Avian psychology?
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Did you really mean to say psychology or do you mean physiology?
If the latter, the proper term would be ornithology and you can find a lot online.
Here's a decent reference: http://www.nmnh.si.edu/BIRDNET/
If you're really looking for psychology, here's a body of links related to animal behavior and cognition: http://www.pigeon.psy.tufts.edu/psych26/alinks.htm
If neither of those work for you, can you be more specific as to what you're looking for?
~Raithere
If the latter, the proper term would be ornithology and you can find a lot online.
Here's a decent reference: http://www.nmnh.si.edu/BIRDNET/
If you're really looking for psychology, here's a body of links related to animal behavior and cognition: http://www.pigeon.psy.tufts.edu/psych26/alinks.htm
If neither of those work for you, can you be more specific as to what you're looking for?
~Raithere
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
As a psittaculturist I have some empirical knowledge of the subject.
First, the universe that birds inhabit (except the flightless ones) is fundamentally different from ours. It is three-dimensional. Ours is two-dimensional, you and I go through life looking ahead and sideways. Birds also look up and down. That is responsible for a major difference in the way birds perceive their surroundings and make decisions about it. (As well as marine mammals of course -- the lower orders don't have enough intelligence to figure in this discussion.)
Just start with the basic fight-or-flight instinct. A cougar comes after us and all we can do is pick a horizontal direction and run. A raptor comes after a bird and the bird can take off in any of six directions, do a free-fall dive, ride thermals, head into a tree where the larger predator is at a disadvantage, get between the hunter and the sun so he can't see well, a whole lot of choices.
It has been hypothesized that having to cope with a three-dimensional environment is a big boost to the evolution of intelligence. The math alone, which must be done by instinct, is daunting! It certainly seems that the average bird is brighter than a mammal in the same ecological niche. The hawks and other hunters seem to me to be better at their jobs than lions. The seed eaters like robins and grosbeaks seem more able to figure out how to get into things than cows and sheep. But the scavengers like jays and crows are phenomenally smart, I'd put one up against a rat or a raccoon any day. The most advanced are the parrots, with their prehensile claws and the beak that serves as a third hand and I believe they are on the same intellectual level as apes (who have an advantage over the rest of the mammals because they have quite a bit of experience in the three-dimensional world of vine-swinging -- it's no accident that we evolved from apes and not zebras).
Except for the predatory species, birds in general are not competitive with other species. They feed together. The social species co-flock. Occasionally two social species of the same genus meet and will even cross-breed.
An amusing observation about birds: they have an instinctive fear of snakes. Snakes are the only terrestrial animals that can follow them up into the flimsy tree branches. Our parrots go nuts at the sight of anything that even vaguely resembles a snake. A garden hose being dragged along the ground outside their window gives them a heart attack. Talk about a genetic-fear-emergency!
Many years ago we took in a baby grosbeak that had fallen out of her nest. Her injuries healed, but she couldn't fly well enough to turn her loose. We hand-fed her so she imprinted on us and she lived in our house as a pet for a long time. We kept her in a cage overnight for safety but during the day she had the run of the house, flying around happily and hanging out with us. She did have an annoying habit of perching on the lampshade of my wife's favorite lamp and pooping on the brass. So my wife figured she'd use the "snake instinct" against her. She got a rubber snake at the toy store and set it on top of the lamp in question. We came home from the supermarket a couple of days later, turned on the lights... and of course the rubber snake was lying on the floor right inside the door. My wife screamed and dropped the groceries. The grosbeak was back on her favorite lampshade, pleased with herself for having beaten the living crap out of a snake.
First, the universe that birds inhabit (except the flightless ones) is fundamentally different from ours. It is three-dimensional. Ours is two-dimensional, you and I go through life looking ahead and sideways. Birds also look up and down. That is responsible for a major difference in the way birds perceive their surroundings and make decisions about it. (As well as marine mammals of course -- the lower orders don't have enough intelligence to figure in this discussion.)
