[HN Gopher] How does a cowbird learn to be a cowbird? (2016)
___________________________________________________________________
How does a cowbird learn to be a cowbird? (2016)
Author : jelliclesfarm
Score : 50 points
Date : 2022-05-13 02:18 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.audubon.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.audubon.org)
| nyc111 wrote:
| Isn't this true for all animals? How does a cat know that he is a
| cat? He never sees himself in a mirror but somehow knows that he
| is like other cats. I understand that they observe other cats'
| behavior, but how does he know initially that he is like other
| cats without seeing himself. This must be something innate. Also
| for birds mentioned in the article, they must know innately that
| they are cowbirds.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Cats are social animals. Kittens learn a lot from play fighting
| with each other.
|
| A lone cat can survive but they behave differently than a cat
| raised with peers. You can also tell a difference if a cat is
| raised among dogs. Kittens are friendly and will socialize with
| most creatures until a certain age where their disposition
| changes to be a bit more reserved.
| jyounker wrote:
| How does "innately" work is the question.
| circlefavshape wrote:
| > how does he know initially that he is like other cats without
| seeing himself
|
| He can't see his head or maybe his back, but can see the rest
| of himself, surely. And he can hear himself and smell himself
| alexvoda wrote:
| I believe it is actually entirely education and socialization.
|
| I have seen or read plenty online about animal pups that were
| raised by a different species. And I also remember there being
| a famous case of a human that was raised by wolves.
| watwut wrote:
| > And I also remember there being a famous case of a human
| that was raised by wolve
|
| Isnt that a myth?
| erikig wrote:
| Here's a rabbit-hole that will definitely eat up a good
| weekend for me:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child#Raised_by_wolves
| bonoboTP wrote:
| I'm not quite sure what sort of mental model one must have to
| pose such a question (maybe some sort of reincarnation-like
| spirituality where all animals and humans have the same
| soul/spirit substance that after birth has to figure out what
| kind of animal it was slotted into this time?).
|
| How does a rock know to be a rock? Why doesn't it get confused
| and become water?
|
| A cat doesn't need to know that it "is a cat". It just has a
| cat brain and a cat body, so it does cat stuff.
|
| Of course, there is some learned behavior, parental
| socialization and some "culture"-like practices is certain
| species, but it's not like cats may forget "how to cat". Do you
| think a fish may get confused and suddenly forget to be a fish
| and instead act like a mouse?
| carapace wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Lorenz
|
| Questions like these were mostly answered decades ago, at least
| operationally.
|
| Broadly, most of behaviour is more-or-less mechanical,
| stimulus-reponse chains, while some behaviour has a
| "transmitted" component (aka "culture"), but _learning_ is
| itself generally of the first order (like how children learn to
| walk and talk automatically); and then there is third-degree
| learning: the learning process itself comes to be self-
| reflexively the subject of culture, and this seems to be
| somehow the essence or crux of what differentiates humans from
| animals.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| As the article notes:
|
| > "In laboratory experiments, cowbirds and other brood
| parasites that spend too much time with their foster families
| end up learning their host species' songs, picking up their
| behaviors, and attempting to mate with them."
|
| Clearly, this would be an evolutionary dead end for the cowbird
| species as such mating attempts would be unlikely to result in
| viable offspring. The reason that doesn't happen appears to be
| that cowbird parents and their offspring maintain a kind of
| distant relationship until maturity.
|
| As usual, some people jump on these issues to promote their
| various ideologies, be it 'biological determinism' or 'social
| constructionism'. Notably the psychologists and politicans
| (i.e. German fascism promoted genetic determinism, Russian
| communism promoted phenotypic plasticity) are the ones who came
| up with these simplistic one-dimensional concepts, reality
| being far more complex in every case.
| k__ wrote:
| So, I should send my kids to party with rich people, right?
| mannykannot wrote:
| Yes - pay whatever it takes to get them into an elite
| university. It doesn't matter what they study.
| [deleted]
| antiquark wrote:
| This is only a mystery to social constructionists.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| Wrong. Did you read the article? Cowbirds raised in contact
| with _only_ their foster parents (e.g., in captivity) think
| they are their foster parents ' species, learn their songs, and
| try to mate with members of their host species. This research
| answers the question of how young cowbirds in the wild avoid
| this. The answer includes instinctual elements (that drive them
| to sneak out to meet their biological parents), but learning
| clearly is an essential factor.
| jasode wrote:
| _> Did you read the article? [...] , but learning clearly is
| an essential factor._
|
| I think your reading of the article missed the point of their
| experiments that dissected the _learning_ :
|
| Yes, the "learning from other-species foster parents" was
| affecting their _non-cowbird_ type of behavior (e.g. songs).
|
| But no, they did not "learn" the _cowbird-specific_ behavior
| from any parents. E.g. They figured out their preferred
| roosting in the fields at age ~20 days _on their own_.
| feintruled wrote:
| Fascinating, but kinda creepy. What prompts them to spontaneously
| leave the nest and go to a certain place? Feel like this raises
| more questions than answers!
| fujidust wrote:
| This behavior is thought to be innate, which by definition is
| considered to be not learned behavior but preprogrammed into
| DNA. Consider a plant titling towards the sun.
| nathias wrote:
| a conspiracy of cowbirds
| cyco130 wrote:
| So how does a group of baby cowbirds learn to be a group of
| cowbirds (without adults teaching them) then?
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| I think the implication is that cowbird behaviours are
| genetically and/or epigenetically encoded.
| mjh2539 wrote:
| That is not the implication. In the article they explain that
| the juvenile cowbirds spontaneously leave their brood host's
| nests at night and mingle with other cowbirds.
| raarts wrote:
| And why do they do that and their 'siblings' don't?
| samatman wrote:
| What's the purpose behind asking why unrelated animals do
| unrelated things? What would be a good answer, they're
| different?
| xuhu wrote:
| At some point they must realize, "I'm different, these
| are not my people, I must find others that are like me".
| erikig wrote:
| This evokes memories of deep-cover spies that come in as teens
| and how, after spending years ingrained within another society
| with little contact externally, they remain loyal to their native
| country.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| If you're thinking of Soviet Illegals, a lot of them defected.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| It's still impressive that the defection rate is less than
| 100%, whatever the folks in the KGB were doing, they surely
| succeeded in some places we still don't know about.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-05-13 23:02 UTC)