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A paper airplane can learn to fly on a breeze in being folded. I posit that a fulmar is closer to a paper airplane than to a drone.

onion2k 3y ago
If that were true lots of young fulmars would drown in the sea at the bottom of a cliff when they fledge. That doesn't happen. They fly, with control, and enough understanding to land safely on water.
- moffkalast 3y ago
  Human babies are born knowing how to swim, I suppose they learn that in 3 seconds as well? Both of these are far more likely to just be genetic memory. If you can encode how to fold proteins to make wings, then packaging a control algorithm along is completely trivial in comparison.
  - logtempo 3y ago
    It's a false believe. Throw a baby in water and he won't survive.
    - nsxwolf 3y ago
      Are you not aware of the throwing babies in pools fad that comes and goes in popularity? They do better than you'd think.
      - shkkmo 3y ago
        Infants do have a "diving reflex" but that is very different from knowing how to swim. If you throw a baby in a pool, the baby will drown and die. There are undoubtedly similar reflexes that assist fulmars in learning to fly quickly, but that doesn't mean that rapid learning isn't also required.
        geoelectric 3y ago
        On a very special episode of MythBusters…
      - Retric 3y ago
        The swimming isn’t what you think. It’s also called the diving reflex for good reason: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_swimming#/media/File:Barnbarn.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_swimming#/media/File:Ba... As a baby I fell into a pool and needed to be rescued. I didn’t inhale water, but as generally happens I very much did just sank to the bottom. Babies can be taught to float at around 5 months, but it’s not reflexive.
      - contravariant 3y ago
        I mean they kind of have to when they're part of a species that's curious enough that they'll hear 'babies can swim' and throw babies in a pool en masse to see if it is be true.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - moffkalast 3y ago
      I'll test that out and get back to you /s I can't say what the extent of those swimming reflexes really is, but water births are not unheard of. Besides there's literally countless examples of this sort of thing, most prey animals can walk or even run mere moments after being born, cetaceans and ram ventilator sharks all know how to swim immediately or they would literally drown, insects can fly as soon as they hatch, etc.
      - datameta 3y ago
        All good examples, but humans are relatively underdeveloped at birth compared to most mammals due to the necessity of limiting skull size to allow an easier birth. An infant cannot lift its own head or locomote for several months, for instance. Just like marsupials finish up outside the womb in a pouch, we have own external phase.
YeahThisIsMe 3y ago
The paper plane has a lot less extending the wings and then flapping them to learn to avoid death.
- serf 3y ago
  I would imagine it activates some motor neuron ganglia that is somehow connected to a flap reflexive action, and then sometime afterwards fine motor control is gained by practice; akin to plantarflexor muscles in a walking stride.
ordu 3y ago
How baby deer learns to walk in a few hours after birth? It needs to control four limbs to keep balance. Animals tend to have some forms of behavior that they learn in a few tries or even from the very first try. But at the same time they may be very bad at learning other kinds of behavior that seem no more difficult for us. Homo Sapience is special in this regard with almost all their firmware broken. Homo Sapience needs to learn hard how to focus their eyes or to hold head or to walk and even how to crawl. Seems like our abilities to learn are linked with brokenness of our innate software, probably it is a double headed causal arrow: our software is broken because we could overcome it with our general abilities to learn, and our general abilities to learn evolved because without them and without working genetic programs for specific forms of behavior we would be doomed. I can't help but think that autism is the next step at breaking innate software and developing more robust general learning mechanisms.
- blackoil 3y ago
  I remember something like humans are born earlier underdeveloped compared to other mammals because are pelvis is smaller to allow standing up. As a side effect some brain development happens after birth. This allows for more social/environmental impact on development than pure genetics, and we have developed better language and understanding.
  - j16sdiz 3y ago
    There are no "because", just speculation. There is no physical limit why we can't have both. .. and we don't have datapoints for time to evolve for every trails. I hate it when biologists talked as if they knew it all
- xyzzy_plugh 3y ago
  Practically speaking humans are born relatively underdeveloped and spend much of their first year catching up to where other animals start. If we spent more time baking we would have trouble getting out of the birth canal because we have such large heads (we already have enough trouble as is). It's easy to conjecture how that may have come to be. Marsupials are an interesting comparison with similar but different traits. For what it's worth there are also countless animals which start out very helpless, including many birds which are wholly incapable of flight for some time, and for which learning is not always an easy process. The bird in question is closer to an exception than a rule.

