[sirtastic]

I believe ravens and crows are very similar, this is a personal (long, and not the great) story about a raven I messed around with in Yosemite National Park:

When I was up on north dome (not to be confused with half dome) there was a group of raven's hanging out on the rocks watching us eat our late lunch. I had an apple core that I tossed to the side and watched as a raven warily tried to approach it. I walked over and grabbed the apple core before the raven could grab it so I could entertain myself teasing the raven for a bit before we started down the mountain. I started by putting my arm back ready to throw the apple and as I did that I noticed the raven kneel a bit as if getting ready to launch itself. I thought this was interesting as it showed it was anticipating me throwing the object based on my arm motion. As I relaxed my arm the bird also relaxed.

I tried grabbing a rock and again watched it brace itself to launch from the rock then tried switching the apple core and the rock behind my back and tossing the rock hoping the bird would dart after it thinking it was the core. The bird didn't do as I expected and instead just watched me carefully never motioning for the rocks.

I tore a piece of the apple from the core behind my back and tossed it just as I had with the rocks and before the piece of apple even left my hand the raven leaped from the rock in its direction.

This blew my mind. Not sure how the raven knew it was a chunk of apple and not a rock.

I messed around with that particular raven for a good 10-15 minutes tossing various things in its direction, testing its reactions and trying to mess with its little raven mind. All I managed to do however was be impressed at its level of experience in dealing with Yosemite tourists such as myself.

[jmnicolas]

> and trying to mess with its little raven mind

don't you get that it was the raven that was playing with your little human mind ? ;-)

[sirtastic]

touche raven, touche. At one moment I had the impression I was annoying the raven.

[krzrak]

You realize you're not supposed to toss around garbage in the national park?

[Unklejoe]

Here's a different perspective, which I will admit in advance is kind of ridiculous, but it makes me think...

Why are humans not considered to be a part of nature? I think it’s because we consider ourselves to be more intelligent than other animals/organisms and therefore assume it to be our responsibility to actively protect nature. However, this is based on our own moral standards, which were created by us, likely as a result of our ability to empathize.

A human eating an apple and discarding the core seems pretty natural to me (though it’s not, by definition). If this has an impact on the wildlife population, then perhaps it was “meant to be”.

Going out of our way to preserve nature seems more unnatural. Nature should have no expectation of our intelligence, so perhaps the human-caused destruction of the world is itself natural.

Then again, perhaps our increased intelligence is natural, so going out of our way to preserve nature is natural.

As you can see, I basically have no point here. It’s just an interesting thought train that I felt like expressing.

Of course, this argument could be extended to just about anything that a human does, including pumping oil directly into the ocean, which is why I’m not actually trying to argue this point.

I guess what I am saying is that if humans are left unregulated, nature seems to find a way to restore sanity. An example of this is the over prescription of antibiotics which has led to a decrease in their overall effectiveness. It seems like nature will always win in the end.

[QuotedForTruth]

Sure, throwing one apple core seems pretty natural. But a national park is full of visitors every day. If it isn't a strict policy not to throw trash and food where animals can scavenge it, they learn to expect and rely on it. This brings them in more frequent contact. With crows that's no big deal, perhaps an annoyance to visitors at worst. But other animals can be much more dangerous. Keeping a healthy fear of people in animals (and honestly of animals in people) is incredibly important.

The most extreme example of this is trash feeding bears in Yellowstone up until 1970. Humans naturally ate at hotels which naturally tossed their trash into giant piles nearby. Bears naturally came looking for all that food they smelled and naturally ate it. The humans then naturally started watching and the park naturally made that easier by putting up grandstands around the trash heaps.

Eventually a new Yellowstone park chief saw the ridiculousness and danger of this and stopped it. It then took a while for the bears to adapt their behavior back to their actual natural behavior without such a rich food source.

http://www.yellowstonepark.com/yellowstone-bears-no-longer-g...

[coldpie]

Unregulated humans have lead to the extinction of hundreds (thousands?) of species. Largely by hunting, but also unintentionally by destroying habitats. It's also a safety hazard: when you feed wild animals, they learn to associate humans with food and are more willing to approach humans, which places humans in danger. Aside from animal welfare, garbage is just disgusting. If one person sees an apple core, perhaps they'll assume it's OK to leave their Doritos bag, and someone else a beer bottle, and now the area is spoiled for everyone. Not to mention health hazards for both humans and animals from rotting food.

