'Bin chickens' learned to wash poisonous cane toads
bbc.com
bbc.com
I just want to say that as a Queenslander who has had Ibises run off with whole steaks brazingly zoinked straight off a sizzling bbq, I think reviled is a bit hyperbolic. I have think people mostly have a grudging respect for these bbq bandits
If you go to Bunnings and look for a BBQ, heaps of them have lids.
https://www.bunnings.com.au/products/outdoor-living/barbecue
But they’re pretty chill dudes. Lots of others birds will try to shove them off somewhere else and they’ll either wander away off their own accord, or they’ll completely ignore the other birds (probably a mynah) and just keep eating. They never really fight, they just mosy along
Then you see this big lump of a bird try to find a comfy spot in a big tree which isn’t the most graceful sight so it’s kinda funny. And then out of nowhere (because they’re so quiet) they’ll remind you that love a good HONK. Sometimes they’ll even HONK, HONK, HONK, EEEEK
they’re alright
They never used to bother Sydney very much until one bird, yes one, was brought into the city on a boat. It managed to get back to it's home land, the next year, hundreds of them migrated into the city and raided the abundant food available in the cities bins.
These aren't stupid birds, they're intelligent and communicate with their peers about food availability.
This riverine habitat loss is why you unfortunately see them nesting in palms in the city. It resembles the reedy habitat theycome from and keeps them safe-ish from urban cats, rats, etc. The downside is theyre not arborial birds and they lose tons of chicks and fledglings to falling out of the trees and dying. Same with appearing “dirty” because they dont have proper water access to clean and preen.
In short, we destroyed their habitat and theyre hanging on where they still can. Welcome to the lucky country.
We may have destroyed their natural habitat but I reckon they're more than just hanging on—they seem to have adapted to our city environment extremely well.
Thanks, you've answered a question I posed above before reading your post when I said they're the dirtiest scruffiest birds I've seen and wondered how clean they'd be in a natural environment.
One thing is certain, they're bold, smart, calculating and cunning (you've no doubt noticed how they'll steal food the split second you cease paying immediate attention to it).
Can't say I like them much but I admire their survival tactics.
Yes, I've been violently harassed by them while waking and riding bicycles through "their" territory - many people disagree, but I still think they are great.
Let them see you and see that you are not threat. Treat them like a dog you want to gain the confidence of an you can't go too far wrong. Don't chase them, just or rush at them, just let them that you belong in the space as well and are not a threat.
Don't feed them. They don't need you to and unless you do it right you can make them very sick.
They are also complete arseholes and appear to teach their which humans to attack.
Yes they are referred to as bin chickens by a lot of city people, and you do see them raiding bins, but for the most part it’s a bit of a joke and done affectionately. Saying they are reviled is a bit strong! Particularly in a country with monstrosities like the funnelweb and mouse spiders…
Great if they turn out to be a natural control on cane toads!
These are Raccoons. Clever little bastards. They can get into just about anything.
Raccoons also like to wash their food.
The article really doubled down on the “reviled” nature of the birds that I figured they must know something. Do they really steal food from our of peoples hands? I’ve had a miner do that but the Ibis near me seem to stay away from people.
But then again, this is the BBC. I don’t know if there exists a worse news organisation that regards itself more highly.
Cockatoos, on the other hand, can fuck the fuck right off
what better way to explain it then having someone from OZ do it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvkkDRiLYkI
Ever see a bird chase away a Tiger??
The reason I ask is that there seems to be a vast difference in intelligence between species. Some birds don't just seem dumb to us but are so in that their actions likely endanger the species—for example, birds that allow cuckoos to parasitize their nests with their eggs and actually go on raise the cuckoo's young which is obviously not its kin compared to birds that are clearly very smart such as ravens, ibis and currawongs.
I have currawongs in a tree near my house and one bird in particular clearly recognizes me from other people, moreover, it knows by my actions whether I'm likely to feed it or not quite some time before I actually do so (it seems to quickly take measure of my mood so to speak). It also knows when I'm annoyed with it, especially so when it rummages around in my overfull wheelie bin when the lid isn't properly shut—when caught in the act it flies off onto a branch and stares at me the moment I appear (even if I'm not close to the bin). At other times he hangs around so close to me I could just about reach out and grab him (he's wary of me but certainly not timid about getting close even when I have no food).
I may be wrong but I simply cannot image that a bird with the inate intelligence of this currawong would let itself be a surrogate for raising a cuckoo's young.
It seems to me this differential in intelligence between bird species is huge but I'd love to have an actual measure of it.
BTW, when currawongs are nesting it's not advisable to get too close to the tree or you'll likely be dive-bombed by them (they can be quite vicious).
I imagine birds raise cuckoos not because they think they are their offspring, but because of some instinctive imperative like we mammals have for raising any kind of puppy.
