
Birds hold 'funerals' for dead - zoowar
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/19421217
======
jerf
There's some projection here. We see some birds gathering around a corpse, we
know that if we did that we would be "mourning", but that does not mean that
they are. Stopping eating for a day may sound like mourning, but it also
sounds like a very sensible defense against poisoning.

They may be; it is true that many birds exhibit complex behavior. But at least
based on the info given in this article, there's a lot of unjustified
assumptions about the internal states of the bird's brains based on deep, deep
subconscious assumptions about how humans would be feeling if we saw humans
acting that way. I would consider it just as likely that to the extent they
are "feeling" something it would be something with no human analog.

~~~
jessedhillon
Anyone who issues this kind of criticism, as is inevitable when these animal
stories come up on HN, needs to provide a consistent, objective framework
explaining why I should not regard their perceived individuality (and
accompanying emotional state) as merely the output of a very complex,
deterministic state machine. I can think of no reasonable standard which would
produce evidence for the theory that _your own_ behavior is everything short
of magical, but an animal's behavior is all mimicry, evolutionarily derived to
be advantageous for survival, but not indicative of that magical _personhood_.
What evidence should I take to be suffficient proof of the proposition that
your emotions are real and the birds' aren't.

A sensible defense against poisoning? Just because evolutionary psych seems
intuitive doesn't mean that every seemingly inuitive speculation passes for
evolutionary psych. Do you stop eating for a day when your friend has diarrhea
from a meal 12 hours earlier? Didn't your highly social species also evolve in
an environment where food poisoning was a concern?

On a meta note, while I realize that it's science reporting, which is
generally of bad quality -- why does every article on HN about some research
findings receive at least one comment from someone at a keyboard who thinks he
has a better explanation than people who spent months putting this work
together. (Many of whom have committed their lives to this field)

Do you like it when, e.g., a client dismisses hours of your work because it
doesn't have the latest X which he only heard about last week, and really has
no clue how it works or whether that would be applicable? Don't we all
generally think that such a person is an assclown? How is this different?

Or to put it another way, given a short sunmary of the story made for a public
which reads at the eight grade level (at best) -- if a person could generate
the criticism given that simple input, how/why would it be that the authors
who invest their own careers in the research wouldn't have anticipated and
addressed it?

~~~
mjn
> if a person could generate the criticism given that simple input, how/why
> would it be that the authors who invest their own careers in the research
> wouldn't have anticipated and addressed it?

People who work in the field do also level the same criticism, quite
frequently; teleological and anthropomorphizing explanations are extremely
controversial topics in biology. The critique that some researchers jump to
such explanations more quickly than the evidence warrants reappears
frequently, and the critique that popular-science writers and journalists do
so is basically universal. Most researchers also try to avoid doing so. You'll
often find such explanations in scare quotes in papers, with it being clear
that they're an evocative shorthand, not part of the scientific conclusions:
the researchers really have a certain set of scientific conclusions about an
observed phenomenon, which they refer to as a "funeral" as shorthand, but the
scientific conclusions don't usually include any attempt to prove a strong
analogy with human funerals. (It does somewhat depend on the journal how
strictly such careful treatment of metaphors is enforced.)

In this case, the BBC article is a lot more anthropomorphizing than the
original article (linked at the bottom), which doesn't make any conclusions
about mourning or similarity to human funeral practices.

------
mark_l_watson
This sounds reasonable. When we lived by the beach there was a blue jay who
after accepting food from me on our deck for about a year started one day
landing on my legs when I was on a lounge chair to get more food. This
behavior lasted for a few years until a cat got him.

Now, years later, we have a domesticated Meyers Parrot and his behavior is
very complex and interesting.

------
Spooky23
These sorts of stories are always fascinating to me. If you look back at human
history, one of the big differentiators between human cultures is how we
handle our dead.

Was the origin of that behavior a sort of opportunity for groups of humans to
learn from the death of their friends? Or are our emotions a sort of outgrowth
of the behaviors these birds display?

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georgemcbay
For anyone that finds this interesting, I highly recommend "A Murder of
Crows", which was made a few years ago and is where I first heard of the idea
of birds holding funerals:

[http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/a-murder-of-
crows/fu...](http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/a-murder-of-crows/full-
episode/5977/)

------
autophil
Lots of findings coming out lately about animals having empathy and
demonstrating qualities us humans think we're unique for.