[tripzilch]

> If one person sees an apple core, perhaps they'll assume it's OK to leave their Doritos bag

Let me nuance that a little bit: They don't actually believe it's OK, they're really just lazy and inconsiderate. If they were actually unaware of the difference between food and plastic packaging, the problem would be solving itself.

[Scarblac]

Well, we're talking about a National Park. Which is a part of nature we explicitly try to keep unaffected by humans as much as possible. So elsewhere you may have an argument, but in this case any visitor influence on nature is bad.

[logfromblammo]

I disagree. Discarding the core is unnatural. The only part of an apple that I discard is the stem.

I also ensure that I do not crush all of the seeds with my teeth, thus honoring "the deal" between fruit-bearing plants and animals (even though sewage treatment plants may be involved after the fact).

I draw the line at plums, though. Those are pretty much the largest fruit seeds that I will swallow whole. Peaches, you're out of luck.

But when you put toilets and sewers in the equation, tossing the seed-bearing portion of a fruit to another animal is probably the most natural thing you can do. The animal receiving the food has no cause to object. The plant that bore the fruit has no cause to object (unless it is seedless). And the only reason a human might object is if it somehow upsets the environmental equilibrium, such as if 10000 humans are all throwing their uneaten apple cores in the same place.

...like tourists at a national park.

When you're in a "natural" area that somehow gets a lot of human activity anyway, you're actually better off burning your garbage, and either packing out the ash if local soil is basic, or spreading it and peeing on it if the local soil is acidic.

[mod]

Do you realize that plums and peaches and apples are all likely to be happy just to be carried off and dropped?

You don't have to eat freaking pits out of fruit.

[logfromblammo]

That's not true. It depends on the plant species, but some seeds require physical or chemical abrasion of the seed coat before germination can occur. Some fruits have germination-inhibiting plant hormones in the fruit flesh, and cannot sprout until that is either digested or rotted away.

Some seeds require seasonal cycles of cold and hot, but that doesn't involve animals except insofar as they may cause the climate to shift.

That's not really why I swallow the seeds. I do it because it makes less of a mess to clean up after a meal or snack. Someone else might have to walk their apple core to a garbage can, and worry about whether it will rot and stink in there. I just put the stem on my desk and throw it in the landscaping mulch later.

[SilasX]

National parks want to maintain nature in a certain pre-tech-influence state. Don't over-philosophize it.

[91bananas]

People were philosophizing long before tech-influence. Technology was absent from the thought train too.

[tripzilch]

Are you saying they had thought trains before there were trains?

[heartsucker]

Biodegradable apple cores that he was feeding to birds? I think that hardly qualifies.

[cr1895]

Well, ideally "leave no trace" and "don't mess with wildlife" are adhered to when in nature

edit: it's also illegal in national parks, carrying up to a $5000 fine and six months in jail

[heartsucker]

Yes, I have spent a lot of time out in nature and parks, and I generally am aware of not leaving a trace or litter. However, with something like a banana peel, I'd rather it end up as tree food the in a landfill, so I usually toss them in bushes.

[eseehausen]

The issue is that leaving food for the animals alters their behavior and can cause issues. You're probably not the worst offender wherever you are, as there are many people who just give food to animals, but the argument would be that it contributes to the problem.

[gerbilly]

Actually banana peels and orange peels don't biodegrade that fast in a north American forest.

Apple cores I think might not be too bad to toss, ants can eat that up in a day or two.

I pack out the peels of any tropical fruit.

[waterphone]

Please don't do that with banana or orange peels, they remain present for a long time. I have no problem personally with people tossing apple cores in more remote, little-visited areas (though it still makes sense to crack down on such things a bit more in heavily visited areas like National Parks) but various peels don't rot well and remain in place.

[seszett]

I'm not sure about Yosemite or even nature in the US so maybe this wouldn't be an issue, but even biodegradable things like apple cores or egg shells can spread diseases to local populations of trees or birds. That's a real thing to take into account in natural parks with endemic species at least.

