January 29, 2004

The Birds First crows are making tools, and then a complaining parrot. Now there's one with a sense of humor, too.
posted by kenko 20 years ago
  • Click here! Click here! *nothing happens* (Bird snickering.)
  • (Appears to be an href=" " missing in the last link. Yes, a little birdie told me.)
  • I don't know what's up with this. I just previewed a comment with the link in it and the link turned into "<a href=:></a>" and cut the comment after the anchor off. The same thing happened when I previewed the post itself, but it two of the links went through fine when it was actually posted. I can only imagine that something similar to the weird preview-thing happened to the third. Anyway,here's the URL: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3430481.stm>
  • Ohh... It was almost a double.
  • I think the problem may be that when putting in the link, you don't include the http://. Or is it that you have to include the http://? Oh, dang - I've forgotten again. At least I've gotten okay with comment links - to make a link, you need [a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3430481.stm"]Bird[/a], only with pointy brackets, of course. Bird. On Preview: You know, if this doesn't work, then I will look really stupid.
  • I wonder how well we'd do if we had only a tablespoon or so of brain tucked inside our skulls. We don't know nearly enough about them yet -- but it's certainly clear that 'birdbrain' is a misnomer for these clever creatures.
  • it's certainly clear that 'birdbrain' is a misnomer for these clever creatures. Er, for some of them. Chickens, for example, are rather, ah, obtuse. (Apologies, naturally, to any chickens reading this.)
  • I'm not sure we can fairly compare wild with domestic birds or animals, Wolof. Intellect in food-yielding domestic animals is scarcely a quality man has selectively bred for. When compared to their wild relatives, it seems many varieties have been dumbed down to an appallign degree. (Understandably, in some cases, for who wants a clever bull careening about the farm?) Turkeys too incompetent to keep from drowning when it rains seem the height of stupidity, but their wild bronze cousins are reputed to be vey wily. Unlike domestic-bred, wild birds either figure out a solution to situations they encounter, or they perish. I only hope the changing conditions humanity is causing to environments won't defeat them in the long run.
  • Domestic vs wild is a fair point to raise, Bees. But many parrots have been bred several generations down and they still can spell better than chkisn cna. Once again, chickens, please attempt to refrain from flaming me. My information is purely personal and as such is best classified as anecdotal.
  • appalign vey Ah, me, spelling bees make me wacky, no doubt of it. So ill do wee shrunken keys perform in combination with my great fat fingers, it's all vey vey surprisign.
  • beeswacky: Bear in mind big chunks of the brain basically correspond to things like "how complex is your colour vision" and "how much body to I have to order around"; this is one reason why animals larger than us (with commesurately larger brains) aren't necessarily smarter. Moreover, much of our brain is redundant to some degree - we certainly seem to have a remarkable ability to remap damaged and destroyed bits of it when required. On top of that, a large chunk of the smarts in the more clever animals relates to how folded the surface is.
  • featherfilter
  • Here's a clever guy. Visusal acuity and other senses as well as information on avian nervous system.