African grey parrots spontaneously 'lend a wing'(eurekalert.org)
eurekalert.org
African grey parrots spontaneously 'lend a wing'
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-01/cp-agp010220.php
48 comments
Awesome! Does the parrot helped with the tokens ever give grain to the helper?
Thanks. Quite amazing to watch this.
African grey parrots are amazing animals.
I once had an African grey who would help our other pets, often. She'd sit in her perch area, with a good view of the drive, and call out to the dog when she saw me arrive home.
She would often drop treats to the dog as well, and once we caught her trying to take dogs collar off - she almost had it.
Of course, this is anecdotal and not a scientific observation, but our grey was as much of a family member in our house as any other pets, and she was a curious and intelligent being.
(The experience swore me off pet ownership for good, however. Not fun losing such loved ones, nor realising the life they led in captivity was not their own..)
I once had an African grey who would help our other pets, often. She'd sit in her perch area, with a good view of the drive, and call out to the dog when she saw me arrive home.
She would often drop treats to the dog as well, and once we caught her trying to take dogs collar off - she almost had it.
Of course, this is anecdotal and not a scientific observation, but our grey was as much of a family member in our house as any other pets, and she was a curious and intelligent being.
(The experience swore me off pet ownership for good, however. Not fun losing such loved ones, nor realising the life they led in captivity was not their own..)
Are they house trainable at all? I always thought birds would make pretty good indoor pets (especially flightless birds like chickens or geese) if they weren't basically incontinent.
There is not sense for a prey to defecate always in the same spot (so predators can easily find and ambush you, or find your nest). It has much more sense for survival to spread your odor randomly in the entire area.
You can toilet train African Greys. Not getting them to chew on stuff is a whole other issue. I have 2 Africanc Greys and would never leave them unsupervised. They are super awesome pets though and probably the most well behaved parrot you can get as far as not screaming.
Indeed, our grey has a perch she regularly shits on, then climbs back down and away and back to the playground.
We collect her efforts, which then are nicely deposited in the garden compost, where they create a rather fat and moist soil condition for later parts of the garden.
She is a talker. We call to her to come play and she'll often respond with a solid "Tuk!" if she's not interested, and we should hush, or a "clirp!" if she's not interested, but wants to talk about something else, or a "<favourite imitation of some befuddling device>" if she's actually on her way and just coming around the doorway for a bit of fuss and fun on the floor ..
But! You should never have a grey unless you are prepared to spend a lot of time with it. Anything less than regularly, daily interaction, is going to result in a kind of neurosis the finely tuned attenuators of the human mind may not be readily prepared to endure. Be aware, greys can be Craa-AA-zy! ..
We collect her efforts, which then are nicely deposited in the garden compost, where they create a rather fat and moist soil condition for later parts of the garden.
She is a talker. We call to her to come play and she'll often respond with a solid "Tuk!" if she's not interested, and we should hush, or a "clirp!" if she's not interested, but wants to talk about something else, or a "<favourite imitation of some befuddling device>" if she's actually on her way and just coming around the doorway for a bit of fuss and fun on the floor ..
But! You should never have a grey unless you are prepared to spend a lot of time with it. Anything less than regularly, daily interaction, is going to result in a kind of neurosis the finely tuned attenuators of the human mind may not be readily prepared to endure. Be aware, greys can be Craa-AA-zy! ..
Yeah, know how inquisitive geese are, I think chewing could be an issue as well.
I nearly died laughing from coughing (I'm eating) thinking of "chewing" geese.
A great name for a restaurant "The Chew Goose".
A great name for a restaurant "The Chew Goose".
> I nearly died laughing from coughing thinking of "chewing" geese.
Surprise!, dinosaur DNA and ready to tear off your hand ;-)
https://justbirding.com/geese-teeth/#1-do-geese-have-teeth
Surprise!, dinosaur DNA and ready to tear off your hand ;-)
https://justbirding.com/geese-teeth/#1-do-geese-have-teeth
that's what this blue goose is doing!