onion2k 3y ago

If that were true lots of young fulmars would drown in the sea at the bottom of a cliff when they fledge. That doesn't happen. They fly, with control, and enough understanding to land safely on water.

moffkalast 3y ago
Human babies are born knowing how to swim, I suppose they learn that in 3 seconds as well? Both of these are far more likely to just be genetic memory. If you can encode how to fold proteins to make wings, then packaging a control algorithm along is completely trivial in comparison.
- logtempo 3y ago
  It's a false believe. Throw a baby in water and he won't survive.
  - nsxwolf 3y ago
    Are you not aware of the throwing babies in pools fad that comes and goes in popularity? They do better than you'd think.
    - shkkmo 3y ago
      Infants do have a "diving reflex" but that is very different from knowing how to swim. If you throw a baby in a pool, the baby will drown and die. There are undoubtedly similar reflexes that assist fulmars in learning to fly quickly, but that doesn't mean that rapid learning isn't also required.
      - geoelectric 3y ago
        On a very special episode of MythBusters…
    - Retric 3y ago
      The swimming isn’t what you think. It’s also called the diving reflex for good reason: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_swimming#/media/File:Barnbarn.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_swimming#/media/File:Ba... As a baby I fell into a pool and needed to be rescued. I didn’t inhale water, but as generally happens I very much did just sank to the bottom. Babies can be taught to float at around 5 months, but it’s not reflexive.
    - contravariant 3y ago
      I mean they kind of have to when they're part of a species that's curious enough that they'll hear 'babies can swim' and throw babies in a pool en masse to see if it is be true.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - moffkalast 3y ago
    I'll test that out and get back to you /s I can't say what the extent of those swimming reflexes really is, but water births are not unheard of. Besides there's literally countless examples of this sort of thing, most prey animals can walk or even run mere moments after being born, cetaceans and ram ventilator sharks all know how to swim immediately or they would literally drown, insects can fly as soon as they hatch, etc.
    - datameta 3y ago
      All good examples, but humans are relatively underdeveloped at birth compared to most mammals due to the necessity of limiting skull size to allow an easier birth. An infant cannot lift its own head or locomote for several months, for instance. Just like marsupials finish up outside the womb in a pouch, we have own external phase.

YeahThisIsMe 3y ago

The paper plane has a lot less extending the wings and then flapping them to learn to avoid death.

serf 3y ago
I would imagine it activates some motor neuron ganglia that is somehow connected to a flap reflexive action, and then sometime afterwards fine motor control is gained by practice; akin to plantarflexor muscles in a walking stride.

ordu 3y ago

How baby deer learns to walk in a few hours after birth? It needs to control four limbs to keep balance. Animals tend to have some forms of behavior that they learn in a few tries or even from the very first try. But at the same time they may be very bad at learning other kinds of behavior that seem no more difficult for us. Homo Sapience is special in this regard with almost all their firmware broken. Homo Sapience needs to learn hard how to focus their eyes or to hold head or to walk and even how to crawl. Seems like our abilities to learn are linked with brokenness of our innate software, probably it is a double headed causal arrow: our software is broken because we could overcome it with our general abilities to learn, and our general abilities to learn evolved because without them and without working genetic programs for specific forms of behavior we would be doomed. I can't help but think that autism is the next step at breaking innate software and developing more robust general learning mechanisms.

blackoil 3y ago
I remember something like humans are born earlier underdeveloped compared to other mammals because are pelvis is smaller to allow standing up. As a side effect some brain development happens after birth. This allows for more social/environmental impact on development than pure genetics, and we have developed better language and understanding.
- j16sdiz 3y ago
  There are no "because", just speculation. There is no physical limit why we can't have both. .. and we don't have datapoints for time to evolve for every trails. I hate it when biologists talked as if they knew it all
xyzzy_plugh 3y ago
Practically speaking humans are born relatively underdeveloped and spend much of their first year catching up to where other animals start. If we spent more time baking we would have trouble getting out of the birth canal because we have such large heads (we already have enough trouble as is). It's easy to conjecture how that may have come to be. Marsupials are an interesting comparison with similar but different traits. For what it's worth there are also countless animals which start out very helpless, including many birds which are wholly incapable of flight for some time, and for which learning is not always an easy process. The bird in question is closer to an exception than a rule.