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Posted by Kris Krieger on October 26, 2007, 3:47 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.
>>> [...]
>>>
>>
>> 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.
My sister (lives in Sydney) has also related some interesting stories of
clever (and mischevioyus ;) ) Australian birds.
Re: talking, the sound-imitation aspect is less surprising than it should
be - birds seem to have superb sound-recognition; recall that Penguins
can identify the call/voice of their specific mate even within teh din of
thousands of braying individuals.
Songbirds are born with a basic sens of how their songs should go, but
it's been shown that learnign plays a *vital* role in developing the
song. And, in the world of canary-breeding, people who enter
competitions for singing canaries (the American Singer being a specifc
sort of cross between a traditional type of English canary with a loud
voice but pleasing shape, and the Gareman HArtz Mountain and, IIRC, Dutch
Waterslager type(s)), competitors know that any canary's song, and
especially a champion singer's song, is much improved by playing melodic
music, with Tchaikovsky's symphonic works, back when I was raising them
at least, being a favorite.
IOW, just as with mammals, including humans, the *ability* to vocalize is
inborn, but there has to be actual learning for communication to occur.
One resualt is that geogrpahically-separated populations of songbir
species develop different "dialects".
Anyway, going back to parrots/psitticines, vocalizations are a major
foundation of flock cohesion, probably developed because parrots tend to
dwell in forested areas where visibility is not always reliable (which is
also why even tiny psitticines can be so *loud*).
Larger parrots also tend to mate for life. So "vocla bonding" is a
genetic trait. What is far more fascinating is the reasoning
capabilities of many birds, which can be almost creepy when it comes to
corvids (especially ravens) and larger parrots (especially the African
Grey). I'm not familiar with teh Australian Magpie, but in nature,
niches are always exploited, so we should not be surprised that a lark-
relative could fill the niche that corvids occupy on other continents ;)
>
>> because the idea has always been that intelligence is a function of
>> the
>>ration between brain mass and body mass.
(( Oops, I meant "ratio" - my typing is pathetic... ))
>
> Not sure that is the current view - don't we give more weight to
> synapses these days?
>
I think it depends upon the person. Some "scientists" are *so* obsessed
with being anti-antrhopomorphizing that they refuse to go beyond seeing
any/all animals as anything more than robots, and will simply deny (not
prove wrong - simply insult) any results that might indicate otherwise.
Some become ossified - at which point, they are no longer truely
scientists, because a Scientist looks at results and data and evidence,
even when they fly in the face of preferences and pet theories.
Also, I'm not sure that "synapses* is all that differnt from saying
"brain size".
I'm convinced that a huge part of the "surprisingly" high, i.e.
"mammalian", level of avian intellignce is a matter of mamallian
redundancy (which is well-known) versus avian NON-redundancy (nto
something I've ever read about anywhere, but based upon my observations
of birds which suffered stroke or other brain injury).
I suppose different peopl ehave different fascinations, but one of my own
far-too-numerous :( fascinations is with the biology, physiology,
structure, and so on, of birds - in a way, it *all* comes down to
structure - not only the skeleton and slek body-shapes, but also, brain
structure, neurons, the "lock-and-key" shapes that molecules take, which
in turn allows fo renzymatic functions and basically *all* biochemistry
of living things. OK, for that matter, the structure of Electron Shells,
which form the basis for atomic bonding and molecule formation...but
that's a different "Kris Blitherfest" <LOL!>
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