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Crow flies with thing in its beak. Sees food, drops thing, grabs food. Comes back later, sees more food! Assumes food came from dropping thing (See "Superstitio
by Lewton 12y ago
Crow flies with thing in its beak. Sees food, drops thing, grabs food. Comes back later, sees more food! Assumes food came from dropping thing (See "Superstition in the pigeon" [0]). Meme spreads among the crows.
No ethics or deep reasoning required. Random rewards lead to irrational behavior.
[0] http://psychclassics.asu.edu/Skinner/Pigeon/ http://psychclassics.asu.edu/Skinner/Pigeon/
- dragontamer 12y agoThe final example though, where a Crow returns the camera-lens cap to the family requires some pretty advanced thinking. We know that Crows recognize human faces and expressions, and communicate these facts amongst each other. Crows / Ravens are the only creature aside from Humans who perform meta-tool use. They can use tools to grab tools to accomplish a goal. In many ways, they're smarter than (non-human) primates, and are probably the 2nd smartest animals on earth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Caledonian_crow#Meta-tool_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Caledonian_crow#Meta-tool_... Birds in general are pretty smart (see Pidgeons, Parrots, etc. etc.) However crows / ravens are on a completely different intelligence level. Crows break nuts by dropping them on the asphalt... timing their drops during red lights so that traffic doesn't hit them. Besides, gift-giving is seen in far dumber animals than crows. Dogs, Cats, Penguins... they don't have the intelligence of Crows but they understand gifts and social situations.
- Lewton 12y agoIt sounds like there's a pretty big amount of crows that got in on the "drop gifts for food" program. And a camera lens is well within the range of what a crow would usually be interested in. It doesn't sound unlikely to me that it would just pick it up as any other thing and gift it. Crows are awesome though, I'm not trying to put down their intelligence, haha. I just wanted to point out that neither deeper reasoning nor ethics is required to explain this phenomenon. One of the researchers in the article said that he had never experienced the gift giving, even though he also fed crows often. That to me makes it more sensible to believe that it's just a meme that developed by chance
- kbenson 12y agoThat's not what the researcher said. He made no claim to having fed them often (and consistently, which is mentioned as helpful to induce the behavior). But crow gifts are not guaranteed. "I can't say they always will (give presents)," Marzluff admits, having never received any gifts personally, "but I have seen an awful lot of things crows have brought people.
- pavel_lishin 12y ago> The final example though, where a Crow returns the camera-lens cap to the family requires some pretty advanced thinking. I think the article (and probably the podcast? haven't listened yet) make too big a deal of this. We don't know that the crows realized that the lens cap belonged to those people. Perhaps they just saw it as another neat thing to gift. Perhaps they smelled the family on it, and just returned it to a place that smelled similarly.
- gaius 12y agoPerhaps they smelled the family on it, and just returned it to a place that smelled similarly. Can you do that?
- kaybe 12y agoMost people never try. Feynman found he could, to some extend. https://books.google.de/books?id=Z7g-BAAAQBAJ&pg=PA105&lpg=PA105&dq=feynman+smell+books&source=bl&ots=WQZhRfi_oQ&sig=Jy-2xoqbc4IMwiE17_zOipToGBY&hl=de&sa=X&ei=OV_vVLLSEszaOJncgcgB&ved=0CCIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=feynman%20smell%20books&f=false https://books.google.de/books?id=Z7g-BAAAQBAJ&pg=PA105&lpg=P...
- lotsofmangos 12y agoThat story makes me suspect that Feynman was also a genius at flirting.
- dragonwriter 12y ago> Can you do that? Maybe not, but then, humans have a pretty poor sense of smell compared to lots of other animals.
- pavel_lishin 12y agoI can't, but I have no idea what that's supposed to prove. That animals have abilities I don't? I can't fly, either, or swim in the arctic ocean and catch fish with my mouth.
- 12y ago
- sys32768 12y agoWhat amazes me is crows manage to do all this with their beaks. Imagine if they had limbs and hands like monkeys? It would be Rise of the Planet of the Ape Crows.
- pavel_lishin 12y agoBut weren't the crows being fed even before they started giving the gifts?
- sswaner 12y agoKind of a weird crow cargo cult. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult#Pacific_cults_of_World_War_II http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult#Pacific_cults_of_Wor...
- rokhayakebe 12y agoMan looks up to the sky in distress. Man prays to the Sun. Tomorrow problem is solved. Assumes Sun fixed problem. Meme spreads among men. Addendum: Other man says this is random. Sun believer says don't insult my problem solver. Other man persists. Sun believer kills him.
- lotsofmangos 12y agoI think I may have worked at that company. Was the sun believer called Phil?
- magentosargento 12y agoTwist: It was Sun Microsystems
- zzalpha 12y agoMeme spreads among the crows. So, to be clear, you're positing an alternative theory wherein one or more crows learn a behaviour, and teach that behaviour to other crows, who learn this complex concept and repeat the feat while they, too, pass it on. And you think that's no big deal? :)
- Lewton 12y agoAnimals learn from other animals by observing them? I don't think that's groundbreaking news. It doesn't have to actively teach the other crows for them to catch on
- basaah 12y agoAbout the "Superstition in the pigeon" link: Kind of painfull that you link to Skinner's (pretty much) only ill-done research; See J.E.R. Staddon for a nice refutation of 'the superstition in the pigeon' experiment.