Birds will arrive the day before fruit is ripe, and the whole flock will strip the berries, trying each one and dropping the green ones on the ground looking for a ripe one. They can strip a tree in minutes. Why? If they waited a day, the whole flock could have ripe fruit. But its a flock, and any bird that waits just loses out to the ones that don't wait. Tragedy of the commons, played out in evolution.
It's not really tragedy of the commons, as there's no commons in play here, just a resource that a hunter-gatherer style group stumbles upon, then utilises, then moves on. Unlike human populations that destroy shared resources fully cognisant that they're doing themselves and their society future harm, it's not clear that birds or other animals conceive of time (in the planning or scheduling sense) the same way we do.
I do a bit of 'pottering on the land', and the inability to negotiate with animals is truly frustrating, as the damage done is objectively greater than the apparent benefit obtained (as per the wasted green fruit in TFA). Killing is undesirable, deterrents are often ineffective (incomplete, degrade over time) -- I'm drawn to the conclusion growing things in large cages is the most effective and humane way, though it's also the most expensive.
But what is cognizance, really? I wouldn't be so quick to assume that the dynamic is fundamentally different between humans and birds, or even inanimate objects like genes.
Downvotes coming from people who lack cognizance. The whole fact that we suffer from tragedy of commons shows a general lack of high level cognizance in humans, no? Sure, we're a little brighter than birds, but it's all relative.
Oh there certainly is. If there was a way to communicate with, let say wasps, I'm pretty sure that we would come to an agreement that allows me to eat breakfast in the garden without being swarmed, and grants the colony more food, less dead workers, and no fear of eradication.
The article is paywalled but it's a pretty plausible result of group selection.
The self-interested birds will force out the cooperative birds at first, but they are naturally self-limiting by cutting off their own resources.
On the other hand the cooperative birds can ensure that their entire species grow quickly, eventually covering areas that selfish birds haven't reached.
In an alternate universe the cooperative birds might even evolve a "moral" behavior where they actively gang up on and punish cheaters who eat unripe fruits.
I’ve noticed a similar thing plays out in tech company offices with bananas. If you wait for a banana to actually get ripe someone else will have already eaten it.
This had never occurred to me as something someone might do.
I cannot do this thing, as I don't open my desk drawer very often, and a banana is exactly the sort of the sort of thing I would forget about. I'm thinking through how this would play out for me, and it's unpleasant for all involved.
"Do you want ants?! Because that's how you get ants!" — Archer
Well, ripe bananas are too sweet for some people. Bananas that are just starting to ripen are very good (especially because they taste a bit sour with a tiny bit of sugar), better than fully ripened bananas.
I agree. Ripe bananas are revolting to me for some reason. I think it's the mushy texture. I prefer when there is just a hint of green left on the banana.
I cannot upvote these comments enough. I truly dislike the taste of ripe bananas. Sweet yuck. I muchly prefer one that is a bit too green to being a bit too ripe.
My Vietnamese buddy has a taste for not quite ripe fruit. He said in the old country everyone would come steal your fruit as it ripened. He who could stomach the greenest fruit won.
I've got a similar problem with chipmunks and the Marian plums I grow. The chipmunks start raiding the trees when the fruit just begins turning yellow and becoming fragrant. But all they do it take a bite and throw the still somewhat green fruit on the ground.
Cheap Chinese pellet gun is cheaper. I'm sure chipmunk will work nearly interchangeably with squirrel in most recipes and arguably would be a little less white trash.
Ha! I lived next to Vietnamese neighborhood in San Jose in the 90's. Never got to taste the fruit on my trees; gangs of kids would come along a few days before it was ripe and boost one another up and take all the almost-ripe fruit.
But, also, if they waited the farmer might take the crop. From the point of view of the bird, not-quite-ripe fruit is nearly as good, nutrition-wise. So, not really a "tragedy".
Nope. They're dropping the green fruit on the ground, and never go back to it. They're nearly destroying their own food supply, in an effort to beat the rest of the flock to that one berry that ripens early.
