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Is bin-opening in cockatoos leading to an innovation arms race with humans?
- bee_rider 4y agoSee also https://gizmodo.com/were-in-a-technology-arms-race-with-bears-for-our-food-1682344883 https://gizmodo.com/were-in-a-technology-arms-race-with-bear... Perhaps we'll be memorialized (since we'll surely wipe ourselves out at some point) in bear or cockatoo legends as the weird hairless/featherless trickster gods that gave them the puzzle-making that kicked off their societies. Probably not, but it is funny to think about.
- mryan 4y agoI am reminded of something I first read on Schneier's blog [0]: Back in the 1980s, Yosemite National Park was having a serious problem with bears: They would wander into campgrounds and break into the garbage bins. This put both bears and people at risk. So the Park Service started installing armored garbage cans that were tricky to open—you had to swing a latch, align two bits of handle, that sort of thing. But it turns out it’s actually quite tricky to get the design of these cans just right. Make it too complex and people can’t get them open to put away their garbage in the first place. Said one park ranger, “There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists.” 0: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/08/security_is_a_t.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/08/security_is_a...
- bee_rider 4y ago“There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists.” is of course a great quip. But in defense of us dumb human tourists, it should also be noted that bears have a much higher personal incentive to get into the garbage, and they sometimes can simplify parts of the puzzle by brute force.
- ggm 4y agoAlso the bears are usually not holding a baby, and a bottle of rum, and a deckchair and their backpack in one hand, trying to drop the rubbish in with one hand. So you have to at least try to design this for one handed human opening, where the bear has two paws to bring to bear (so to speak)
- bee_rider 4y agoIn addition to the two paws, they also have powerful jaws. And many humans are surprisingly resistant to mouth-operated garbage opening mechanisms!
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- onion2k 4y agoFailing to realise that you can put things down to do a task and then pick them up again is an important aspect of being a dumb tourist.
- mellavora 4y agoFormer forest ranger (great summer internship!), so plenty of experience with dumb tourists, but your comment shows a severe lack of empathy for parents of small children. Consider, for example, that while you could put the thing down, it might: start crying uncontrollably, or run off into the woods (hello, Mr. Bear!), or start eating the trash, or, ...
- onion2k 4y agoI was mostly suggesting putting the deckchair and bag down rather than the child. But if you did put the child down and it ate some trash, started crying, and ran off in to the woods to get eaten by a bear, I think that's just Darwinism at work. You can't fight evolution.
- 4y ago
- mrpopo 4y ago"no personal incentive to throw away the trash" is not such a good defence to the dumb tourist's intelligence as you make it seem.
- bee_rider 4y ago"Leave no trace" is very important (and point taken -- some people don't take it seriously enough and it reflects quite poorly on them), but bears are facing hunger and possibly even starvation if they don't find some food source.
- xani_ 4y agoThat's less dumb and more egotistical, just because tourist is an asshole doesn't mean they are automatically dumb.
- socialismisok 4y agoI disagree, if you are an asshole to the degree that you're just throwing trash on the ground, you cannot be that intelligent. An intelligent asshole still throws trash away properly.
- SilasX 4y agoYes, humans might spend an hour and give up, and complain about the time the spent getting the container to work, while a wild animal will spend every waking moment to bypass the container's defense mechanisms.
- phreeza 4y agoGreat point, even within humans there are studies that show motivation plays a great role in the measured IQ, eg https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1018601108 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1018601108
- Cthulhu_ 4y agoYup; or paraphrasing, one man's trash is another bear's dinner.
- Cerium 4y agoThat ranger's quote reminded me about a time I learned about the overlap in abilities between cats and raccoons. When I was a child my family had a cat that preferred to spend most of the time outside. When we went on vacation, we would leave it inside and come home to an annoyed cat. We couldn't leave it outside, since the raccoons would steal all the food. My dad had an idea that since we had a house on a hill with a wrap around balcony we could find a way to enable the cat to reach the balcony but not the raccoons. First we tried putting a long narrow board between the ground and the balcony on the theory that cats have better balance than raccoons. False, raccoons are fine at climbing across a narrow bridge. Then we decided that cats are smaller than raccoons, so we would make a gate with a cutout matching the exact dimensions of our cat's head and body. In some ways this worked, the adult raccoons could not access the food. Unfortunately raccoons are not stupid, they sent a child raccoon to fetch the food to the door and then scooped it through the small opening. The cat remained indoors during our trip.
