote:
| > this shouldn't be surprising when you work out the
| implications of having a good brain, a high perch, and a lot of
| time and curiosity
|
| Under what circumstances do those things have poorer
| implications?
| monocasa wrote:
| "Curiosity killed the cat"
| dmos62 wrote:
| Isn't curiosity a synonym for adventurous stupidity in this
| idiom?
| monocasa wrote:
| > "Curiosity killed the cat" is an idiom-proverb used to
| warn of the dangers of unnecessary investigation or
| experimentation. It also implies that being curious can
| sometimes lead to danger or misfortune.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity_killed_the_cat
| [deleted]
| howaboutnope wrote:
| "Curiosity was framed, ignorance killed the cat."
| monocasa wrote:
| There's something to be said for a healthy respect for
| what you don't understand yet, particularly dangerous
| situations.
| taneq wrote:
| The thing about unknown unknowns is that they're unknown.
| By _definition_ we can 't reason about them.
| imilk wrote:
| Even more amazing to me is that crows can communicate what
| someone looks like to another crow. Then that other crow will
| be able to identify that person without ever having seen them
| before.
| taneq wrote:
| Do they actually communicate semantic information enabling
| another crow to identify a person? Or do they just
| communicate "that's him, that's the guy that threw a rock at
| Bobby Crow!"?
| ksml wrote:
| Whoa. Do you have any links I can read about this? That
| sounds incredible
| codetrotter wrote:
| Check out this video starting at the 4:06 mark.
|
| https://youtu.be/LF77qpbvkxo?t=4m6s
|
| They talk about crows passing knowledge from one generation
| to the next, and they show an experiment that they
| performed on some crows.
|
| While the young crows are still in their eggs, the
| scientists wear masks and capture the adult crows, teaching
| the adult crows that this mask means danger. What they then
| find out is whether the adult crows pass the knowledge of
| the dangerous mask on to their young.
|
| However, in this video the young are learning about the
| dangerous mask because they get to see the adults react
| directly to it.
|
| I don't know anything similar where the adults communicate
| this kind of thing without the masked person being present.
|
| It is possible that the young ones in turn taught the next
| generation without the masked individual being present. But
| I don't remember and am not going to watch the whole video
| again right now.
| vmh1928 wrote:
| Anyone who has watched birds find a dish of cat or dog food on
| the back porch knows they watch each other. The same thing goes
| for a place to roost (as in under the eves.) One bird might find
| the food or the place to roost by accident but other birds are
| watching.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| My wife got an African Grey parrot during lockdown - it repeats
| some phrases but I sometimes it uses a phrase under the "right"
| circumstances.
|
| Like "what are you doing" - usually when I sit down at my PC or
| in bed reading a book.
|
| Maybe I am just imagining things.
| jcun4128 wrote:
| That's the species that had a famous bird right? Alex I think.
| mosseater wrote:
| Considering the African Grey is definitively one of the
| smartest birds in the world, it's intelligence and emotional
| capacity being that of a 5 year old human, you are probably not
| imagining anything :P.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| I have a cat that unfortunately has caught a couple birds. They
| get unusually close to it while tweeting loudly. It is almost
| like they are trying to taunt it away.
| Jhsto wrote:
| Birds definitely do this to cats. My parents used to have a cat
| which could occasionally located by listening to where magpies
| were shouting. Now that the cat is gone, the magpies can often
| be located by listening to where the thrushes are shouting.
| eloeffler wrote:
| Now I wonder if some birds will fool other birds by pretending
| something isn't good.
| dint wrote:
| Your comment reminded me of this video of ravens trying to hide
| food from each other. They clearly demonstrate a robust theory
| of mind. Each is keenly aware of the other's goals and
| capabilities.
|
| Seeing this, I could imagine birds using the strategy you
| describe.
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/Sng1oV_uDzM
| JadeNB wrote:
| > Now I wonder if some birds will fool other birds by
| pretending something isn't good.
|
| How would they do that? If other birds are watching to see if
| they eat the food, it seems that your options (as a deceptive
| bird) are not to eat it (in which case they might be fooled,
| but you lose the food) or to eat it (in which case they aren't
| fooled--they aren't looking for your subsequent review of the
| prey!).
| taneq wrote:
| Eat it and then feign sickness. As long as you check for
| predators first you have a good chance of scaring competitors
| away from the rest of the food.
| inetknght wrote:
| By watching for when you're being watched. Don't eat it when
| you're being watched. Then eat it when you're not being
| watched.
| autokad wrote:
| this is the real reason you shouldnt mess with / look at bird
| nests. Its not that the parents will 'smell a human' and not come
| back, that's not true at all. When you mess with or even look at
| a nest, you draw attention to predators. They see you looking and
| learn of the nest location.
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(page generated 2021-07-08 23:01 UTC)