Is there any definitive research on this?
I don't have research documents on hand atm, but I do have a terrifying video about them from zefrank: https://youtu.be/9TZQDA2yabg
I think I've learned more from that story on 'Bin chickens than any other HN story in quite a while, it took me down all sorts of alleys, research papers, etc.
Initially I wasn't even going to click on this story as there are so many of them on HN and I've only a casual interest in birds from the fact that I see then in my neighborhood. It's interesting really how things turn out (and how one learns things).
And expecting a bird to be "intelligent" in this situation would imply a source of knowledge about what an egg is supposed to look like.
I should have been more perceptive and not mixed these. This begs the question that I've posed elsewhere: the cuckoo and other parasitic birds would, I'd reckon, also act out of inate gene-based expression in that they'd have to be quite selective about which species of birds they lay their eggs in (as I said, if they were to lay eggs in an osprey or eagle's nest then they'd likely be food).
Any info on this?
Vicious and horrible.
It may surprise you but from my limited experience I agree with you that currawongs are about the meanest most mercenary omnivore I've seen. I suppose I've had a casual interest in them from early on, when as child of about five one attacked me whilst I was walking with my mother in a park. It dive-bombed me and its beak left my head bleeding.
I never feed them regularly but only when it suits me such as when I'm eating or have scraps immediately to hand and it's only when I've time. The reason is that the birds and one in particular will come very close to me where I can study their behavior in response to things I do such as moving around, staring at them and so on. From this it's clear to me that currawongs are significantly more intelligent than say pidgins or seagulls (having observed them in similar situations) and on a spectrum I'd put the ibis somewhere between them and currawongs but closer to the latter. It's their intelligence that holds my interest.
Feeding currawongs means that I can be within a meter or so of them for quite some minutes. What I found intriguing is how quickly they learn and remember and they do so for a long time. As I said, they know me and others in the neighborhood, they have no difficulty in distinguishing between people and they show this by responding very differently to each person they've become aware of. I can be away for weeks and sometimes several months can pass between my interactions with them yet they still specifically remember me from others.
Outside domesticated pets, they are essentially the only animal I've had regular interaction with that has sufficient cognition and intelligence to single me out from others and remember the fact. That alone makes them fascinating from an observational perspective (essentially it's curiosity that drives my interaction with them).
Note: I'm not an expert in animal behavior nor do I have anything other than a general interest in the subject (I've a technology-based background).
The other species live with the parasitism grudgingly not obliviously!
Surely Reed Warblers know the chick is not their own so what's going on?
The only logic I can come up with is that there's a symbiotic relationship between cuckoos and birds that it paristizes that's evolved over millions of years which is that the cuckoo acts as a population control agent. In effect it regulates the population of birds in the area of bushland it covers and thus ensures that there is enough food, territory to nest etc. for all birds in the area.
If it's not something like that then the Reed Warbler must be dumb. If neither of those ideas fit then what else could it be?
(Look at it this way, the Reed Warbler pair has committed huge resources in building a nest and brooding three eggs. All that is effectively destroyed by the cuckoo so why would a 'sensible' Reed Warbler continue to feed the cuckoo chick?)
Same reason humans raise step kids. Assumed Parental obligations.
By and by I suppose.
The short and overly simplified explanation is that a considerable amount of research has been done over many years and it's deemed useful for various reasons, understanding species longevity, rates of extinction, the evolutionary one-upmanship between the parasites and those who stand to lose by being parasitized and so on. What is clear is that there are many quite logical and reasonable theories about said matters but little actual proof so more research is needed before any definitive conclusions are drawn.
At least on the matter of brood parasites this wiki is a good place to start as it provides a reasonably comprehensive overview (other sites are more specific and some I've only skimmed so I'm not in the position to comment about them): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brood_parasite.
One thing for certain is that these matters are complex and often there are multiple-threaded explanations (that is different explanations can simultaneously apply to each case without conflict).
As I said to nullc there has to be some other reason why, say, the Reed Warbler continues to feed a cuckoo chick twice its size with now no viable offspring of its own if it's not oblivious to the fact (see video in that post).
I don't find it surprising at all. Imagine a mother from the earliest humans, not equipped with complex language, formal education, or a civilization-- gives birth. Somehow an infant chimp is slipped into her lap along with her own baby.
Both babies look weird, one is strangely hairless one is strangely harry. Both cling on and nurse. Seems obvious to me that mom is going to try to tend to both babies.
And a chimp isn't evolved to be a human brood parasite. If it were it would be more similar to humans in whatever ways mattered to the instincts and perceptions of the host (but not necessarily look very similar to a third party species).
So if you could at least imagine this working on a primitive human, then it's not at all surprising that it works on some birds.