- Ma8ee 4y agoNowadays there are cat doors with micro chip readers to make sure that only your cat can get in.
- vijayr02 4y agoWait till the raccoons kidnap the cat and make it open the door :)
- graderjs 4y agoHahaha ..lol. oh that's hilarious. Please write a sci Fi.
- aitchnyu 4y agoMy half stray used to bring boyfriends and they ate after she did.
- BurningFrog 4y ago
- rickdangerous1 4y agoI've often wondered if it is convenience rather than IQ that is the limiting factor for this. If I approach a bin with two hands full of garbage, how much time am I going to spend using half a hand to open an elaborate lock mechanism? Not much.
- mechanical_bear 4y agoIf you won’t spend the requisite time to properly dispose of your refuse, even if mildly inconvenient, then you don’t belong in our parks.
- mryan 4y agoIn addition, if someone reaches the "I need two hands to open this and both hands are full" stage and can not figure out a solution, it would appear that IQ is still the limiting factor.
- fennecfoxen 4y agoNot belonging in the parks and not being in the parks are two different things, though.
- thrwyoilarticle 4y agoAnd how successful has that attitude been so far?
- _ytxa 4y agoWhy can’t the parks use electronic means? I can think of a few solutions using connected bins. 1. Have a QR code printed on the bin that simply leads to a website that temporarily toggles the bin to an open state when a button is clicked. 2. Humans can read, bears cannot. Print out simple instructions with a key code, like they have at Starbucks coffee shops for bathroom access.
- icelancer 4y agoBecause that was written in 2006, referencing something from much earlier than that?
- danbruc 4y agoA website to open a garbage bin? Seriously?
- moonchrome 4y agoWeb developer spotted :) I'm sure there will be a ML guy here telling us we could train a NN to recognize bears on the camera and lock the bins (will probably lock out the bins whenever a child brings a teddy bear toy/shirt and or randomly at a small enough percentage that it will annoy people but won't be worth fixing)
- rypskar 4y agoSo that is why lecture 2 in the fast.ai course is a bear detector that also can detect if it is a real bear or a teddy bear https://github.com/fastai/fastbook/blob/master/02_production.ipynb https://github.com/fastai/fastbook/blob/master/02_production...
- Dalewyn 4y agoWhen all you have is JavaScript, every problem looks like a website.
- EGreg 4y agoHow do you know that a desperate mama bear can't learn to read? https://theconversation.com/can-crows-read-3740 https://theconversation.com/can-crows-read-3740 hehehehehe
- walrus01 4y agothe bear proof garbage cans installed in Whistler, BC (and Vancouver's north shore mountains) seem to be pretty successful as a design. thankfully, bears can't read written instructions yet https://www.flickr.com/photos/chuytron/2484618352 https://www.flickr.com/photos/chuytron/2484618352
- TylerE 4y agoHaving to stick your hand into a hidden handle on a public trash can…eww.
- mburee 4y agoSeems like a straight pushing job, so you could probably get away with using a stick. But someone who has used one of these may want to chime in.
- TylerE 4y agoRead the directions. There is an inner latch that must be manipulated
- michaelt 4y agoThe directions just say "push inner latch forward" which sounds feasible with a stick - unless it's more complicated than that makes it sound?
- askvictor 4y agoIf it can be opened with a stick, then a bear could probably work out how to open it with a stick
- desindol 4y agoThat's not how any of this works lol.
- nottorp 4y agoWell, the first thing I thought of when I read the title was "better a cockatoo than a bear in your back yard".
- brudgers 4y agoNot to deny the big point. Bear proofing is pretty good these days. The standard anti-bear latch relies on the physiological difference between human hands and paws. Bear country street furniture has the latch recessed beneath a metal guard where a hand will fit and a bear paw won't. Indeed the problem is well solved enough that you can buy a bear safe cooler at Walmart.
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoI encountered complex garbage can lids in a Texas state park. The ranger said it was to keep out raccoons. Did it work? Sort of, he said. I suggested if they put cable-lock on them, the raccoons would be out all night trying combinations.