Just start with the basic fight-or-flight instinct. A cougar comes after us and all we can do is pick a horizontal direction and run. A raptor comes after a bird and the bird can take off in any of six directions, do a free-fall dive, ride thermals, head into a tree where the larger predator is at a disadvantage, get between the hunter and the sun so he can't see well, a whole lot of choices.
It has been hypothesized that having to cope with a three-dimensional environment is a big boost to the evolution of intelligence. The math alone, which must be done by instinct, is daunting! It certainly seems that the average bird is brighter than a mammal in the same ecological niche. The hawks and other hunters seem to me to be better at their jobs than lions. The seed eaters like robins and grosbeaks seem more able to figure out how to get into things than cows and sheep. But the scavengers like jays and crows are phenomenally smart, I'd put one up against a rat or a raccoon any day. The most advanced are the parrots, with their prehensile claws and the beak that serves as a third hand and I believe they are on the same intellectual level as apes (who have an advantage over the rest of the mammals because they have quite a bit of experience in the three-dimensional world of vine-swinging -- it's no accident that we evolved from apes and not zebras).
Except for the predatory species, birds in general are not competitive with other species. They feed together. The social species co-flock. Occasionally two social species of the same genus meet and will even cross-breed.
An amusing observation about birds: they have an instinctive fear of snakes. Snakes are the only terrestrial animals that can follow them up into the flimsy tree branches. Our parrots go nuts at the sight of anything that even vaguely resembles a snake. A garden hose being dragged along the ground outside their window gives them a heart attack. Talk about a genetic-fear-emergency!
Many years ago we took in a baby grosbeak that had fallen out of her nest. Her injuries healed, but she couldn't fly well enough to turn her loose. We hand-fed her so she imprinted on us and she lived in our house as a pet for a long time. We kept her in a cage overnight for safety but during the day she had the run of the house, flying around happily and hanging out with us. She did have an annoying habit of perching on the lampshade of my wife's favorite lamp and pooping on the brass. So my wife figured she'd use the "snake instinct" against her. She got a rubber snake at the toy store and set it on top of the lamp in question. We came home from the supermarket a couple of days later, turned on the lights... and of course the rubber snake was lying on the floor right inside the door. My wife screamed and dropped the groceries. The grosbeak was back on her favorite lampshade, pleased with herself for having beaten the living crap out of a snake.
John Connellan
Valued Senior Member
SpyMoose said:
Aww thats lovely. So did the Quail pluck the eyeballs out of the baby rabbit to feed its chicks?
Fraggle Rocker said:
That was fascinating, Fraggle. I'm currently taking piloting lessons: I can see what you mean about having to think in 3 dimensions. Do you think that human pilots, however experienced, can never have the same grasp of aerial maneuvoring as birds do?
Speculatively, if birds ever evolve human-level intelligence, do you think that the flightless birds (who inhabit savannah ecosystems similar to those of our early ancestors) would be LESS likely to do so than smaller arboreal species?
Once, at the beach, I watched a little bird land on the low tide area and come across a beached squid. The bird poked and "nibbled" a bit. Looked at it. Poked and nibbled some more. THEN, he flew over to a small group of birds about 30 feet away. A few moments later, he and his buddies were flying over to chow down on the squid. Basically, it looked like he found some food, flew over and said, "Hey guys! Dinner! Follow me!" Pretty neat.
John Connellan
Valued Senior Member
Yep. What the bird realised was that there was too much food for him to gulp down so he decided to 'invest' the food in his buddies stomachs so that they will repay him when they find food. Everybody wins!!!
my mother is a avian behavioral biologist, I’ll ask here some time.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
And I call myself an aviculturist. Sorry for the gaffe. Robins are passerines (perching birds, members of the sparrow order) but not specifically fringillids (finches) which are mostly seed eaters. Although many species of birds will happily eat a creepy-crawly if they happen to come across one even if it's not their primary diet. Our parrots love meat when we give it to them, I'm a bit surprised that as similar as their beaks and claws are to those of a raptor, none of them evolved into hunters.Idle Mind said:
Hmm... As I said, we evolved from the apes, who (according to the hypothesis under discussion) got a huge evolutionary boost in intelligence from the three-dimensional arboreal environment. There's even a further hypothesis that man did not drop directly from the trees to the savannah, but moved into the lake first. After all, there was fierce competition with other mammals for ecological niches on the land, but air-breathers frelling rule when they take to the water. A few epochs adapting to yet a different type of three-dimensional environment could have given our brains an enormous advantage. When we decided to relocate on the land again, we were much smarter and quickly realized that the way to get the maximum nutritional value out of a grazing diet was to let the herbivores eat it and then eat them.Starthane Xyzth said:
So I don't see that we necessarily have lost the brain centers that were developed by our arboreal ancestors. Whether a vine-swinger has the full 3-D brainpower of a true flyer, that is up to speculation.
