Hacker News Reader

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sqnxlzLakU

This is more about beehaiviour research and playing with your balls, but the basic idea seems to be that even "small" brains do the same stuff the big brains do - like forming relationships, playing for fun, using tools, etc.

> beehaiviour

Heh :)

PS. "Hive" five I guess?

To bee or not to bee - that is the question.

It's all buzzwords.-

> the basic idea seems to be that even "small" brains do the same stuff the big brains do

The shorter distances would allow for lower latencies, making the perception of time different. What we take a couple seconds to decide they must think took minutes and we are incredibly slow thinkers. The number of connections is lower, as is the neuron count, and I imagine they can't hold as much in working memory as we do, but, apart from that, they appear to be very smart.

Portia jumping spiders are incredibly smart. People have done experiments where they place the spiders in a complex environment with food in a hard to access location and they basically just sit there looking around until they've figured out a route to get the food. It takes them a while, I guess because they can only process so much information at a time, but they're remarkably good at doing it.

It's not that simple -- small animals move their bodies much faster than us, but the time scale at which they think seems to be similar to ours.

There was a 2022 study on rats which showed that when they listen to music, they will spontaneously move their bodies to the rhythm, like us. And the range of tempos where this effect is strongest is 120-140bpm.

https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/focus/en/press/z0508_00262.html

Which is also why I think young children are so annoying to adults. They just think way faster, since they have much less things to consider and past experience to compare with, so they already skipped to the overnext topic, while the adult is still considering the last thing. Also all the people I talked to about it and myself report feeling that time becomes faster is you become older. There is of course also the affect that you perceive time less as you don't pay attention, because it is just regular Tuesday, but even if you only do new stuff for a day, it feels shorter than when you were young.

I agree - time keeps getting faster and faster as I age. In addition to less novelty and change, I like to think of it in terms of the fraction of your life lived so far. When you're 5 years old, every day is about 550 ppm (parts per million) of your life. When you're 35, every day is only 80 ppm. Of course it feels faster!

This was such a good watch, thank you

Crows are somewhat unique as an animal in that they've got the ability to pass information off to other members of the flock, and to continue passing information down through generations as necessary. The bird saved in this story, if it has offspring, will likely teach them that she is a safe and beloved human. At the very least, there's lots of research into this topic. I can't speak to the others, sorry.

Yes! This is a heartwarming story. But the opposite is true. If you happen to piss off a crow, your life will become very difficult. You might as well move towns.

That makes me wonder: If you happened to piss them off, is there a way to appease them again sort of by redeeming yourself and thereby amend the diplomatic relationship?

I feel like there's gotta be

Have a friend, in a mask, kidnap one of the crows. Then you appear, and set it free, and give it cookies. (And your friend stops using the mask.)

This makes the assumption that crows can identify people only by the face. It's quite likely they could recognise something else.

That is not so much an assumption as a conclusion, backed up by research:

https://urban.uw.edu/news/crows-hold-grudges-against-individ...

https://crowlingo.org/journal/marzluff-mask-experiments-expl...

I think the person meant that it might not be for the mask-wearer. They might be targeted by crows even when the mask comes off because the crows might still recognize them from their walking style or body odor or voice etc.

They explicitly are not able to recognize once the mask comes off. That’s the point.

That's why you use your friend!

Or even better: use a (visiting) tourist.

Mostly face - at least crows. There were experiments done with people in mask, and when they remove the mask - crows would no longer recognize them

There was a story a few years back about a woman who did that. She was a target, so she tried leaving treats, and ended up converting one of the crows to her side and it then came to her defense against other birds.

So we need to research if we can apologize to crows.

Here in Australia, magpies do something similar but in a bad way. During nesting season they'll swoop you, remember your face, and keep targeting you. My daughter got attacked two weeks ago.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-30/magpie-swooping-seaso...

Yeah this happened to me when I was around 12 years old on my way to school. I spotted the crow one day in the middle of the road and thought it was a raven because it was so big for a crow. Then a car came and I guess it thought I attacked it with the car so it got pissed. Since that day it started attacking me every day as I went to school for about 1-2 years. Nothing too serious though but I had to be on my guard, it would literally position itself right where the sun was so I couldn't really see when it would strike at me if it did - most of the time it just screamed at me 5 meters away.

> Crows are somewhat unique as an animal in that they've got the ability to pass information off to other members of the flock, and to continue passing information down through generations as necessary.

Not that unique. My grandfather was a forester, his favourite time passing was to whistle back bird's song, changing only a little bit at a time, turning it slowly into something totally different. The changed song was passed to other birds and offsprings no probs.

The result was quite hilarious, you went to the primeval woods and you could hear wild birds singing the Für Elise... I bet it freaked out ornithologists!

(My granddad died about 30 years ago, sadly the bird "dialect" has vanished since, but I still have some old tapes in the attic.)

This is an absolutely beautiful story! My mother always whistles back at the birds, but mostly just tries to imitate their songs. But she used to play "Für Elise" on the piano when I was a child :)

Please digitize and post some of these recordings!

Omg please

Not surprising it died out, and probably quickly. Birds trained to sing Fur Elise would probably be at a disadvantage in attracting a mate imprinted on a more typical song.

Restoring avian song culture is an important part of conservation.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article/380/1925/202...

> will likely teach them that she is a safe and beloved human

I like to think the crows from my neighborhood think I'm their cat food god.

When our cat was thirsty, he used to go into our shower unit and start knocking bottles of shampoo over until we put the shower head down low and turned it on gently so he could have a drink.

Our dog has started doing the same, from watching the cat.

As a child we had a duck that would come nest in our garden for many years, it was really quite friendly, and would come up the patio doors every morning to beg for some food, didn't seem to be afraid of us. She would have her little ducklings follow her around the garden until they eventually went off to some lake not too far away.

Our cats were absolutely terrified of it.

> Our cats were absolutely terrified of it.

I knew a couple that had a pretty big cat, and a parrot (I think an African Grey, but can't remember, exactly).

The parrot would walk around the house, and the cat would ignore it.

I asked if the cat ever attacked the parrot, and the answer was "Yes. Once.".

I guess we know how that went LOL

> Does anyone know of any research into this or books identifying behavior like this?

"Ethology" is the study of the behaviour of non-human animals - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethology (see "References" for books).

An old soviet-era book, Science for Everyone: Ethology, What Animals Do and Why? is a great read on this - https://mirtitles.org/2013/10/08/science-for-everyone-etholo... I had read this when i was young and it has always stayed with me. It gives a nice overview of the domain and is highly recommended.

You will like reading Niko Tinbergen's Curious Naturalists

Hummingbirds are weird. I had assumed that given the size of their brains, they'd be not as smart (naive assumption). But they are curious critters! I have a few who visit my backyard, where I have a chair which noone uses. The other day I decided to sit down in the chair and soak in the sun (a rarity in SF, I might add) with my eyes closed. And soon I heard a low buzzing sound, and what do you know? A hummingbird was hovering about a foot away from my face, observing me. It backed off a bit when I opened my eyes, but did hover around for a few more seconds before flying away. The control they have on their flight is unbelievable. They can hover with so much precision!