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.
That seems excessively skeptical to me. You don't know what an animal is feeling, in the sense that you don't know other minds exist, but I think when animal behavior makes emotional sense, it's appropriate to interpret it that way.
Nor do I think it's that farfetched that birds should feel grief. A lot of animals display emotions that I identify with. I've seen pride and humiliation and saving face in cats. And dogs obviously feel joy and worry and mourning.
I understand the need to distinguish between what's likely and what's proven, but I also don't see a reason for the explanation to be complex. It looks like grief. I think it's more likely to be that than some alien phenomenon that happens to look like it.
I thought the exact opposite from the article. I decoupled the idea that a funeral was an emotional or cultural event with something that is a long time survival technique. We place a value in funerals from a cultural level, but forget that ultimately it's just a behavior that extends our survival. What better time to slow down and think about the lessons learned? Is culture not just distilled and sophisticated survival techniques? Is the difference for why birds 'mourn without feeling' and why we 'mourn with feeling' any different?
On the flipside, we humans have spent centuries convincing ourselves that we are fundamentally different from animals and assuming that our experiences are unique to us. Social animals are much closer to us than we give them credit for, particularly with respect to emotions, given the evolutionary role they play in making kinds of sociality possible.
If they developed an adaptation to step eating for over a day by associating a dead bird with poisoned food or some other danger, wouldn't a more effective response be to leave for somewhere else? They stop eating for over a day while also calling each other over and gathering together around the dead body. Applying the term "funeral" is a really unscientific and poorly chosen description, but that is an interesting collection of behaviors.
I get an eerie feeling sometimes watching Western scrub jays, gray jays, and Steller's jays and how complex their behavior can seem.
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?
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.
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?
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:
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.
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.
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.
[+] [-] jerf|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Dove|13 years ago|reply
Nor do I think it's that farfetched that birds should feel grief. A lot of animals display emotions that I identify with. I've seen pride and humiliation and saving face in cats. And dogs obviously feel joy and worry and mourning.
I understand the need to distinguish between what's likely and what's proven, but I also don't see a reason for the explanation to be complex. It looks like grief. I think it's more likely to be that than some alien phenomenon that happens to look like it.
[+] [-] trout|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] walterkim|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tichy|13 years ago|reply
Also, what is human mourning good for? Perhaps we interpret too much into our own behavior, too.
[+] [-] bfe|13 years ago|reply
I get an eerie feeling sometimes watching Western scrub jays, gray jays, and Steller's jays and how complex their behavior can seem.
[+] [-] jessedhillon|13 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] mark_l_watson|13 years ago|reply
Now, years later, we have a domesticated Meyers Parrot and his behavior is very complex and interesting.
[+] [-] Spooky23|13 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] georgemcbay|13 years ago|reply
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/a-murder-of-crows/fu...
[+] [-] autophil|13 years ago|reply
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|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelbuckbee|13 years ago|reply
http://blogs.ngm.com/blog_central/2009/10/the-story-behind-o...
[+] [-] sleepyhead|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mise|13 years ago|reply
Except for roadkill, I don't see dead birds. I'm guessing under some shrubs, where they hide away weakly?