The 90s are nothing. I remember a flock of seagulls from the 80s that are still flying around.
Hello, fellow old people. My 10 year old is sporting that cut, unironicaly.
Any bird who lives primarily in the water is dumb as shit. They have unlimited protection above and around them, so they have zero adaptive pressure to put anything into their intelligence. Land birds have a lot to worry about so their brains are approaching human levels of intellect.
If the land birds get any smarter they’re going to have to start worrying about a whole lot more. Like taxes, or rent.
I mean some birds have been shown exchanging money for goods and services, so it’s not that far off.
A land bird flew into my window so hard I was worried it died this morning. This happens once a month to my knowledge and I don’t spend long in my bedroom outside sleeping. Land birds aren’t smart outside of a few select species lol
In all seriousness that’s more of a sensory limitation than an intelligence limitation. IIRC birds’ eyes work differently from mammals and they can’t see glass pretty much at all.
That just gives them a target. They can’t see the window. This is a real problem in some cities. AFAIK no one has found a real solution other than frosting the windows, but then humans can’t see through the windows and get irritated.
Like what? It’s a bay window like any other, I have blackout curtains drawn across it most of the time so I can sleep past 6. I’m not putting any stickers or anything on it that the hoa will get pissy about
Funny story, never hit a bird with my car in Quebec, until I drove into Manitoba, where I proceeded to wack 3 in 2 days.
Birds seem to be stupid by region.
A land bird flew into my window so hard I was worried it died this morning. This happens once a month
The same bird???
Not true at all. There’s tons of adaptive pressure. If there weren’t, we wouldn’t see the thousands of pelagic and shorebird species that we do. But even if what you say about the threat from predation were true --its not-- there would still be adaptive pressure from differential reproduction rates and access to nutrients.
I’m sure there’s some seagull out there with a 1000-yard stare who went through the most fucked up shit of his life in the 90’s and still remembers it like it was yesterday. He hangs out down by the bars and drinks discarded alcohol out of the trash, trying to forget, and then flies around drunk bumping into things.
The other seagulls look at him and shake their heads with pity “he used to be such a good gull… so full of promise.”
This reminds me of a talk I had with my dad, an equine veterinarian for 40 years. I’d seen that video of a horse eating a chick online and someone in the comments explained that horses are naturally opportunistic eaters and that’s why it took the chance to munch it down. I confidently told him this later on and he said, ‘nah, they’re just stupid’.
If you throw a blanket over a horses head, it will think it’s dead and starve to death if you don’t remove the blanket
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
throw a blanket over a horses head, it will think it’s dead
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I don’t know that I’d trust an ornathologist to know how the brain chemistry works. But I do trust that they’re dumb. Lacking memory isn’t predictive of being dumb, but there’s probably some correlation. Maybe seagulls have perfect memory but just want to flip human observers the bird.
Ornithologists do actual science, they aren’t just bird watchers. An ornithologist is pretty much the only one I would trust about this because they are the ones studying the birds.
Idk bird lawyers probably don’t deal with birds at their smartest. Human lawyers likely don’t think we’re intelligent life either
