insect

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Baal Zebul

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i guess that this is the right forum.
I am looking for the english and possibly also the Latin name of an insect (a sort of fly)

I observed it in northern sweden so i guess that it exist in norway, finland and other countries too.
It puzzled me because it flew up and down (vertically) all the time, not horizontally, it just tried to reach a higher ground all the time.

I managed to see it through the binoculars and it looked like a ...
(i looked up the name and in english it is called "crane-fly" or "daddy-longlegs")

I would like to say that it was a crane-fly then but its movement did not really fit so i wonder if anyone can help me out here?

It is rather important because i need it in a paper that i am writing, english or Latin name will do.

Thank you for your assistance
/Rikard Svensson
 
Tipula paludosa?
T-ole_side_female.jpg

http://whatcom.wsu.edu/cranefly/printerpages/pf-Cfid.htm
ya we have them to here in the states.
 
why i am asking is because whilst observing nature to get ideas for my AI, i came across a "Survival of the weakest" behavior.
These flies/insects. possibly Tipula paludosa, they were systematicly eaten by swallows which assisted the natural selection to their own favor. The swallows were leaving 1 fly, the weakest, the one that flew the lowest.

i observed it 5 times, at atleast 2 occasions i could with 100% truth say that 4 were flying equally low, but the birds only left 1. so the thought i had that maybe they just feared flying low was proved wrong.
Now, i cannot prove anything, i have not recorded it. And i am not interested in, i got the data i wanted out of that.
I am not trying to say that Darwin was incorrect, just incomplete. Survival of the weakest exist but what it is is just a sub-system for survival of the fittest proving that it extends between the species.
i also say that the birds evolve faster than humans and that the bird is smarter than a 3 year old human extremly quickly, whilst the flies had a lesser intellect than a 3 year old human.
Why the birds are smarter is because they have lesser parameters to evolve.
there are probably 100 other reasons for this behavior you could name and i have no possiblity to prove my thesis and i am not trying to back it up. Found some existing data on my theory here:
http://www.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/~abraham/Publications/Rock_Scissors_Paper.pdf

better link here: http://www.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/~marcus/manuscripts/RSP.pdf
 
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Baal Zebul said:
why i am asking is because whilst observing nature to get ideas for my AI, i came across a "Survival of the weakest" behavior.
These flies/insects. possibly Tipula paludosa, they were systematicly eaten by swallows which assisted the natural selection to their own favor. The swallows were leaving 1 fly, the weakest, the one that flew the lowest.
Click to expand...

Its not called survival of the strongest as u are implying, it is called survival of the fittest. Even if those flies are too weak to fly high, they are still fitter because they are avoiding predation by flying low. As a result, the tendency to fly low (genes) will be passed. Eventually all flies will fly low and the birds will have to adopt a new strategy (arms race).
 
yes, flying low and slow will be passed to their offspring. I believe that is what the birds wanted.
But as James told me, there are probably 100 reasons for the behavior and you cannot be sure you have the right one. It could be fear from flying low (cats might eat them), they might know that those that are flying low have eaten and could therefore produce more offspring (if that is the case then the birds are still controlling natural selection by breeding more flies); i simply cannot be sure i have gotten the right reason. So i am not defending this observation, i cannot prove it in any way.
 
Well, i can only explain it as my AI works.

Food is a need for survival. The bird see a long time profit which is superior to the short time profit and therefore it serves its survival system.
 
I cannot prove anything, and it was just an observation I came across whilst comparing human behavior with behavior by other creatures for my AI research.
However, I am optimistic that the birds have enough intelligence to make that kind of decisions.
 
Baal Zebul said:
Well, i can only explain it as my AI works.

Food is a need for survival. The bird see a long time profit which is superior to the short time profit and therefore it serves its survival system.
Click to expand...

What is the long and short term profit here? Can u explain that a bit more?
 
well, food matter to the bird. If it can have more food within a long time period instead of little food for a short time then the matter of that food will be larger, although it will of course need to know how long it can go on the food it will find.
The birds will never eat more than they have to.
I might be wrong and if i am then they are not controlling nature, but i can tell you this, you think way to highly of the human brain.
 
I really think that all animals live in the present when it comes to feeding. The reason is evolution again. If there was a gene which made birds think that it was best to kill off the strongest flying insects, then there will always be the mutant bird which will get to eat whatever it likes. As a result, this bird will spread its genes and basically it is nigh on impossible for the trait u just mentioned to become fixed in a population of birds.
 
yes, but what i am trying to say is that the birds understand that the insects need to have an offspring to feed them in the future.

they left 1 insect alive at 5 different occassions, just 1.
 
well, as i wrote in my AI paper, Darwin was correct but survivial of the weakest is a function of intelligence.

i do not know if my hypothesis is correct, so please. I am not defending it, cause i have nothing to defend it with.
 
Baal Zebul said:
Why the birds are smarter is because they have lesser parameters to evolve.
Click to expand...
Birds are smarter because they have to be in order to live successfully in three-dimensional space. Terrestrial animals live in a two-dimensional space, so the intuitive mathematics that their brains must perform in order to move around on the earth's surface is significantly less than that required to move around in the air (or water). That extra intelligence spills over into other areas of life.

It is my reasoned hypothesis based upon empirical observation that a species of bird in any ecological niche is more intelligent than a species of mammal in the same niche. (It's only fair to compare warm-blooded animals with their superior oxygen supply. Fish, reptiles, amphibians, and invertebrates can't possibly compete fairly in this contest but they do the best they can. Flies will never be as smart as birds.)

The fact that the primates are significantly more intelligent than most other land mammals is, according to my hypothesis, a direct result of their living in an arboreal environment. Swinging through the trees is perhaps not quite as challenging as flight, in terms of the ballistic calculations that must be performed unconsciously, but it is much more so than walking. The fact that some of the most intelligent mammals are those that spend all or most of their lives in the water -- another three-dimensional milieu -- upholds my hypothesis.

It has been asked, why then are humans, who dropped down out of the trees, more intelligent than our cousins who stayed there? The aquatic ape theory, which has been discussed at great length many times on SciForums, answers, because we first dropped into the nearest lake where the competition for food wasn't as difficult as the savannah. (Mostly those oxygen-poor cold-blooded animals.) This true three-dimensional environment pushed our intelligence even higher than the other primates. Eventually we walked back out onto the ground with enough brains to not only out-compete the other herbivores, but to learn how to catch and eat them, providing even more protein for our ever more massive brains.

Our souvenir from that little sojourn into aquatic life is the little vestigial webs between our fingers, which no other primate has.
 
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