
African grey parrots spontaneously 'lend a wing' - hhs
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-01/cp-agp010220.php
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radres
Here is the video, taken from the original article:

[https://www.cell.com/cms/10.1016/j.cub.2019.11.030/attachmen...](https://www.cell.com/cms/10.1016/j.cub.2019.11.030/attachment/c97f2de5-abfc-4e74-9dd7-372d9bdacff8/mmc2.mp4)

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duncanawoods
Awesome! Does the parrot helped with the tokens ever give grain to the helper?

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fit2rule
African grey parrots are amazing animals.

I once had an African grey who would help our other pets, often. She'd sit in
her perch area, with a good view of the drive, and call out to the dog when
she saw me arrive home.

She would often drop treats to the dog as well, and once we caught her trying
to take dogs collar off - she almost had it.

Of course, this is anecdotal and not a scientific observation, but our grey
was as much of a family member in our house as any other pets, and she was a
curious and intelligent being.

(The experience swore me off pet ownership for good, however. Not fun losing
such loved ones, nor realising the life they led in captivity was not their
own..)

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gadders
Are they house trainable at all? I always thought birds would make pretty good
indoor pets (especially flightless birds like chickens or geese) if they
weren't basically incontinent.

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sprite
You can toilet train African Greys. Not getting them to chew on stuff is a
whole other issue. I have 2 Africanc Greys and would never leave them
unsupervised. They are super awesome pets though and probably the most well
behaved parrot you can get as far as not screaming.

~~~
gadders
Yeah, know how inquisitive geese are, I think chewing could be an issue as
well.

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dghughes
I nearly died laughing from coughing (I'm eating) thinking of "chewing" geese.

A great name for a restaurant "The Chew Goose".

~~~
pvaldes
> I nearly died laughing from coughing thinking of "chewing" geese.

Surprise!, dinosaur DNA and ready to tear off your hand ;-)

[https://justbirding.com/geese-teeth/#1-do-geese-have-
teeth](https://justbirding.com/geese-teeth/#1-do-geese-have-teeth)

~~~
gadders
Our gander has bitten me fairly hard. Not hard enough to draw blood, but hard
enough to leave a mark like a blood blister. They are very good at chewing
things to destruction.

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legec
Had the parrots taken in this new experiment been exposed to the articles
published about the initial experiment ?

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retbull
Gotta make sure it is double blind. Don't want those parrots going in with
knowledge there.

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EdwardDiego
Kea are another interesting social parrot. I highly recommend Kea, Bird of
Paradox: The Evolution and Behavior of a New Zealand Parrot:
[https://www.amazon.com/Kea-Bird-Paradox-Evolution-
Behavior/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Kea-Bird-Paradox-Evolution-
Behavior/dp/0520213394)

~~~
PlasticTank
Another fascinating social bird although not a parrot and one of only a few
social birds of prey is the Harris hawk, my father had one when I was a kid
and it was the most intelligent animal outside of humans that I have ever
interacted with.

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volkk
reminds me a bit of the Ted Chiang short story "The Great Silence"
[https://electricliterature.com/the-great-silence-by-ted-
chia...](https://electricliterature.com/the-great-silence-by-ted-chiang/)

~~~
MandieD
The species of the story's narrator:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rican_amazon](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rican_amazon)

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Gravityloss
Frans de Waal has written about these kind of things extensively, and I can
recommend him.

~~~
mikorym
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frans_de_Waal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frans_de_Waal),
in primates

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mLuby
Generosity is when you give something of value without expecting value in
return.

The subject was given things of no value and we don't know if it expected a
reward.

How do they know the animal wasn't just making the only move it had out of
boredom, or that it expected reciprocity but didn't get it?

~~~
philipov
> _How do they know the animal wasn 't just making the only move it had out of
> boredom_

The parrots only exchanged tokens when it would actually help the other
parrot, meaning the subject understood the other parrot's test and wasn't
acting randomly.

> _or that it expected reciprocity but didn 't get it?_

Ultimately, all generosity is predicated on an expectation of reciprocity ("Do
unto others..."). The difference is how long the subject is willing to wait
for it. The subject was in a situation where _immediate_ reciprocity wasn't
possible.