I'm thinking this is why we'll never find an herbivore race reaching intelligence and civilization in the galaxy. They get stuck in this anarchistic zero-cooperation state.
To be fair that isn't entirely lossy either in its natural environment. "Wastage" of fruit leads to accidental plantings which leads to some more in the future. Just look at how squirrel stashes have turned into accidental tree farming as unretrieved stashes germinate.
Buffalo being hunted almost to extinction wasn't a case of tragedy of the commons, it was part of a deliberate policy to drive Native Americans from the land.
This hardly tragedy of the commons, as in the long term game there will be more trees distributed throughout the landscape this way. By dropping some of the fruit on the ground it is dispersing the seeds.
Fruit seeds need to tavel longer distances than a shrubs roots to be useful. It’s fruit eaten at significant distance that makes fruit a useful evolutionary strategy.
Would this have a terrible effect on insect populations as well?
The Four Pests Campaign of the Great Leap Forward targeted the sparrow, amongst other animals, because they ate grain. Turns out they also ate a lot of insects, so when the sparrows all died the locusts came in and killed the harvest. These lasers don't kill, but permanently scaring them away from fields could have a similar effect.
The advantage here is you can turn the lasers on right before the harvest (when the birds do damage), but otherwise leave them off and the birds can return.
But, if the birds derive a significant portion of their yearly calories from eating berries during the harvest, you will still do damage to bird populations. Also, an open berry field keeps birds nearby. If the birds can't eat the berries, then what incentive do they have to stick around and eat harmful insects?
I'm not necessarily against the bird-lasers, but it's worth considering their side effects.
I work on a system that strives for 100% efficiency, I think it makes the it extremely fragile. Loss is also tolerance for upset. It might be cheaper to produce more and not implement this system at all. Innovation comes from increase the size of the solution universe over micro optimizations.
I have a tiny amount of experience in bird control. Birds are devious.
I don't mean evil. They're completely amoral, but they're clever. They'll work out what's going on in order to get their food. Things that might take an insect multiple generations to work out and adapt to, a bird might spend a day or a week on.
In the decade I've been shooting, I've seen many countermeasures (and lures) come and go. Scarecrows consistently fail now. Propane cannons just annoy residents. The birds adapt swiftly because their lives depend on it. That is all to say, lasers won't last. I'd be surprised if they work for longer than a few seasons before the birds are simply used to them.
The silly thing is we know why this is an issue. Intensive farming, outrageous field size, the removal of hedgerows and the removal of predator habitats (mature trees) have all meant massive colonies of pigeons and starlings can exist. If you want to start peddling this back you have to reintroduce the natural controls that used to keep things in check.
There's a colossal difference in the amount of power required to blind or even maim a bird and the amount required to humanely dispatch it. You're talking thousands of Watts and pinpoint focussing.
It's just too expensive to park Navy grade laser weaponry on every field.
By comparison this is cheapo clutch of laser pointers strapped to a whirly-gig and that already somehow commands $10k.
When I worked in the fertilizer business both the partners were berry growers. Literally when they figured out their cost of production they allowed for the 'bird's share' of the crop. They tried sound machines, scare crows and air cannons with nothing working very well. They would have been absolutely delighted to have been able to use lasers to deny the birds their share of the crop.
The irony being, entirely possible the birds are providing valuable services in the form of pest control. In other words, maybe they really do deserve a share, & everyone is the better off for it.
Maybe not for the farmer, but how about the general region? What we don’t know about complex interconnects in ecosystems could fill volumes, but we still are happy to disrupt that system for profit. Sometimes we try to disrupt it for seemingly good reasons, like reducing the impact of a disease by killing vectors, only later to discover said vector was also a pollinator.
We’re just too ignorant to be trusted with levers of questionable power over such a complex system.
