Home
Posted By: grelber Australian birds have weaponized fire ... - 01/10/18 07:30 PM
Australian birds have weaponized fire be... make us afraid

Scientific article: Intentional Fire-Spreading by “Firehawk” Raptors in Northern Australia

ADDENDUM

If you're interested in animal consciousness and sentience, you might want to check out What is it like to be a bat?, a paper by American philosopher
Thomas Nagel, first published in The Philosophical Review in October 1974, and later in Nagel's Mortal Questions (1979).

And anything by Donald R. Griffin, father of cognitive ethology.

Here's a little list of worthwhile reading:

Halberstadt A. Zoo Animals and Their Discontents. The New York Times Magazine, July 6, 2014. Available from: http://www.nytimes.com/ 2014/07/06/magazine/zoo-animals-and-their-discontents.html Last accessed December 10, 2014.

Grandin T, Johnson C. Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals. Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009.

Griffin DR. The Question of Animal Awareness: Evolutionary Continuity of Mental Experience. New York: Rockefeller University Press, 1976.

Griffin DR. Animal Thinking. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1984.

Griffin DR. Animal Minds: Beyond Cognition to Consciousness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.

pictures or it didn't happen.

(heck, I want video of that!)
Oh, it happened.

In addition to the other references proffered, I strongly recommend Bernd Heinrich's Mind of the Raven (New York: Cliff Street Books, 1999), wherein inter alia he reports on a raven's guiding a cougar to his wilderness cabin (opining that the raven was seeking the leftovers of a cougar's kill, namely him).
This is one of the best books you will ever read.

Corvid behavior will blow your mind (if it hasn't already).

I have seen (several years back, in late spring) what was ostensibly a family of crows "sitting shiva" for a fallen family member (apparently killed by a car). The body was next to the curb and the rest of the family was sitting [obviously standing, literary license on my part] silently in a semicircle on the curb. Even though I was in the middle of my morning jog, I watched for 10-15 minutes. They moved only slightly and made not a sound, only looking at the body in the street. When I went by next day, the body was still there (intact).
[I will never forget that and even now it brings a tear to my eye to recount it.]

During the spring and summer months during my early morning runs I've taken to dispensing handfuls of peanuts in a number of spots, originally announcing my presence to a number of crow cliques with a duck-like quack. It doesn't taken too long for them to recognize me and caw, whereupon I dispense the peanuts, which they dutifully collect upon my departure. And sometimes they'll follow me for another handout. (Not quite as cool as the little girl's backyard feeding on YouTube, but delightful nonetheless.)
Posted By: ryck Re: Australian birds have weaponized fire ... - 01/12/18 07:20 PM
Originally Posted By: grelber
During the spring and summer months during my early morning runs I've taken to dispensing handfuls of peanuts in a number of spots, originally announcing my presence to a number of crow cliques with a duck-like quack. It doesn't taken too long for them to recognize me and caw.....

They are able to recognize faces and even pick them out of a crowd. If you haven't already seen it, you'll enjoy this.
Back a while (a couple years) CTV or CBC had an hour-long special on corvids — which you may well have seen or, if not, is probably available somewhere on the Web.
Not only could crows recognize individual human faces (wearing masks) in an urban environment but they were able to culturally transmit that recognition across generations, especially when those faces were associated with unpleasant experiences. Way freaky!

At this point in ethological pursuits, I think that we can dispense with the term "anthropomorphization", at least in its derogatory sense as applied to animal sentience and consciousness. René Descartes was wrong.

My favorite quote in this regard is by Henry Beston in The Outermost House (1928):

We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals.
Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion.
We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves.
And therein we err, and greatly err.
For the animal shall not be measured by man.
In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear.
They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.


(Everything written by Beston is worthy of a read.)
Posted By: Ira L Re: Australian birds have weaponized fire ... - 01/13/18 05:08 PM
Originally Posted By: grelber
René Descartes was wrong.


Perhaps only where his great pickup line is concerned: "I think, therefore I am."

He was right about the Cartesian coordinate system. wink
Originally Posted By: Ira L
Originally Posted By: grelber
René Descartes was wrong.

Perhaps only where his great pickup line is concerned: "I think, therefore I am.

I'd say most assuredly!
Originally Posted By: Ira L
Originally Posted By: grelber
René Descartes was wrong.

Perhaps only where his great pickup line is concerned: "I think, therefore I am."

Since the discussion relates to animals ...
Descartes believed (as did many in his time) inter alia that non-human animals were neither sentient or conscious. Ergo, as a "speciesist" he was wrong.

Do read the Halberstadt article (at least) for further insights.
© FineTunedMac