(Evidence supporting the aquatic ape theory: We are the only apes that have those suspicious little vestigial webs between our fingers.)
Hewing to the human model, I'd guess not. After all, they evolved from birds that could fly and presumably retain a good bit of the brainpower that developed during that phase of evolution, just as we don't seem to have fallen behind the gorillas in the IQ race after leaving the trees.
Of course, the best-known flightless birds are the ratites -- ostriches, emus, cassowaries, etc. They aren't exactly poster children for the savannah academy of avian intelligence.
Typical behavior for pack animals of any vertebrate class. It does seem to me that compared to mammals, a high percentage of bird species are social. Does anybody know if that is true?chunkylover58 said:
This could be another correlation with intelligence. Not all social animals are intelligent, but in general the most intelligent warm-blooded animals are social. Primates, rodents, dogs, marine mammals... It could be that intelligent animals figure out the advantage of working as a group and adopt it somewhat consciously.
Yes she recommended for a general overview "Bird Behavior" by Donald stokes, aaah something about there being more then one volume. Don’t try to IM your mother people they make little sense.
John Connellan said:
I don't think a quail could kill even a very young rabbit if it tried. It was probably just a territory dispute or something. I was there at the time and I feel obligated to back Spy Moose on this; It was very cute.
John Connellan
Valued Senior Member
Mystech said:
But it could pluck a bit of its eyeball out!
Fraggle Rocker said:
Not to mention that we have downward-pointing nostrils which retain air when submerged; our hands and feet form reasonable flipper shapes; we have a thin subcutaneous fat layer which other apes lack (they can't even float); our bodies are more streamlined, with dense hair only on the top of the head, which would have remained above water more often; and we can eat fish!
I don't know - most animals instinctively know that there is safety in numbers. Colonial insects work collectively - can they be called intelligent?! Top predators are usually solitary (except lions and sperm whales) because nothing can really threaten them. Early humans were not well physically adapted to act as predators, so they stayed together and, fortuitously, learned to exchange information verbally. Thus we developed out tools and weapons.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
I'm not sure that's such an accomplishment. Fish tissue seems to be easier to digest than land vertebrate meat. They feed fish meal to herbivores and they digest it.Starthane Xyzth said:
I'm suggesting that most intelligent animals, because they are capable of learning, learn that cooperation benefits everyone. What you say is the converse and that doesn't necessarily follow.
Many of them work in groups, not because they are concerned about being some other predator's prey, but because they can get more food that way. Ten wolves can bring down a bison. A pride of lions can maneuver several slow or young zebras out of the herd when one lion might not even get one. Several members of a pod of orcas can separate a baby grey whale from its mother while the rest sit on top of it so it can't get its head above water to breathe. A pod of dolphins can herd an entire school of fish up into shallow water.
OK: so I was wrong, in that there are a lot more social predators than just lions and sperm whales!
If humans, dolphins and apes are the most intelligent of animals, then yes, they are all social creatures. Which animals come next - pigs? Wolves? Octopi? Parrots?
If humans, dolphins and apes are the most intelligent of animals, then yes, they are all social creatures. Which animals come next - pigs? Wolves? Octopi? Parrots?