@vvanders: I hate to break it to you, but raspberries aren’t native to the Americas either. Calling one species invasive while ignoring the plethora of other species which have no significant history in a place is just a word game. In fact raspberries can be classed as invasive, but so what? Raspberries got about a 100 year head start on the starling, so they’re grandfathered in? Feh.
Maybe, but if we continue to build over what we don’t destroy outright, maybe not. Farmer’s fields used to be wild land, along with highways, cities, suburbs, clear cut forests, mines, office parks, etc. Those same birds also have to cope with dwindling insect populations, toxic runoff, pollution, loss of biodiversity, along with habitat loss. It’s sort of like saying that gulls should be able to thrive without trailing fishing boats or stealing our sandwiches, but of course that ignores how overfishing has crushed their food sources.
I’ve been driving through farmland in central North America recently and have been struck by the lack of insects. 30 years ago, a windshield grew thick with locusts and who knows what... not now. In hundreds of miles of backroads saw couple deer and several mice.
It also shocking how little land was left forested and I utilized for agriculture, in a way wildlife could still use the land, in areas like Nebraska (maybe 2-3% and usually only if it can’t be used for crops or cattle). And where they have left patches of forest, it’s used as a hunting area.
Headlines 10 years from now:
"Scientists mystified by 'bird blindness' colony collapse"
"Laser manufacturers found to be spending millions on lobbyist groups"
Many birds are already in dramatic decline from threats like forest fragmentation, southern deforestation, windmills, and cellphone towers. I doubt they’ll be able to kill off black birds and seagulls, though.
> I doubt they’ll be able to kill off black birds and seagulls, though.
In New Zealand, The Seagull has become an endangered species, even though there are lot of them. "Because it's a species that's quite long-lived it can take 100 years before you see a significant change in the numbers. As long as the adults aren't being killed, it will be a long, slow decline. Seagulls can live up to 30 years."
Per tower or in total? I don’t understand how a spinning turbine is safer than a tower, so if you’re talking about it in total then how many extra bird lives will be lost when the number of wind turbines increase drastically?
The theory goes that, as birds have excellent eyesight and use it to navigate, they're more likely to avoid a huge slowly rotating object than a very narrow pointy one.
Sadly, I think it’s a variety of factors pecking away at them from all directions, so to speak. Habitat loss, loss of food stocks, urban, suburban, agricultural and industrial pollution, more buildings to fly into, intentional killing, pets, climate change, and probably even more. Essentially being a bird isn’t working out for them right now.
They fly into it and die since giant metal structures are not found in nature. Makes sense, right? Tens of thousands of birds can die in one night on one tower during migrations.
Such comments are pure negative addition, not adding any value in terms of solving the problem.
It's not even clear if this is a problem: "very little is known about whether lasers can harm the animals' retinas."
The sentiment of this type of comments are also predominantly one-sided, which always is the most important property of any failed attempts of solving any non-trivial large-scale problems.
It's like an invitation to the precautionary principle.
"When the occurrence of any damage, albeit unpredictable in the current state of scientific knowledge, may seriously and irreversibly harm the environment, public authorities shall, with due respect for the principle of precaution and the areas within their jurisdiction, ensure the implementation of procedures for risk assessment and the adoption of temporary measures commensurate with the risk involved in order to preclude the occurrence of such damage"
I think this fails the base rate fallacy test; there are lots of times when mucking with an ecosystem hasn't caused problems, but nobody talks about those.
Failure of an ecosystem is very severe. What does the base rate fallacy test have to say about playing russian roulette? No one talks about the 5/6 times it doesn't cause any problems.
I suppose I might be a little naive, I assumed this use of lasers might be as a weapon but the lasers are "merely" used like a scarecrow. [though the article points out that some scientists will analyze whether this does harm to the birds].
The article points out that this is actually more humane than poisons or guns (which are presumably among previous technologies used to protect the crop).