[heartsucker]

Huh. I didn't know. Do you have a link on that?

[seszett]

I don't have a link though, it's just something that was been repeated at length by the Natural Reserve agents and the ecobiologists to the personnel and visitors while I was on Kerguelen island (precisely about apple cores and egg shells - most of the vegetation is actually in the same Rosaceae family as apple trees, and there are many local bird species).

It makes sense to me, seeing how a single disease like chestnut blight or phylloxera can be very devastating to a population on a whole continent, it could be both as bad but also less noticeable in a natural park.

[nommm-nommm]

In the very least it's unsightly. Thousands of people go to Yosemite, imagine if every one of them dropped food debris along the trail.

[emiliobumachar]

Well, there are seeds in it...

[sirtastic]

It was an apple grown in one of the 3 orchards around Yosemite purchased from the store in the valley. It was a native apple.

Also, I don't consider biodegradable native fruits to be trash. People argue the birds will choke on seeds or something which is absurd. I hike in Yosemite dozens of times a year and I can't recall ever seeing so much as banana peel and I know people are tossing those on the ground everywhere.

[obj-g]

Boy, there's one in every thread, huh?

[manojlds]

> I believe ravens and crows are very similar,

Have to ask - read only the article title?

[pestaa]

I'm in love with your writing style.

[finid]

What most people don't realize is that most live forms lower on the chain can read our minds. So if the crow's reaction was different based on what you wanted to throw, it's because it knew what you wanted to do before you did it.

It was reading your thoughts.

Dogs and cats do it too.

A few years ago I went to a farm to buy a goat. The younger goats did not know why I was there, but when an older goat saw me and our eyes met, it knew, and took off.

[frankquist]

Okay, so these are the kinds of things that definitely need a citation ;)

In what sense do you mean reading minds? Genuine mind reading, or basically a kind of intuiting about human intention based on say, body language?

[kawsper]

Not OP, and I am not talking about mind-reading.

But we have domesticated dogs for a long time, and some might argue that they are a lot better and quicker to pick up on our body language, than we are at picking up on theirs.

Dog Behaviorists spend a lot of their not training dogs, but training dog owners to understand and read their dog.

[tripzilch]

> In what sense do you mean reading minds? Genuine mind reading, or basically a kind of intuiting about human intention based on say, body language?

And by "genuine", he means "magical" ... :-)

[praptak]

Intuiting is pretty well described in the case of the Clever Hans horse (googleable).

[finid]

Sorry, no citation. Just my personal knowledge and experience.

And it's not just reading body language, but actual reading your thoughts. In the case of the crow, what body language tells it that the guy is about to throw a piece of rock or a bone when it can't SEE the object?

I know it's not something I can prove to you, but that doesn't mean it's not happening.

[icelancer]

>I know it's not something I can prove to you, but that doesn't mean it's not happening.

Come on man.

[coldtea]

>what body language tells it that the guy is about to throw a piece of rock or a bone when it can't SEE the object?

Tons of things, from being able to understand body cues that the guy is up to some BS (like we can tell a liar), to smelling the thing he has in his hands...

Plus who said it "couldn't see the thing" in the first place? Even if it couldn't see what in his hand, it could have watched his moves before, as he left the apple and picked up the rock etc.

[duncan_bayne]

No, that is pretty much the definition of "not happening".

[bitJericho]

Smaller animals are incredibly faster than humans in reaction times because of the difference in the length of their nerves. Birds are also far smarter than people give them credit for. Nothing can read minds tho. That's pure fantasy.

[andrepd]

I'm just curious what your thought process is. I mean, what makes you think something so wacky as reading minds is happening (come on..) when the explanation is probably just that the birds have quick reflexes.

[coldtea]

>A few years ago I went to a farm to buy a goat. The younger goats did not know why I was there, but when an older goat saw me and our eyes met, it knew, and took off.

It could have took off for 100000 reasons, non of which end being "because it read your mind".

For example: it got scared, it did it randomly, is afraid of strangers because it had some bad experience, etc...

[vidarh]

The most "advanced" behaviour I'd attribute that to would be possibly having recognised that when strangers come, other goats disappear and don't come back.

But I'd expect it to be more likely to just be one of your simpler suggestions.

