Quote:
Originally Posted by ngcles
Hi Bert & All,
So did they learn this all by themselves? No! In fact unwittingly you (as an intelligent being) have been teaching them -- and it took them "many years" to learn to repeat a simple behavioural pattern.
By the rewards given out, you have unwittingly taught them when to expect a possible reward, how to act if they want a reward or to increase the probability of a reward. If there was no teacher, how long would it have taken them to learn and display that behaviour? Answer: Likely never. How many of these birds have been independently able to teach this information to other birds (that are strangers to you), so that they come along display a pattern of behaviour to provoke a reward. I can confidently predict the answer is none.
Yes of course they do -- but given their limited (and limiting) physiology and quite small brains, they need a teacher to learn this type of behaviour! Otherwise their learning capacity and learning speed is extremely limited.
Yes you are, we are the only "conscious" teachers on the planet! That makes us very special indeed.
Best,
Les D
|
How about those Ravens though - their very smart
. I watched a doco on the study of them once, and it showed them using a busy road to drop big nuts from a set of traffic lights. They waited for the cars to crush them, and then when the red light came up for people to cross, only then would the crows collect the nuts. Also, in a more detailed lab study, it showed how Ravens would break and bend sticks to get food out of boxes.
