Friday, November 18, 2005
well we always learn something new everyday rite... haha today i learnt that the term "bird brain" might not be very apt afterall... apparently... in some lab which i cant recall... a crow affectionately called betty or something like that... has stunned scientists... they were studying how animals learn... and designed an experiment to test it... they created a tiny bucket... whose base was about teh size of a 50 cents coin complete with a tiny handle... and filled it with food... then they artificially created this long tube just slightly longer than betty's beak... now the tube stood upright and the bucket was lowered into it... now comes along betty... places near the food is a small piece of wire... betty sees the food and tries to reach it by stuffing her head down the tube.... but its too small and she cant reach... she tries and tries for a while... and realises it's futile... she looks around and sees the wire... grabbing it by her beak... she primitively tries to stab at the bucket from above... after a while she realsies this really sint going to help and actually starts to bend the wire using her feet... she forms a hook at one end!! she then grabs the wire at the other end by her beak and lowers it into the tube and hooks the bucket up... hahanow for those of u who think it must be a coincidence... here's the amazing part... the scientists remove the bent wire and place a fresh straight new wire and new food in to tube...betty see it and tries to get it with her beak again... but this time... she tries only once and immediately heads for the wire... and repeats the same thing... succesfully getting the food... and she does it time and times again 9 times in a row... well that to me is clearly an indication of her learning something... haha... smart little bird... haha
the reason y humans are where they are now is simply from the fact that we evolved to be bipedal and started to use our 'hands' to grasp things... eventually we fashioned tools which we could use to our advantage... and through this we developed solutions to problems we faced... even now.. if u put a human with any other animal like a lion or a tiger in a cage... we would lose the fight if we werent given access to our tools... and so the only thing special abt humans reallys is this fact that we have learnt and adapted to harnessing the resources around us to our benefit...
and yet betty the crow has show rather crudely that animals are too on occasion capable for such creativity... of course we dun expect that all crows woudl start fashioning tools to make nicer nests tomorrow... but give or take another hundreds of thousands of years... who's to say... we may be the creative species now... but at the same time... if u think abt all the things we're done.. we are really the dummest "bird brains" around... haha food for thought which i grab food for my stomach... haha bon appetit!!!
{6:54 PM}
3 Comments:
haha... so glad ur blog's up and active once again... love reading ur thought-provoking and sometimes morbid entries. haha!
haha y are they morbid? haha i dun talk abt morbid stuff rite? haha maybe weird but not morbid... i hope.. haha
By 
20 sec interval... fire!!, at
10:46 PM
all the talk abt corpse and burning ur body n throwing ur ashes away... not morbid? then wat is? haha..