And it makes me sad. We're not considerate towards animals. We hardly give
them a second thought. We eat them, cage them and experiment on them.

Humans need to be better "caretakers" of the planet. We need advances in
compassion towards animals and the environment, not more advances in
technology.

~~~
philwelch
Another thing many of those animals have in common with us? They eat other
animals. The cheetah uses its speed, the wolf uses its pack instinct, and we
use our intellect to capture our respective prey. The environment is a
dangerous, savage place.

~~~
Shum
I think we have a responsibility to hold ourselves to higher standards than
that of a wolf or cheetah. Given our intellectual capacity to do so.

Suffering is bad. The fact that it occurs in nature is irrelevant.

~~~
lutusp
> I think we have a responsibility to hold ourselves to higher standards than
> that of a wolf or cheetah.

We may or may not have that responsibility, but we certainly don't meet it.
History shows that people are at least as vicious as any animal you can name.
This is something one tends to forget between wars, or in a place untouched by
war.

> Suffering is bad. The fact that it occurs in nature is irrelevant.

The fact that it occurs everywhere in nature is absolutely relevant. Consider
the rules of civilized society -- for example, everyone has the right to the
pursuit of happiness. Some pursue happiness by having a lot of children, more
than the planet can support. The result is widespread disease, starvation and
war (otherwise known as "retroactive abortion").

It seems the high standards we've set for ourselves can result in (is
resulting in) an unimaginable disaster, one in which everyone exercises their
innate freedom of expression.

But there is a solution -- education. The very thing governments fear the
most.

~~~
eru
> Some pursue happiness by having a lot of children, more than the planet can
> support.

Perhaps more than their country or their own income can support. But with
current technology we can farm enough calories every year to keep every body
well fed. (Of course, they are not distributed equally at the moment. But the
sum comes out right. And we haven't even really started farming the oceans. We
are still mostly hunter-gatherers there.)

~~~
lutusp
> with current technology we can farm enough calories every year to keep every
> body well fed.

False. Food growth rate increases arithmetically, based on available land.
Population growth increases exponentially, based on reproductive potential.
They cannot be compared -- population always increases until starvation limits
the process, as modeled by the logistic function:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function>

Unequal distribution of food resources is an effect, not a cause. The cause is
uncontrolled population increase.

In short, people will aggressively answer an increase in food supply by
increasing the supply of hungry people, until starvation halts the process.

~~~
eru
> Food growth rate increases arithmetically, based on available land.
> Population growth increases exponentially, [...]

Sources? Malthus made the same mistake, if I remember right.

~~~
lutusp
>> Food growth rate increases arithmetically, based on available land.
Population growth increases exponentially,

> Sources?

It's called "mathematics." Fields of corn don't spawn little offspring fields
of corn on adjacent plots of land, but people do spawn little offspring
people. The first is an arithmetic increase (as long as there is still arable
land), but the second is exponential.

> Malthus made the same mistake, if I remember right.

Nonsense. He predicted something that hasn't happened yet. If a geologist
predicts an earthquake with a probability of 50% within 30 years, and 35 years
pass without an earthquake, does that make him wrong?

------
michaelbuckbee
I'm reminded of the National Geographic story (and iconic photo) of the
chimpanzees grieving over the death of one of their own.

[http://blogs.ngm.com/blog_central/2009/10/the-story-
behind-o...](http://blogs.ngm.com/blog_central/2009/10/the-story-behind-our-
photo-of-grieving-chimps.html)

------
sleepyhead
I saw a monkey funeral in Malaysia last year. Took a really long time and a
bunch of monkeys from around the area all walked towards a tree while some
came up and patted the dead baby which the mother was holding. They ended up
all sitting in a big tree. This was at a little hill which has some tourists
coming to it and normally the monkeys would be up at the road eating food that
the tourists give out. But while the funeral was going on almost all the
monkeys took part of it.

------
mise
I have often wondered: where do dying birds go to die?

Except for roadkill, I don't see dead birds. I'm guessing under some shrubs,
where they hide away weakly?

