
Distressed ravens show empathy - ogig
https://medium.com/@GrrlScientist/distressed-ravens-show-empathy-is-for-the-birds-too-grrlscientist-248338c1809e#.jdtlkzqy9
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jameslk
I have a strange love for birds. People often laugh at the endearment I have
for birds like they have for dogs or cats. But when asked why I like birds so
much, I can answer this very succinctly: there is very few other species that
can fly, walk or swim all at once like some birds can. Nor a group of species
so diverse, colorful, capable and intelligent. With such an interesting
evolution sharing an ancestry with the once terrifying dinosaurs that roamed
the world now so commonplace and taken for granted.

Just the intelligence of birds alone is fascinating with birds that can learn
human speech and understand its context, solve puzzles, solve puzzles in
teams, understand the concept of self, learn human faces, give gifts, have
theory of mind, perform ritual and now show empathy. All packed into a tiny
"bird brain." They are truly marvelous creatures.

~~~
spacehome
All that, and they're delicious, too.

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nier
Your comment reminds me of a story in a book called Shantaram. Guy feeds a
mouse visiting his cell every now and then. Before being relocated this
prisoner tells the new inmate to take good care of Mickey. Next thing he
knows, his little friend is on display with two pencils piercing his body.
Crucified.

~~~
charlesdm
:(

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mirimir
Corvids are bloody amazing. Arguably, they also have language.[0] Nightingales
too.[1] But bird languages are very different from mammalian ones. Maybe more
like neuronal activity directly mapped to sound.

[0] Mates (2016) Locally Periodic Signal Estimation and Pitch Detection, and
Acoustic Communication in American and Northwestern Crows (PhD thesis)
[https://dlib.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/handle/1773/35...](https://dlib.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/handle/1773/35633)

[1] Weiss et al. (2014) The use of network analysis to study complex animal
communication systems: a study on nightingale song
[http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1785/2014...](http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1785/20140460)

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nickledave
Hey mirimir, it's awesome to see posts from someone else that thinks birds are
cool. I hadn't seen those papers before--that Weiss study looks like it's
worth reading in depth.

Just wanted to say that most people who study birdsong and bird calls wouldn't
describe it as a "language"\--as far as we know, humans are the only animals
with language, unless you believe that one guy who wrote the article about
dolphins. But you're right that birdsong is a lot more like language than most
other animal vocalizations; often the songs have "syntax" (like in the Weiss
article you posted) where the structure follows rules. But the syntax doesn't
convey meaning in the same way it does in our language. No bird has ever
written a philosophy book, right? They're just communicating stuff like "this
is my tree and I'm so manly I can sing in this tree for hours in the middle of
the night".

Along the same lines, I think birds are pretty close to us evolutionarily
speaking. You're not the first person I've heard compare them to aliens, but
their brains are actually a lot like ours. Here's a grumpy blog post I wrote
about it if you want to have a look:
[http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2012/09/snakes-on-brain-
or...](http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2012/09/snakes-on-brain-or-why-care-
about.html)

As the article above demonstrates, along with many other behavioral studies
like those you mentioned, birds behave a lot like we do. So: their brains are
a lot like ours and their behaviors are a lot like ours. This is why we should
study them even more, if we want to understand intelligence.

Think of it this way: you're an alien and you want to figure out how a
computer works. If you could only carry out your experiments with MacBooks, it
would probably take you longer than if you could also use e.g. Lenovo
ThinkPads (just trying to draw an analogy, I'm not throwing shade at Mac or
anything).

I hope that wasn't way too "tl;dr" but I just wanted to build a little bit on
your comments.

~~~
mirimir
> Just wanted to say that most people who study birdsong and bird calls
> wouldn't describe it as a "language" ...

Yes, I get that. And maybe they're looking too hard for something like human
language. Maybe it's more like communication protocol. I mean, if you down-
shifted Ethernet traffic and listened to it, would it sound like language?

> They're just communicating stuff like "this is my tree and I'm so manly I
> can sing in this tree for hours in the middle of the night".

Well, if you didn't know any human languages, and your system clock were
really slow, maybe English would sound like that to you. So if I'm out
dancing, I'm wasted, and I'm using earplugs, casual conversation __does
__sound a lot like that to me ;)

> Along the same lines, I think birds are pretty close to us evolutionarily
> speaking. You're not the first person I've heard compare them to aliens, but
> their brains are actually a lot like ours.

Yes, I get that too. The basic layout is the same. But when reptiles and
mammals diverged, their brains were much simpler, and arguably neither line
was very intelligent. So brains and intelligence have evolved in parallel in
birds and mammals. And maybe structural similarities just reflect the shared
lineage.

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anotherhacker
This is compassion / responsiveness, not empathy.

Empathy = mental simulating of how an action will affect another.

Compassion = a desire to help another.

Responsiveness = the ability to recognize changes in someone's emotional
state, and then develop and engage in a course of action based upon that
change.

More info: Heinz Kohut - Reflections on Empathy
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ6Y3hoKI8U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ6Y3hoKI8U)

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hellofunk
I strongly recommend the book Ravens in Winter for anyone interested in this
topic.