- WalterBright 4y agoWhat humans have is leverage, due to having language. This is a giant intelligence multiplier. The next multiplier was writing. The next printing. The next is computer networks. Communication gives us the ability to coordinate with and teach others, which is an incredible advantage. We can build on what other humans learn, rather than having to rediscover it. I sometimes wonder why this ability is so limited in other intelligent animals. For the Park Service, they can print instructions and put them on the garbage can, or a ranger can explain it to the person.
- renewiltord 4y agoThey just have a non-locking carabiner clip on the bin on a metal cable. It's actually really easy to use. So whatever was true back in the 1980s or the early '00s is no longer a problem.
- edrxty 4y agoCockatoos can be highly intelligent. They're known to be able to solve fairly complicated puzzles and have the added bonus of having bolt cutters for a face. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5YyTHyaNpo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5YyTHyaNpo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lgWcGIoSVA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lgWcGIoSVA
- exodust 4y agoNicely shot videos. I have these birds in my area every day. Might need to dust off the 3d printer and make some puzzles. But it's challenging to keep cockies from destroying plants in the garden. I need a solution to that problem first.
- ehnto 4y agoThey are also smart enough to be huge assholes. We host a rescued gallah, we called him Stephen Squawking. He plots his malevolent actions far in advance, and is great at manipulating people go help him achieve his misdeeds.
- delecti 4y agoI was hoping someone would post the Maker's Muse videos about cockatoos. Birds can be so amazingly clever.
- HlessClaudesman 4y agoPut a brick on the lid, bin guys take brick off, problem solved.
- bamboozled 4y agoYou really think they wouldn’t be able to knock the brick off ?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- aussiesnack 4y agohttps://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/video/2022/sep/13/cockies-got-too-clever-cockatoos-learn-to-push-bricks-off-wheelie-bins-video https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/video/2022/sep/13...
- defrost 4y agoClearly someone has never seen three yellow crested cockatoos working together to move a brick off of a wheely bin lid before ... that worked, like, five or six years ago for maybe a summer or two. See Article Title "Arms Race" Also, "bin guys" no longer get out of bin truck, it's a camera guided hydraulic arm that reaches out and lifts the bin these days- that leaves a problem with bricks littering the ground after truck passes down street. EDIT: See peer comment linked video|article !!
- aussiesnack 4y agoYou can't expect non-Aussies to understand the ingeniousness of our birds. Like the maggie who can nick me precisely on the ear lobe exposed by my bike helmet. Or the Kookaburra who can swoop down to extract, mid flight, a slice of meat from a sandwich held by an unsuspecting tourist.
- a_bonobo 4y agoCase in point: >Magpies Help Each Other Remove Tracking Devices, Thwart Scientists https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/331977-magpies-help-each-other-remove-tracking-devices-thwart-scientists https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/331977-magpies-help-each...
- oraphalous 4y agoSince this is waste - why not provide an easy way for them to access it such that they don't make a mess? Some thoughts: 1) Could making it available be more effort than trying to restrict access? 2) The food is bad for them? But they are eating it anyway it seems. Will they adapt over time? Since humans are taking all their natural spaces away - why not encourage species to adapt to what we leave them? 3) Their adaptation makes them dependent on us... but only the ones that live around us. Besides - are we imagining a future where we aren't here? If no, then why not help them?
- byvirtueof 4y agoA great thought, but much of our waste is outright dangerous to animals. Think sharp half-opened cans that bears cut their tongues on, plastic multipack can straps that the necks of smaller animals get stuck in. If you want to make waste accessible, you'll have to separate it into stuff safe for animals, and the rest, and since many tourists can hardly clean up after themselves, this seems like a herculean task to me. Plus encouraging possibly dangerous animals to get close to human areas might not be the smartest thing to do.
- nabogh 4y agoHaven't seen many cockatoos go for rubbish where I live (they like the bugs more) but if they're anything like the crows at my old school they make a lot of mess when they open a bin. The crows used to lift a rather heavy metal lid and then scatter rubbish everywhere.
