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If food is served every day without the need to earn it there is no need to use your brain. I have a lot of cats, i toss snacks in the back yard. They are abou

If food is served every day without the need to earn it there is no need to use your brain. I have a lot of cats, i toss snacks in the back yard. They are about interested enough to find 80% meanwhile the birds sitting on the roof 40 meters away study the situation carefully and wait for the right configuration of cats before they fly in and snatch the remaining snacks. They see all of them, they never mis one. Im sure they think my cats are dumb but cats in general are not. I use to have a stray cat with a gaze powerful enough to win any stairing contest. He pulled tricks that took me years to figure out - seriously.

jvanderbot 3y ago
Well, to be fair, that is precisely what birds evolved to do. It's like complementing a tree for being tall.
- theendisney 2y ago
  If they have plenty of food they wouldnt need to steal from animals that evolved specifically to kill them. If the cats were hungry enough often enough they would find 100% of the snacks. After fasting for 3-5 days I have crazy focus, I see and hear everything. I also have aggresive tendencies that are totally alien to my normal personality. Punching an annoying coworker all of a sudden seemed like a perfectly normal response. He is always like that, it takes no effort to ignore it.
- bobbylarrybobby 3y ago
  Being smart (in the all ways we exhibit intelligence) is what humans evolved to do, but it'd be hard to argue that that doesn't make us smart after all.
  - jvanderbot 3y ago
    I don't understand. It's true that judging humans by human intelligence should have a perfect alignment. But it's not necessarily true that judging other creatures' actions by drawing rough analogies to human intelligence is valid. Birds waiting for an opportunity to steal seeds doesn't really strike me as a universal indicator of intelligence.
voisin 3y ago
> If food is served every day without the need to earn it there is no need to use your brain. 1) there is still danger that the brain needs to be attuned to. 2) I often let the chickens out of the fenced in area when the grasshopper population gets unruly in the warm summer months, and if you watch the chickens hunt them, I think you’d find that even in the presence of being fed for ~10 months of the year, their brains are highly alert and they are quite good at killing fast moving, unpredictable things.
- theendisney 2y ago
  I hear it takes only one chicken for all of them to learn a trick. My grandma had a rooster that ran many circles every morning and eventually flew to a nearby tree branch. The chickens would follow one by one, the last one needed 15 minutes worth of warming up until she was finally able to fly. I dont know what the point was but it seemed important to her? They all sat there watching until she made it.

jvanderbot 3y ago

Well, to be fair, that is precisely what birds evolved to do. It's like complementing a tree for being tall.

theendisney 2y ago
If they have plenty of food they wouldnt need to steal from animals that evolved specifically to kill them. If the cats were hungry enough often enough they would find 100% of the snacks. After fasting for 3-5 days I have crazy focus, I see and hear everything. I also have aggresive tendencies that are totally alien to my normal personality. Punching an annoying coworker all of a sudden seemed like a perfectly normal response. He is always like that, it takes no effort to ignore it.
bobbylarrybobby 3y ago
Being smart (in the all ways we exhibit intelligence) is what humans evolved to do, but it'd be hard to argue that that doesn't make us smart after all.
- jvanderbot 3y ago
  I don't understand. It's true that judging humans by human intelligence should have a perfect alignment. But it's not necessarily true that judging other creatures' actions by drawing rough analogies to human intelligence is valid. Birds waiting for an opportunity to steal seeds doesn't really strike me as a universal indicator of intelligence.

voisin 3y ago

> If food is served every day without the need to earn it there is no need to use your brain. 1) there is still danger that the brain needs to be attuned to. 2) I often let the chickens out of the fenced in area when the grasshopper population gets unruly in the warm summer months, and if you watch the chickens hunt them, I think you’d find that even in the presence of being fed for ~10 months of the year, their brains are highly alert and they are quite good at killing fast moving, unpredictable things.

theendisney 2y ago
I hear it takes only one chicken for all of them to learn a trick. My grandma had a rooster that ran many circles every morning and eventually flew to a nearby tree branch. The chickens would follow one by one, the last one needed 15 minutes worth of warming up until she was finally able to fly. I dont know what the point was but it seemed important to her? They all sat there watching until she made it.