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
My own hypothesis is that being an opportunistic feeder promotes the kind of behavior that benefits most from high intelligence.Starthane Xyzth said:
On land, that's generally the scavengers. The more sources of food there are available, the more one individual of a species can outcompete another by being smart enough to avail himself of a source that his cousins can't quite figure out. Bears opening the most complicated and secure trash cans, or just finding their way into your pantry. Raccoons learning that being real cute and standing up on their hind legs encourages human campers to toss marshmallows at them, and then when you go back into the tent for more marshmallows they open your ice chest, grab all the hamburgers, and run off. Among birds, the corvids (jays and crows) can get into damn near anything that contains food. Coyotes have learned to walk with their tails held high like dogs instead of hanging down like wolves, so they can walk down the center of the main street of a Los Angeles suburb at high noon and people just think they're dogs, and dart into everybody's yard looking for garbage and the occasional slow cat.
In many cases what seems to matter most is one particular kind of intelligence -- curiosity -- which inspires them to tolerate being close to human settlements and discover all the tasty food we call garbage. In Latin America and Australia, psittacines (the various families of parrots, including macaws, cockatoos, etc.) have grown bolder about hanging around outdoor tourist cafes and stealing food right off the table, or just becoming garbage scavengers like so many species before them. (If you've ever been bitten by a parrot you'll understand why nobody tries to defend their sandwich.)
I've seen live videotape of hyenas in Africa doing the same thing that dogs did 12,000 years ago: coming in really close to campsites and helping themselves to the trash. And I saw one African doing the same thing that one Chinese did in 10,000 BCE: getting playful and playing tug-of-war with a young hyena over a large bone. They both seemed to enjoy it. Give the hyenas a few thousand years and they may be the next self-domesticating species. I've been told that they make pretty docile pets, unlike the carnivores that live 100 percent by hunting, such as lions and tigers.
In the water, scavenging isn't the same kind of life. All the trash is on the bottom and you have to be built to withstand the pressure. But in rivers where that's not a problem, the carp are the bottom feeders and they are definitely one of the most intelligent kinds of fish.
In the ocean, "opportunistic feeding" seems to have more to do with being able to figure out how to outsmart the schools of fish. That includes some mental mathematics, predicting currents and the vectors of fish travel, as well as the curiosity to try new kinds of food. Still, I'm not sure whether the cetaceans and pinnipeds (seals and sea lions) went into the water and then developed intelligence, or if they were really smart to start with and decided that it would be so easy for a big, strong, fast, warm-blooded air-breather to out-compete the cold-blooded, gill-breathing fish.
Hypothesis #2 was in vogue when it was believed that marine mammals evolved from bears who just kept walking a little further out into the water. But DNA analysis has blown that one apart. The cetaceans, at least, are actually a sub-order of the ungulates -- the hoofed animals. Their ancestors were hippopotamus-like mammals who followed the river all the way to the sea and kept going. Not much IQ there, they must have developed their brains after being in the water for a while, not the other way around.
You may have also seen my theory on other threads that living in a three-dimensional universe fosters higher intelligence. I.e., swimming in water, which requires a 3-D world view, or flying in the air. As opposed to walking on land, where everything above and below you is irrelevant and the math you have to do by instinct just to get from point A to point B isn't nearly as complicated as it is if you're flying or swimming.
It may be that learning to live in water naturally caused the cetaceans' brains to develop quickly. As I've said elsewhere, I believe that most any bird is noticeably smarter than the terrestrial animal who occupies the same ecological niche on the ground.
Apes got a boost by swinging through the trees. It's not quite as good as flying, but it's far more complicated than walking on the ground. If, as some speculate, humans dropped from the trees into the lakes before coming up to live on the ground, we got a second boost in IQ by mastering a second kind of 3-D environment. That could explain why we're the most intelligent of all animals. Of course you'd think then that diving birds would be really smart because they too live in two different three-dimensional universes. Perhaps they are. Some of them can swipe the bait off a fisherman's hook in midair.
Back to your question: if mankind dies off without destroying all life on earth, who will be the next species to take over? All of your options are good. Parrots, other apes, marine mammals (because of the 3-D thing); or canines, pigs, hyenas, raccoons (because of the scavenging thing). Or it could be rats. They're just about as bright as any animal.
One thing's for sure. If the next dominant species on this planet is rats, they'll probably build a civilization very much like ours, because they are so much like us in so many ways, for example their sense of ethics.