- Theodores 4y agoThis could be sold as freedom of the marketplace with bears now able to bid for waste management which is rebranded as recycling. I have ten sparrows that I put food out for in the middle of the city. This attracts pigeons, that the neighbours are not keen on. The sound of a distant crow and they are off, however, they will wait there for a speck of grain that gets dislodged by a sparrow all day. The area has been devised so that specks of grain only fall into sparrow only areas but there is still the chance. The golden rule is to not feed the animals. I am breaking it selfishly, those sparrows would be a pair, if that. When I move, or when I can't justify their food bill (£1 a day), they will just die.
- pavlov 4y agoLet’s uplift the cockatoos. They would probably make excellent starship navigators.
- oynqr 4y agoThey will fly into a black hole for the fun of it. While screaming expletives.
- pavlov 4y agoThat’s the trade-off. We can go to the stars with insane cockatoos who manipulate space-time and sometimes kill everyone for kicks, or we can stay grounded forever.
- ehnto 4y agoThey absolutely would. They are agents of chaos.
- ladyattis 4y agoThis sounds like a good idea for a cartoon to be honest.
- kylehotchkiss 4y agoEven better cockatoo action: when they decide to be a dog and run around barking
- madduci 4y agoOr coders. Leetcode for all
- ldh 4y agoCockatoo navigator: Hey, that's a neat-looking planet we just passed, let's dismantle it for fun.
- gadders 4y agoI read this as cockapoo and thought "I know my dog is smart, but..."
- acqbu 4y ago:-))
- PrivateButts 4y ago99 Percent Invisible put out an episode about a similar problem Toronto has facing with their raccoons: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/raccoon-resistance/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/raccoon-resistance/
- brendangregg 4y agoRandom cockatoo/FAANG story: I had an all-hands meeting earlier this year at Netflix, with me remote in Sydney, and a cockatoo knocked on my glass office door wanting to be let in -- so I'm saying "stop it! stop it!" when I realized my mic was on, and I'd said that to the whole org as my new manager was speaking. I quickly explained to everyone that I wasn't criticizing the meeting, oh no, I was actually talking to a bird that was knocking on the door. I then felt it best to post a video of the bird knocking so people didn't think I was crazy. They knock with their beak: tap tap tap. Gets annoying when they do it at 6am to wake you up. Recently I have noticed cockatoos raiding the bins in Sydney, it's definitely a thing.
- kylehotchkiss 4y agoWait, why does a cockatoo ask to enter your home? I'm in US so to me these birds are generally best left in cages, last time I visited the bird sanctuary, one of them started angrily chasing a lady around
- llamaLord 4y agoAs an Australian, I’m assuming said cockatoo was wild, but wanted to come in and say hello. Relatively common occurrence over here.
- ehnto 4y agoNo mention of the Ibis, unaffectionately known as the Bin Chicken. But in the denser cities, they are mangey bin foragers who break open garbage bags, fight and make a mess. I quite like them as they are not a pain in my city, they are quite elegant in their full glory. With a wingspan that can be up to 40-50inches/100-125cm wingspan they are a surprisingly big bird to be lurking around the city. I definitely wouldn't want to make one mad.
- inkcapmushroom 4y agoBin chickens aren't nearly as scary as the bush turkeys, who are very aggressive in mating season. And of course the magpies.
- ehnto 4y agoI've already had a few encounters with magpies this month, thankfully it's when usually when I have a full face helmet on.
- agilob 4y agoSeagulls in the UK were doing it for decades, I saw 3 seagulls cooperating to lift lid of a container. Maybe stop pretending that opening a lid is a complex thing?
- xani_ 4y agoThat "Australia vs. its wildlife" series is getting wild.
- onychomys 4y agoI mean, good on the authors for publishing in a big 3 journal, but come on, there's literally no cellular biology anywhere in this paper.
- michael1999 4y agoToronto went through this with raccoons opening the compost bins. It was bad enough that there were several commercial after-market add-ons for sale at hardware stores, and an active DIY scene trading tips online. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7FJs-4XrAw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7FJs-4XrAw - https://youtu.be/kNcL87yUuaA?t=117 https://youtu.be/kNcL87yUuaA?t=117 We have new bins now, and they mostly work. But it does mean we're breeding ever-smarter raccoons. - https://youtu.be/2s2RNK0Bmp8?t=39 https://youtu.be/2s2RNK0Bmp8?t=39 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yfQP2FSEvE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yfQP2FSEvE