> Researchers at Purdue University are studying the risk of injury to birds. Principal investigator Esteban Fernandez-Juricic says very little is known about whether lasers can harm the animals' retinas. "What we are trying to assess is whether different levels of energy output of these lasers and different levels of exposure time could cause any kind of retinal injury on the animal," Fernandez-Juricic says. "These retinal injuries could potentially be pretty serious and affect the ability of the animal to see and consequently to find food, mates or refuge."
> Attending seabirds (all species) showed little detectable response to the laser beam during daylight hours. At night however, Northern fulmars (Fulmarus glacialis) showed a transient and localized response at lower vessel speeds (3.5 kts) while feeding in the offal plume. In contrast, gulls in flight at nighttime in pursuit of the vessel showed a strong aversion at higher vessels speeds (11 kts). These results suggest that laser beam detection by birds may be more challenging at high light levels. The implication is that lasers might be modified to increase its visual contrast during the day. From these field trials, lasers appear more likely to scare birds from an abundant food source at low light levels and success may be species and condition specific.
We have blueberries planted at home but the deer always get them first. We’ve just come to regard this as a cheap form of entertainment. We also grow Rainier cherries, but birds spike them with amazing accuracy. They divebomb the tree and somehow spear only the cleanest, freshest, best part of the cherry on their way down. It is impressively accurate work at very high speed.
we grew berries (blackberries, raspberries, loganberries) when I was a kid, but our doberman would always pick the ripe berries before anyone could get to them. she'd peel her lips back and use just her front teeth to pick them and avoid the thorns.
Since most here are not Dutch it requires a bit of explanation , this was a parody video made in the early 2000’s of the countless “QVC” style info/commercials that used to be aired during the day or late at night on dutch television to fill airtime. They would take some b-grade TV products from US (and possibly other countries) and just poorly dub it over for the Dutch market, often by the same guy. These “Tellsell” (which I believe was the actual name of the company) commercials everyone would know about and sometimes joke about the crappy products and commercial style. This parody has all the typical cliches of these commercials like every time the name of the product was mentioned it would be extra sloooow and disadvantages of “alternative” products exaggerated to comical extremes. I believe this video came out before YouTube was mainstream, and circulated on USB drives and shared on LAN parties. Ahh the old times (when not every piece of content ever made was instantly available).
Living currently in Japan in somewhat rural area, lots of fruit growing around. I am not sure why but there are A LOT of hawks and other birds of prey around. I am guessing they are doing decent job controlling bird population. Other then that there are scarecrows that mimic bop sort of like kites. Also some people rig ventilators all around trees, spinning blades kill birds perhaps?
Laser sounds really nice but they will need up the power to blind birds or they will just learn to ignore it.
I am also really hoping for razor blade tipped ramming drones :)
Where can I buy such a laser? My yard is always covered in birds, and at least twice a week birds get caught in my house (very open design). I would love love love to be able to keep them away harm free.
They don’t explain how the lasers repel the birds. Especially in the day you’d they wouldn’t notice green dots on a green background and it doesn’t seem like that would scare them.
> Growers Are Beaming Over the Success of Lasers to Stave Off Birds
Once every 10 years there comes a moment when you can use "beaming" with this sense. Funny how they couldn't help using it. I had to read twice to make sure who's beaming lasers over the success.
So, in the case of literal scarecrows, any bird that is naturally less frightened by the scarecrow will be at a disadvantage because they will also be slower to get spooked by the actual farmer (this only worked when scarecrows were dressed in similar clothes to actual farmers, who would periodically come out with a rifle and kill a few birds). In the case of the laser, I don't see the downside for the birds that decide to ignore the laser, and they get extra food, hence more offspring next year. I would not be surprised if this stopped working in 5 years or so.
I have a nice and bright green laser (10 mW) and I get plenty of birds (I put out grain, seeds, and peanuts on my deck railing to attract birds and squirrels), so some experimentation is called for.
There is a Dark-Eyed Junco [1] on the railing of my deck eating right now. I put a green jiggling spot right on the railing in front of him on and near the seeds he was taking...no reaction. I send the beam through the air in front of him...no reaction. I was not able to find anything that got a reaction from him. I didn't try putting the spot on him, such as on his foot, because I didn't want to get close enough to risk an eye shot.