I've fostered goslings before, it's a very rewarding experience and they are very interesting, inquisitive and will follow you everywhere, but it is a messy affair.
We have five pet geese that live in our garden. They tolerate me and my daughter, but are fully bonded with my wife. It's surprising the level of rapport she has with them.
Kea are another interesting social parrot. I highly recommend Kea, Bird of Paradox: The Evolution and Behavior of a New Zealand Parrot: https://www.amazon.com/Kea-Bird-Paradox-Evolution-Behavior/d...
Another fascinating social bird although not a parrot and one of only a few social birds of prey is the Harris hawk, my father had one when I was a kid and it was the most intelligent animal outside of humans that I have ever interacted with.
reminds me a bit of the Ted Chiang short story "The Great Silence" https://electricliterature.com/the-great-silence-by-ted-chia...
The species of the story's narrator: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rican_amazon
Frans de Waal has written about these kind of things extensively, and I can recommend him.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frans_de_Waal, in primates
Generosity is when you give something of value without expecting value in return.
The subject was given things of no value and we don't know if it expected a reward.
How do they know the animal wasn't just making the only move it had out of boredom, or that it expected reciprocity but didn't get it?
The subject was given things of no value and we don't know if it expected a reward.
How do they know the animal wasn't just making the only move it had out of boredom, or that it expected reciprocity but didn't get it?
> How do they know the animal wasn't just making the only move it had out of boredom
The parrots only exchanged tokens when it would actually help the other parrot, meaning the subject understood the other parrot's test and wasn't acting randomly.
> or that it expected reciprocity but didn't get it?
Ultimately, all generosity is predicated on an expectation of reciprocity ("Do unto others..."). The difference is how long the subject is willing to wait for it. The subject was in a situation where immediate reciprocity wasn't possible.
The parrots only exchanged tokens when it would actually help the other parrot, meaning the subject understood the other parrot's test and wasn't acting randomly.
> or that it expected reciprocity but didn't get it?
Ultimately, all generosity is predicated on an expectation of reciprocity ("Do unto others..."). The difference is how long the subject is willing to wait for it. The subject was in a situation where immediate reciprocity wasn't possible.
> Ultimately, all generosity is predicated on an expectation of reciprocity ("Do unto others...").
Not really, a billionaire donating his fortune doesn't expect to have that given back to him. The richest in the world would never have a hope of reciprocity
Not really, a billionaire donating his fortune doesn't expect to have that given back to him. The richest in the world would never have a hope of reciprocity
A billionaire that donates their fortune is buying a place in history. It's not called the Carnegie-Mellon University for nothing. Being remembered daily a hundred or more years after you die is the most valuable prize one can obtain. Wouldn't you pay billions of dollars for the closest to immortality we can get?
Maybe, but that's also not generosity with expected reciprocity. That's just buying something.
> That's just buying something.
Exactly. Don't look to billionaires to inform yourself about how generosity works; they live in a completely different world.
Exactly. Don't look to billionaires to inform yourself about how generosity works; they live in a completely different world.
OK, so you've shown that sometimes billionaires donations are buying things and not really donations. But that certainly does not account for ALL billionaire donations.
My argument was about RECIPROCITY, which in the billionaire example is not possible regardless of their motives. Even if some are just buying things, there's absolutely no way that every single large donation was given to buy something like a name on a building. There are countless examples of anonymous donors.
Because the idea that all generosity has expected reciprocity is silly and completely unprovable. You would have to change the definition of reciprocity to include any feeling or personal satisfaction, which is completely unknowable. You could never actually prove what that donors intentions were or how they felt after, even if you think you know. And even if you could that would be a huge stretch of an argument for " expected reciprocity" and not what I was implying by the billionaire example.
My argument was about RECIPROCITY, which in the billionaire example is not possible regardless of their motives. Even if some are just buying things, there's absolutely no way that every single large donation was given to buy something like a name on a building. There are countless examples of anonymous donors.
