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Some Birds Are Excellent Tool-Makers (abc.net.au)
brindafella writes: Veterinary scientists from Viena have shown that Goffin's cockatoos can do an excellent job of remaking cardboard into tools to get rewards. This follows on from earlier experiments with the New Caledonian crow that can select tools for its purposes. So, birds are definitely not "bird-brained." "[The study] tells us that the cockatoos' mind is highly flexible and that they can modify their solution to a problem in order to save effort," said Alice Auersperg, a cognitive biologist at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna and lead author of the paper.
The Australian Broadcast Company explains how the study was conducted: "[S]ix trained birds were given a piece of cardboard and placed in front of a cage that had food accessible through a small hole, but placed at different distances away. The birds used their beak to cut strips of cardboard they then used to reach the food. Importantly, when the food was close, the birds made a shorter strip. When it was far away, they made a longer strip. But when the researchers made the hole in the cage smaller, only one of the birds was able to fashion their cardboard tool to be narrow enough to fit through the hole. The successful bird was the only female in the group, and the researchers think she was able to do this because her beak was small enough to make a narrow tool."
The Australian Broadcast Company explains how the study was conducted: "[S]ix trained birds were given a piece of cardboard and placed in front of a cage that had food accessible through a small hole, but placed at different distances away. The birds used their beak to cut strips of cardboard they then used to reach the food. Importantly, when the food was close, the birds made a shorter strip. When it was far away, they made a longer strip. But when the researchers made the hole in the cage smaller, only one of the birds was able to fashion their cardboard tool to be narrow enough to fit through the hole. The successful bird was the only female in the group, and the researchers think she was able to do this because her beak was small enough to make a narrow tool."
I've seen some wonderful things done by those. From simple stuff like holding food down with their claws and ripping bits off with their beak, to using a twig for - something, I couldn't get close enough to see exactly what, but it was a magpie poking at something on or in the ground with twig held in its beak.
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
...and then a large, strong, handsome bird saw the wisdom of division of labor and forced the small toolmaking bird into servitude making tools for all birds for the greater good, becoming Avian Stalin.
Sure, crows are smart with tools, but they have shitty social skills.
Table-ized A.I.
Husbands hardly ever get screwed.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
He's in trouble because he hasn't washed his socks in six years and nobody likes it.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
...have been observed to make original tools (ie: not derivative from prior direct or indirect experience or observation) for original problems not encountered in the wild.
This creates some interesting problems, not least for those people who insist all human creativity is derivative, never inventive. However, that's off topic.
We also know African Grey parrots can understand the concept of zero and basic mathematics.
We now have a better understanding of which birds have which sorts of intelligence. It would seem logical, if it hasn't already been done, to use the 9.1T, 13T and next-gen MRI scanners to identify specific structures that might relate to such intelligence.
Currently, the "whole brain" simulators that exist can't simulate whole human brains. They could certainly simulate the relevant structures in an avian brain, though.
Once we know what those structures actually do, we can devise experiments via proper models. If the simulator says the brain can learn X with a level of difficulty of Y, you have an experiment. You can study a random assortment of crows or whatever and see if, on average, they do indeed learn X with a difficulty of Y.
In that case, your model is good enough to describe, define and parameterize non-human intelligence. Which means you can start to do useful things with animal intelligence studies.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I don't differentiate you from the other bullies. Note "other". Verbal and textual abuse are never acceptable, and that includes the abuse in the post I'm referring to.
Things to do:
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rf...
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/games...
(B1 applies to all Internet posts)
Things not to do:
https://groups.google.com/foru...
I doubt you, or any other troll, will read any of this, or care even if you do. Why should you? If nothing matters and nothing exists, then netiquette just means better quality nothing.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Why would they want to make one?
They have no use for laser printers. And they probably wouldn't be interested in making anything for someone who was insulting them.
Birds have a sense of magnetic fields. You're much more likely to see them invent an extension to their natural navigation system.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Why would kids in China want to make iPhones and luxury handbags?
They have no use for them.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Unfounded accusations? Check. Overselling one's intellect? Check. Composing and selling straw men? Check.
Trump, is that you?
Christ man, I am liberal (not to be confused with progressive) and even I think you're a trolling idiot with an IQ smaller than your shoe size.
Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
The Penguin comes pre installed with los of tools like awk, grep, sed, emacs, vi, gcc, vim, git ...
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Definitely an excellent tool-maker.
Yes, they do. People make junk commodities to sell in exchange for something they want. It's the basis of all trade that you exchange low value for high value. That is a use. Indirect, yes, but still a use.
Stop giving the kids money and they'll stop making the goods, because then the goods will indeed have no use.
Crows have no interest in anything you could supply. You don't speak crow, assuming they have language, so you can't barter.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Crows have no interest in anything you could supply.
Table scraps? I promise you that corvids of all types are interested in those.
You don't speak crow, assuming they have language, so you can't barter.
You don't have to speak their language, you only have to communicate.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I've seen a grease monkey fix cars.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
I had an Amazon Parrot for 18 years. He was a great talker, but didn't do it unless he knew for sure what he was saying. One morning... He had been saying (and understanding), "How are you? Good?" for years. That morning he said, "How are you? Good? Say 'Yup'."
I now have a Green Cheeked Conure. Words are his favorite toys. Just one example..... One day, when he was a few/several months old, he realized that "I" and "me" mean basically the same thing. He just thought this was wonderful - he was all excited, going, "I am me! I am parrot, me! I, me, me!"
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
Well done. You're officially smarter than jd ( 1658 ).
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If they "made it known," then why don't you know when the activities it accuses him of happened?
You care, and you still don't know. Maybe nobody knows but me, the reporter, and the prosecutor.
It doesn't fucking matter what you think of the rape charges. That was my point. The maximum penalty he was facing was less than what he already sentenced himself to in that fucking closet. And now, he finally has what he always wanted; a sealed indictment. From the United States. For helping to hack our election.
The stuff he did in the past was stuff that pisses off the US Government, but is explicitly legal and protected here. He is not and never was going to be charged for any of that. These are current charges responding to recent events.
Nobody that I know of speaks Doggish or Muttuese. But they're perfectly aware that if they intimidate some woolly human food that's alive so it goes into the pen, or find some feathery human food that's been shot and fallen in the long grass, they'll get tickled and fussed over and get some food for themselves. And they know they get different food, they mustn't take the human food.
And that's dogs, FFS, which are about the second stupidest thing I can think of at this moment.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Should say "Veterinary scientists from Vienna", not "Viena"...
(But at least it doesn't say "Austrian Broadcast Company".)
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
Feel free to ignore the fact that it took 10,000 years for humans and wolves to come to that arrangement, and another 10,000 to domesticated wolves to the point where that arrangement is bred in.
Tell me how you're doing after you've worked with crows for 20,000 years. Otherwise, the comparison is false. You're not a time lord? Oh, then I guess you'll just need to accept you can't make the comparison.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)