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Posted by Kris Krieger on October 18, 2007, 7:09 pm
Justa bit of "fluff" - video of Cockatoo dancing - one of the funniest I've
ever seen, even keeps pretty good time with the music...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j_fxs8mUcQ
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Posted by Troppo on October 19, 2007, 5:53 am
> Justa bit of "fluff" - video of Cockatoo dancing - one of the funniest
> I've ever seen, even keeps pretty good time with the music...
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j_fxs8mUcQ
>
>
Yep, clever blighters. Around here they tend to give up living with people
and go back to the wild. There will often be a squawking mass of them, and
the lead bird will often be shouting something like "who's a pretty boy
then?" or "woof woof" if the dog is in the yard. The dog really hates that
one - one day its going to get just a little bit too close to her and that
will be that :-)
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Posted by Kris Krieger on October 19, 2007, 7:30 pm
>
>> Justa bit of "fluff" - video of Cockatoo dancing - one of the
>> funniest I've ever seen, even keeps pretty good time with the
>> music...
>>
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j_fxs8mUcQ
>>
>>
>
> Yep, clever blighters. Around here they tend to give up living with
> people and go back to the wild. There will often be a squawking mass
> of them, and the lead bird will often be shouting something like
> "who's a pretty boy then?" or "woof woof" if the dog is in the yard.
> The dog really hates that one - one day its going to get just a little
> bit too close to her and that will be that :-)]
That's funny ;)
When I lived in Monrovia, CA, there were feral conures, i think htey were
Chreey-Headed COnures - a flock used to visit myneighbor's qumkwat <?SP?>
every day. I put out water for 'em. What a riot! THey always put me into
a good mood :)
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Posted by Kris Krieger on October 19, 2007, 7:39 pm
>
>> Justa bit of "fluff" - video of Cockatoo dancing - one of the
>> funniest I've
>> ever seen, even keeps pretty good time with the music...
>>
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j_fxs8mUcQ
>
> My MIL has had a gray one (Cockatiel - smaller) named Ruffles for
> about 10 years now and he's pretty smart.
> I haven't spent much time around smart birds so I'm easily impressed
> by him. He's especially fond of my wife and we believe its because of
> her long blond hair.
> He seems wary of me and I believe its because of my facial hair.
> Beleive it or not my wife has talked to him on the phone, then he yaps
> about it for an hour afterward, over and over and over.
>
>
Well, I'm something of a Bird Nut, so I go for the bird stories.
I have a theory about this, tho' - people, including scientific types,
are generally amazed that birds can be so smart (esp. psitticines and
corvids, whcih can be slmost scary <g>), because the idea has always been
that intelligence is a function of the ration between brain mass and body
mass. Humans have a lot of brain mass in proportion to body mass, chimps
and various dolphins (including Orcas) come next, and so on.
But my theory is that this rule fails with birds, because, having evolved
to be specialized for flight, they do not have *redundancy*.
I got this idea from raising canaries, and saw what happened when a
couple suffered strokes (yeah, i got them checked).
With humans, and some mammals, strokes can be survived because ther eis
so much redundancy, so many parts of ht ebrain that aren't used a lot,
that, if one part of the brain is destroyed, other parts can take over
and restore much or even all of the lost function.
But birds cannot have redundancy, precisely *because* it leads to a heavy
brain - their heads would become too heavy to support, or at least,
tehy'd be off-balance during flight. I mean, they even evolved minimized
sex orgnas, as an adaptation for flight.
Therefore, much as some humans have been known to literally lose half, or
nearly half, their brains, and still function well, birds function with a
non-redundant brain.
So, to put it one way, they can be "twice as smart" as one would
otherwise expect, given their brain size, and the rations o fbrain mass
to body mass.
That's my theory.
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Posted by Troppo on October 20, 2007, 10:06 am
>
>>
>>> Justa bit of "fluff" - video of Cockatoo dancing - one of the
>>> funniest I've
>>> ever seen, even keeps pretty good time with the music...
>>>
>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j_fxs8mUcQ
>>
>> My MIL has had a gray one (Cockatiel - smaller) named Ruffles for
>> about 10 years now and he's pretty smart.
>> [...]
>>
>
> Well, I'm something of a Bird Nut, so I go for the bird stories.
>
> I have a theory about this, tho' - people, including scientific types,
> are generally amazed that birds can be so smart (esp. psitticines and
> corvids, whcih can be slmost scary <g>)
Like an African Grey I met once who could talk - and curse, in three
accents corresponding to its previous owners, recite numerous entire
nursery rhymes, make meaningful comments on daily events. Sounded human -
not parrot-like.
Minah birds easily learn to talk if they are hand-reared. I have noticed
that the local variety (now something of a pest in Australia) will
actually look right, left, right again before walking across a road.-
pity it seems to be so hard for humans.
An outstanding native in this regard is the Australian Magpie, often
thought to be a corvid, but apparently part of the Lark family. Eg they
can recognise cars and associate them with humans. Car A appears,
associated with human A, who is likely to start digging and watering (A =
my son the landscaper who used to bring stuff home, do a bit of afternoon
digging, disturb insects, mice etc). So when his car appears the sentry
bird sends out a call for all the others.
Sons B & C will feed the Magpie chick on the verandah, and don't care if
it makes a racket. Son A doesn't like the noise - so if son A is there,
the parents make sure the chick keeps quiet.
> because the idea has always been that intelligence is a function of the
>ration between brain mass and body mass.
Not sure that is the current view - don't we give more weight to synapses
these days?
> [...]
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