Do we know much about the reliability of crow behavioral science (or whatever the field is called, if it has a name)?
Josh Klein, the fellow who popularized the ideas of crows being trained by a machine to retrieve things for reward, turned out to be extremely misleading[1] about the circumstances and reliability of his research.
Granted, Joshua Klein is not connected to the startup in the popular mechanics link, but interestingly, that startup does cite Klein as their source of inspiration[2] on their website.
Not an expert, but I do not think that you need an evolutionary explanation: birds are often not stupid, and can simply observe that nests with more cigarettes have less parasites.
Do birds spend time observing the nest of their peers? AFAIK the only nests they care about are their own (though I'm definitely not an ornithologist, I'm mostly ignorant about them in general).
But that's the beauty of Darwinism, whether the information is stored in the genes or in their culture (memetically) doesn't matter, the selection/amplification process is the same.
We know they're capable of passing complex information onto each other. What "a bad man's face" looks like for instance, I'm sure some of HN has seen the documentaries on their abilities.
I wonder if they choose nesting material based on insulation properties also. Cigarette stubs are probably great for stuffing into cracks and it is known that plugging air gaps dramatically increases whole house/nest insulation value.
Yep, same way AlphaGo Zero learned to play. It evolved, generation by generation, by selection. People think an agent can't solve a problem unless it has full understanding, but that's not true, selection based on fitness can do it.
Cue fun time with etymology: understand translated to Latin and back yields support, which is significant, kinda, because support vectors are one model of machine intelligence, while DNA is basically a vector, in terms of transcription, or a matrix even, looking closer at the base molecules.
disclaimer: I have n o idea about support vectors, to be honest
Support Vector Machines (SVMs) are a classification technique that was in vogue before 2012, with great results for smallish problems. It's still useful today, but less talked about, I mean, it's just assumed as common knowledge.
i'm wondering if 15-25 generations (that's approximately how many generations of garden birds were there since the invention of the cigarettes with filters) are enough for evolution to actually show this trend here
Tangentially related - there was the russian experiment on fox domestication that had decent success in selecting for "tameability" with just 3 generations.
I think some birds are actually pretty smart and can learn by imitating other birds, so it's a cultural thing. All it takes is one bird to discover it.
Take a look at this video: "Crow uses a vending machine". It was an experiment where they trained crows to collect coins and put them into a vending machine for a few grains.
We have a bird feeder in our garden, which has a river at the bottom and is surrounded by forest, so we get a lot of birds.
I've often noticed blue tits (UK) in particular stealing cigarette ends out of the ashtray that sits on our windowsill. I've read about the "nicotine as an insecticide" theory before, but my understanding is that most birds don't nest all year round, and they seem to take the cigarette ends through autumn and winter.
Maybe they simply get hooked on the nicotine? Used cigarette ends are pretty much oozing with all the nasty stuff, it wouldn't surprise me if some of that ends up in their system, and they develop a liking for it.
That's supposedly the case for NYC pigeons [0], funny in a weird way but actually quite depressing. I wonder how many rats and other rodents are also hooked on cigarette butts?
>”We immediately noticed a large majority of the pigeons display external signs of chemical addiction. They are often found standing in a group outside of a building. They twitch often and look around with sharp turns of the head. They have anti-social tendencies and are quick to fly when confronted. Their breath smells terrible and they leave droppings everywhere they go. After thorough research we have proven that 98% of pigeons in New York City are hooked on nicotine. Each of the birds in the study reek of smoke and are constantly fidgeting and adjusting their wings. We have also observed the hoarse, raspy mating calls of these nicotine-addicted birds."
>The Mayor has started a new program to help these city birds break their addiction. If you notice a pigeon displaying signs of nicotine addiction call 311 to report it and get it the help it needs.
That article is a joke, and there's no real study (it's not even named). The final sentence is obviously not serious: "If you notice a pigeon displaying signs of nicotine addiction call 311 to report it and get it the help it needs."
I figured there was something off about it due to lack of a source, also couldn't find any studies like that when searching, that's why I put the "supposedly" in there.
Still kinda odd that nobody seems to have actually looked into a connection like that.
Sometimes I think life is just one big joke and that I'm going to wake up in a lab with technicians around me laughing "He really believed yellow labradors evolved from wolves! How gullible!"
> To firm up the conclusion, Macías Garcia and his team experimented with 32 house finch nests. One day after the eggs in the nest had hatched, the researchers removed the natural nest lining and replaced it with artificial felt, to remove any parasites that might have moved in during brooding. They then added live ticks to 10 of the nests, dead ticks to another 10 and left 12 free of ticks.
> They found that the adult finches were significantly more likely to add cigarette butt fibres to the nest if it contained ticks. What’s more, the weight of cigarette butt material added to nests containing live ticks was, on average, 40 per cent greater than the weight of cigarette butt material added to nests containing dead ticks.
Another possibility: being fed on by blood-sucking parasites makes birds crave the taste/smell of cigarettes, without any understanding of the insecticidal properties.
It won't let me read the article as I've supposedly "reached my article limit".
From what I can read, before the paywall pops up, this seems based on similar (the same?) research as an old Atlantic article [0] from 2012?
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/startups/news/a28...