~~~
reroute1
> Ultimately, all generosity is predicated on an expectation of reciprocity
> ("Do unto others...").

Not really, a billionaire donating his fortune doesn't expect to have that
given back to him. The richest in the world would never have a hope of
reciprocity

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philipov
A billionaire that donates their fortune is buying a place in history. It's
not called the Carnegie-Mellon University for nothing. Being remembered daily
a hundred or more years after you die is the most valuable prize one can
obtain. Wouldn't you pay billions of dollars for the closest to immortality we
can get?

~~~
reroute1
Maybe, but that's also not generosity with expected reciprocity. That's just
buying something.

~~~
philipov
> _That 's just buying something._

Exactly. Don't look to billionaires to inform yourself about how generosity
works; they live in a completely different world.

~~~
reroute1
OK, so you've shown that sometimes billionaires donations are buying things
and not really donations. But that certainly does not account for ALL
billionaire donations.

My argument was about RECIPROCITY, which in the billionaire example is not
possible regardless of their motives. Even if some are just buying things,
there's absolutely no way that every single large donation was given to buy
something like a name on a building. There are countless examples of anonymous
donors.

Because the idea that all generosity has expected reciprocity is silly and
completely unprovable. You would have to change the definition of reciprocity
to include any feeling or personal satisfaction, which is completely
unknowable. You could never actually prove what that donors intentions were or
how they felt after, even if you think you know. And even if you could that
would be a huge stretch of an argument for " expected reciprocity" and not
what I was implying by the billionaire example.

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willis936
Hasn’t this behavior been observed in other non-great-ape species? I know
there are reports of dolphins working cooperatively with human fishers and
domestic dogs having similar behavior. It’s not far off from helping members
of the same species.

~~~
telesilla
Killer whales were recorded by whalers as directing larger whales towards the
killing area in return for feeding rights on the dead whales.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Tom_(killer_whale)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Tom_\(killer_whale\))

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JohnJamesRambo
I think altruism and good is the natural evolution of the universe. People
fear aliens but I feel any race that hasn’t extinguished itself has already
realized that doing good and love are the best way.

~~~
Konnstann
If the aliens see us the way we see cattle it won't matter that they are
altruistic.

~~~
kjs3
If they've actually solved crossing the distances required, we're probably
more like bugs or bacteria.

~~~
vl
There is nothing magic about crossing these distances, we can do it right now.
It’s just very expensive and nobody wants to spend the money.

~~~
kjs3
"I read sci-fi in my moms basement and because I want it to be true it is!"

No, we can't.

So let's ingore the whole "we don't live long enough to make the trip".
Because we don't.

So if we're going to go, it's a generation ship. Which is currently magic. Our
MVP experiments trying to do this _on earth_ have failed, not in space with
all the crazy complications that incurs.

So there's no reason to think our meatbags can go at any price. So....

We've never built a machine that can work for a 1000 years. That's a fraction
of what you need to go to another star.

So the fact that there is nothing magic about crossing these distances is
exactly the reason we can't do it right now. And probably never can.

~~~
vl
Flight to the moon was beyond reach in 1943, but it was clear that it’s
possible to do and what technologies need to be developed. This later was done
at great expense.

We are in the similar situation now, we know what needs to be developed, it’s
just very expensive and we can’t (and should not) mobilize entire earth
population to pay for it. If we do, we can colonize nearest star systems in
few thousand years and Milky Way in couple million.

~~~
kjs3
The next star is a trillion some odd times farther away than the moon. You're
trying to draw a linear relationship that's equivalent to "I stepped off my
porch" and "I went to the moon".

It's fantasy.