Because the idea that all generosity has expected reciprocity is silly and completely unprovable. You would have to change the definition of reciprocity to include any feeling or personal satisfaction, which is completely unknowable. You could never actually prove what that donors intentions were or how they felt after, even if you think you know. And even if you could that would be a huge stretch of an argument for " expected reciprocity" and not what I was implying by the billionaire example.
There are many anonymous charity givers.
Yeah but how many of those billionaires donate anonymously?
Also there is the self satisfaction that will always prevent any deed from being truly selfless.
Also there is the self satisfaction that will always prevent any deed from being truly selfless.
Selflessness or altruism are not the same things as reciprocity.
The capacity to be bored in itself is a sign of intelligence. The ability to identify an independent intelligence with its own goals, discern those goals, identify a course of action that will help that intelligence, and then execute that course of action simply because you're bored, is evidence of higher intelligence than we expect from fellow humans most of the time.
Hasn’t this behavior been observed in other non-great-ape species? I know there are reports of dolphins working cooperatively with human fishers and domestic dogs having similar behavior. It’s not far off from helping members of the same species.
Killer whales were recorded by whalers as directing larger whales towards the killing area in return for feeding rights on the dead whales.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Tom_(killer_whale)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Tom_(killer_whale)
I'd even say working cooperatively with a different species is a step above doing so with your own species, because you have to bridge the cognition gap and model another species' mental processes as well as your own.
Whales help other species against killer whales.
I think altruism and good is the natural evolution of the universe. People fear aliens but I feel any race that hasn’t extinguished itself has already realized that doing good and love are the best way.
If the aliens see us the way we see cattle it won't matter that they are altruistic.
If they've actually solved crossing the distances required, we're probably more like bugs or bacteria.
There is nothing magic about crossing these distances, we can do it right now. It’s just very expensive and nobody wants to spend the money.
"I read sci-fi in my moms basement and because I want it to be true it is!"
No, we can't.
So let's ingore the whole "we don't live long enough to make the trip". Because we don't.
So if we're going to go, it's a generation ship. Which is currently magic. Our MVP experiments trying to do this on earth have failed, not in space with all the crazy complications that incurs.
So there's no reason to think our meatbags can go at any price. So....
We've never built a machine that can work for a 1000 years. That's a fraction of what you need to go to another star.
So the fact that there is nothing magic about crossing these distances is exactly the reason we can't do it right now. And probably never can.
No, we can't.
So let's ingore the whole "we don't live long enough to make the trip". Because we don't.
So if we're going to go, it's a generation ship. Which is currently magic. Our MVP experiments trying to do this on earth have failed, not in space with all the crazy complications that incurs.
So there's no reason to think our meatbags can go at any price. So....
We've never built a machine that can work for a 1000 years. That's a fraction of what you need to go to another star.
So the fact that there is nothing magic about crossing these distances is exactly the reason we can't do it right now. And probably never can.
Flight to the moon was beyond reach in 1943, but it was clear that it’s possible to do and what technologies need to be developed. This later was done at great expense.
We are in the similar situation now, we know what needs to be developed, it’s just very expensive and we can’t (and should not) mobilize entire earth population to pay for it. If we do, we can colonize nearest star systems in few thousand years and Milky Way in couple million.
We are in the similar situation now, we know what needs to be developed, it’s just very expensive and we can’t (and should not) mobilize entire earth population to pay for it. If we do, we can colonize nearest star systems in few thousand years and Milky Way in couple million.
The next star is a trillion some odd times farther away than the moon. You're trying to draw a linear relationship that's equivalent to "I stepped off my porch" and "I went to the moon".
It's fantasy.
It's fantasy.
I have a hypothesis that technological progress and egalitarianism are correlated, but it's not provable.
Altruism is nature only works within same species since it’s beneficial for their genes propagation.
Expansionist species capture resources and eliminate threats. As such we are lucky to be at the edge of the galaxy and not discovered.
Expansionist species capture resources and eliminate threats. As such we are lucky to be at the edge of the galaxy and not discovered.
https://www.cell.com/cms/10.1016/j.cub.2019.11.030/attachmen...