Unfortunately, it is close enough to sunset and it is cloudy today further darkening things, so it looks like I'm not going to get anything other than that Junco. Everything else seems to have decided it is time to bed down. Too bad...on a sunny day I'd have some Steller's Jays [2] around at this time, and I'm really curious to see what they think about the laser.
I'm particularly interested in comparing the Steller's Jays, and also the crows that often come by, to small birds like the Junco, and also the Chickadees and assorted types of Sparrows, because I've already observed interesting behavior differences between the bigger birds in general and the small birds.
The Jays and the crows are corvids. They are among the smartest birds. I had expected when I started putting out food for these, especially the crows (which are known to be able to easily learn to recognize individual humans and learn which humans are threats and which are not) to quickly learn that I'm not a threat. In fact, I was worried that they might end up learning to beg for food.
I had expected the little birds, on the other hand, to always see me as a threat.
In fact, it seems to be the opposite. After about 10 months of feeding, the crows still will not come anywhere near if I'm outside on the deck. If they are there eating and I start to come out they immediately fly away. They have seen me come out and put out food. They have never seen me aggressive to any bird (or other animal). Heck, they have seen me let squirrels come and take peanuts from my hand, and seen my hold out a hand of seeds for small birds to land on eat from.
The Steller's Jays are only slightly more accepting than the crows. They immediately leave if I start to come outside, but if I stay outside, but a couple meters away from where the in-shell peanuts are on the rail, they will fly in, quickly grab one peanut, and fly away. (If I'm inside, they pick up and put down several peanuts, apparently judging by weight which are the most worthwhile, and then take the best--or take two if there is also a smaller one that they can stuff in first leaving room to also carry one).
The little birds, though, after only a few weeks or so of my regularly putting out food, would come and start eating while I was still putting out food. They had no problem landing and eating newly placed food less than a meter from where I was currently placing food.
These little guys, the Chestnut-backed Chickadees [3], went even farther. Their favorite of what I put out seems to be out-of-shell peanuts (these birds are too small to deal with in-shell peanuts). If I had put put seeds and grain already, but not yet peanuts, I found I could hold out a palm full of out-of-shell peanuts and the Chestnut-backed Chickadees would actually fly over, land on my fingers, pick out a peanut, and leave [4]. They also would sometimes fly over to me when I came out the door, and hover near my hands--I'm guessing looking to see if I've got food for them.
(It's only the Chestnut-backed Chickadees that do this. I also get Black-capped Chickadees, a couple different kinds of Nuthaches, and some other birds of about that same size, and none of them got past the "will eat a meter away" stage).
> I had expected when I started putting out food for these, especially the crows (which are known to be able to easily learn to recognize individual humans and learn which humans are threats and which are not) to quickly learn that I'm not a threat.
Birds are second-level smart. They've seen hundreds, thousands of humans. Most of them are a noops. The next largest fraction of them are pains in the ass. The next largest fraction feeds birds, but still hates crows. Then there's some fraction that feed animals just to trap/shoot/kill them, like rats, squirrels, rabbits, doves, even deer. Ain't hardly nobody in hell that feeds birds because they just like doing that.
Birds are smart and they see everything. They aren't gonna chance it. Forget about being friends.
> ...lasers can burn your eyes if you look into them. It's the same danger as pilots being blinded by irresponsible people aiming laser pointers into the sky.
It's worth noting that there are no records of ground based lasers causing damage to a pilot's eyes or causing an aviation accident. Not that it's a good idea to point lasers at airplanes.
I presume by "blinded" they mean temporary blindness due to losing their night vision, not permanent damage. The reason they don't cause accidents is because they generally happen on approach or departure which are (or can be) fully automated and therefore easy to abort. It's still very unpleasant for the pilot.
> I presume by "blinded" they mean temporary blindness due to losing their night vision, not permanent damage.
It says "burn your eyes" so I don't interpret it that way.