In some sense you could see that capacity for raising a foreign young as itself a sign of intelligence: A highly unintelligent species would only raise its young in ways triggered by an extremely narrow and exact set of signals, while a more intelligent species may be more able to accommodate the differences and figure out how to make things work even when they're not quite right.
Think of all the scams modern humans fall for that can be warded off by "hey, watch out for scams that look like xyz". In both the birds case and the early pre-language human case, no one could have warned them that they might be exploited by impersonator babies.
Chickens are the dumbest animal on earth. They're dumber than fish. They're dumber than oysters. They're even dumber than people. They only survive because they breed so much and because we breed so many of them to eat them.
You are what you eat, we say. We eat so much chicken that we've become dumb like them and an animal that does something that a chicken would never do, on account of the animal not being terminally dumb as the chicken, strikes us as really clever. Hey, look at that clever bird, it learned to eat the toads. Yeah, duh. People used to come up with tricks like that all the time, back in the day, when they had to find their food in the wild. Nowadays the greatest challenge in securing sustenance is in finding which aisle the pasta was moved to every time the supermarket hires a new manager.
Intelligence is so overrated. What does it all lead to in the end? We've dominated our environment and now our environment sucks, and btw, it's also dying, with us in it. All those smarts that helped us eat wild animals and poisonous plants, they don't look that smart now, do they?
But maybe those birds, those "bin chickens", are really smart. They've learned to live in our world, even after we've covered up everything with concrete and cars. Maybe when we're gone they'll evolve into a better intelligent species than ours, make a better civilisation than ours. One that is not so smart that it can't avoid destroying itself.
Years ago when thinking about this I used to envisage a graph with a log scale that would indicate the intelligence of brightest humans (the Einsteins of this world), the dumbest ones and also all other supposedly sentient animals extending way down to the simplest forms of life.
I pictured the graph with humans way out in front at the top but closely grouped together (that is there isn't that much difference between the dumbest and smartest human on an absolute scale). The next most intelligent animal on the scale would be widely separated from humans and a long way down the graph (despite the log scale).
In recent years, witnessing some of the things you mention and other antics I've seen, that gap has just about eroded altogether. Now, I no longer have any clear idea where humans should be placed on the graph (I still find it hard to believe how stupid humans can be—and I'm not being elitist about it as I include myself in that category).
Right, we need to reevaluate intelligence, IQ tests don't mean much in the grand schema. I suppose the thing that may distinguish us humans from other species is that at least some of us know how stupid we humans are.
BTW, I'd still group all humans pretty much together on an absolute scale (if it were ever possible to construct one), we're all pretty much the same.
PS: you're right about chickens, they're about as dumb as it gets when intelligence is measured in cognitive terms, but as you infer surviving with humans implies evolutionary intelligence (again what is intelligence?). Nevertheless, the difference in intelligence (in its cognitive sense) between chickens and covids and currawongs are miles apart—a comparison would almost be a non sequitur.
You may also wish to answer the question I've asked elsewhere, which is the cuckoo's inate behavior must also extend to the species it selects as surrogate hosts for its young (would it risk laying an egg in an eagle's nest at the risk of becoming food?).
I've since done a little research on this and now have a somewhat clearer understanding of brood parasites and I've learned that it's no simple matter. However, one thing is apparent and that's despite there being many quite logical theories about it there's no clear proof about why the parasites and those being parasitized act the way they do—see my comment to vagrantJin.
We come home with a stuffed toy bin chicken toy and book for our little niece which is the no. 1 toy at the mo.
Also Barry the Bin Chicken 2032 - https://barrythebinchicken.com.au/
Wow. That's a lot of toads!
One or a few, here & there? Yes, true. But talk to someone who's worked at removing invasive plant species for a decade or two, and recalls the "before". If the mortality rate of $Invasive can be seriously pushed up for several generations, in a modest-sized area, then the local population of $Invasive can often be reduced by 10X to 1000X. That is not wiping it out - but it's enough to hugely reduce the environmental damage caused by $Invasive.
(Yes, a toad can get around far more than a plant. OTOH, birds can't eat berries off a toad, then poop out seeds 25km away. And there's probably no soil seed bank - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_seed_bank - with toad eggs.)
These sound like excellent ideas that I will definitely incorporate into the next invasive species I make.
(Not sure if /s. Troll worldbuilding is fun.)
Much better manners than the bears.
On other trips they will even eat out of your hand (not permitted in parks, but you can't corrupt a Whiskeyjack or Raven - they already are).
Apparently other animals are eating them with varying success - https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-11-01/cane-toad-nat...
Edit: the title used to say “How ‘Bin chickens’ learned…”
Unlike the method that crows and eagles are known to use - flip over and eat from the underside.
RIP Cordelia (or "Cordoglia").