> The reason they don't cause accidents is because they generally happen on approach or departure which are (or can be) fully automated and therefore easy to abort.
If you're not on approach or departure, what kind of accident would even happen? Especially when even a total loss of external vision still leaves you with all your instruments.
I don't know why you're getting downvoted. A laser pointer (limited to 5mW) isn't capable of causing eye damage anywhere past 50 feet. Even a big 500mW laser is causing no damage past 500 feet.
They can distract for miles, but that's not the same thing at all.
This comment breaks several of the site guidelines, including the one that asks you not to post shallow dismissals, and the one the asks you to please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. "Someone" here applies to stories just as much as to comments. Also, the guidelines ask you not to snark.
You may have a good underlying point, but if you'd please review
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and express your good underlying points more thoughtfully from now on, that would be much less destructive and we'd appreciate it.
I found those two guidelines ironic considering that calling something a shallow dismissal without making reference to the original argument is in itself a shallow dismissal that encourages weakening the interpretation of the strength of an argument. It only gets worse when you consider the case of domain experts giving concise commentary using domain specific language. Is an argument shallow if you don't understand it?
In every government I'm aware of, humans have the most power of Right compared to any other animal, so my expectation is "thrown out of whatever court you choose."
Then again some countries maintain Nature Preserves and National Parks. Hm.
> In every government I'm aware of, humans have the most power of Right compared to any other animal
But is a human's "right" to destroy the ecosystem (eg clearing and erecting buildings) superior to the entire forest's "right" not to be killed?
As a counterpoint, Equador has enshrined Rights of Nature into their Constitution,[1] and ecosystems themselves can be plaintiffs in environmental suits brought on their behalf[2].
A forest may be a valuable resource but we recognize its value in respect to us. Even when we recognize that a lot of value may be obtained by protecting it for its own sake we do so because we feel that we will ultimately benefit in the long run.
Forests aren't individuals and talking about their rights is meaningless.
Exactly and forests can't demand rights they must at best be granted them by humans with an eye to how helping the ecosystem can ultimately help us too.
If these lasers are used to prevent these species from damaging the ecosystems, then OK. But AFAIK, it was never the intention to discriminate between invasive and non invasive species.
Humans are part of nature and therefore anything we do is natural, I wish people would stop trying to create this dichotomy between humanity and the rest of nature.
I was reading the Wikipedia article about "The road to hell is paved with good intentions", which I found after translating the idiom from my native language. I wanted to make sure you'd understand the quote but guess what?
Here's the first sentence of the first section (Meaning):
>A common interpretation of the saying is that wrongdoings or evil actions are often masked by good intentions; or even that good intentions, when acted upon, may have unintended consequences. A simple example is the introduction of an invasive species, like the Asian carp, which has become a nuisance due to unexpected proliferation and behaviour.
Why do you think we are the only species that feel the need to save others? Have we ever tried to save one that wasn't threatened by the consequences of humans' wrongdoings?
We act like we don't know what we're doing. Perhaps we should calm down and observe before destroying our fragile environment and rush to save it (often destroying it further in the process). Just. Calm. Down.
Yes, we do try to save species we know are threatened by human activities and because we have wiped out many animal species in the past.
Also, as with other kinds of problem-solving, our efforts are indeed going to include missteps and side-effects, despite efforts to minimize these.
However my sense is that many of us are consumed by guilt (existential as well as environmental) and this isn't going to help us to think clearly about environmental matters. Perspective is needed!
For instance, it's worth noting that (1) 99% of all the species that have ever existed were wiped out by purely natural causes, (2) only humans can possibly hope to avert the next major asteroid impact, the next supervolcano eruption, and so on.
Lol @ the thought of threat to the bird’s eyes. An average beam is a few mm across, and divergence quickly spreads the beam to trivial power. It would probably happen once in awhile, but it would be incredibly rare to catch one right in the eye. Add to that fact the birds seem scared away so it makes it even more unlikely.