It's just bizarre to attribute it to mind reading, when we'd apply far more mundane reasons if we saw the same behaviour in people.

[carapace]

Don't downvote, it's true. Animals can read your thoughts. The mechanism seems to be that they can see your visualizations: I can call my sister's cat in from outside "telepathically" by clearly "seeing" in my mind's eye the cat walking in the back door and "sending" the imagery to him.

Sometimes the if the back door is closed and I'm not distracted by computer or something he "calls" me to open the door. Subjectively, I get this subtle "ping" that feels like "I should open the door for the cat" so I do and he's there waiting.

This sort of thing is pretty easy to develop. It's innate, you're already doing it, you just have to learn to pay attention and calibrate.

[LyndsySimon]

> Sometimes the if the back door is closed and I'm not distracted by computer or something he "calls" me to open the door. Subjectively, I get this subtle "ping" that feels like "I should open the door for the cat" so I do and he's there waiting.

I've experienced similar things, as I have both small children and a very fat cat that doesn't like to jump over our toddler gate. I've been playing games with headphones on in an entirely separate room and suddenly felt that the cat wanted me to go open the gate. Sure enough, when I got there, he was waiting by the gate.

That said... I don't attribute this to telepathy. Animals get on schedules after a while, and perhaps it's likely that I merely intuited that the cat was very likely to want to go through the gate at that specific time.

It's like that episode of the Office where they put an increasing number of nickels in Dwight's phone handset over a long period, then take them out all at once and he smacks himself in the face with it - we humans often exhibit behaviors that are primarily driven by unconscious stimuli.

[cr1895]

>Don't downvote, it's true. Animals can read your thoughts. The mechanism seems to be that they can see your visualizations: I can call my sister's cat in from outside "telepathically" by clearly "seeing" in my mind's eye the cat walking in the back door and "sending" the imagery to him.

Unsubstantiated nonsense. Your perception that this is a real phenomena is not evidence that it actually exists.

[lxxxvi]

So you're saying the cat is Branning your Hodor? :p

[thedoctor79]

No, I'm sorry, you got this wrong. When you do that, you are not "calling" the cat, you are effectively controlling it with your mind eye. You need to be very careful with that, doing it long term can result in damage to the cat.

[logfromblammo]

I am picturing in my mind's eye someone beating you on the dome of your skull with an oversized elementary science textbook.

It is not generally useful to say someone else is "wrong" about their religion or superstitions, unless you have statistically significant data from a controlled, reproducible experiment that contradicts their implied hypothesis. Without the support of facts, you're just in a pissing contest over who writes the best fiction.

If you're going to talk about this on HN, in terms of correct or incorrect, you're going to need to show the differences in medical scanner images between cats that have been continually mind-controlled by psychic humans over their entire lifespans and control cats with similar breeds and ages.

Because of that, I'm not going to say that your hypothesis is wrong, as it remains untested, but I will say that it is so implausible that any research experiment intended to test it is very unlikely to get public funding.

[tripzilch]

> I am picturing in my mind's eye someone beating you on the dome of your skull with an oversized elementary science textbook.

Yeah well that's not going to work, obviously. You can't have both elementary science textbooks and mind-projecting them through a non-physical mystical plane of existence.

And even if it could be done, it'd be highly unethical. Imagine a non-corporeal entity finding out they've been violating physical conservation laws during their whole existence.

[someone7x]

I don't know what to say other than I'm sad when I see reddit-ish comment chains like this on HN. Someday I'll be a big kid and be able to downvote, but in the mean time I shake my head.

[LyndsySimon]

I've not seen KenM show up yet, but it's just a matter of time.

[tripzilch]

Okay let's get one part straight here. I don't believe any of this bullshit but I'm pretty sure I know a lot more about it than whatever you're making up right now.

The "mind's eye" is strictly input-only. Associated image of a silver mirror (or the Moon or my favourite, the pineal gland), which carries a reflection of the realm(s) of the Gods (or Godlike), which are beyond comprehension of mortal Man yadda-yadda etc, you can only witness the reflected image, which can be a divine/true vision or a false vision/hallucination (or a meaningless vision, or any combination thereof). Hence why the moon is associated with insanity.

I like reading about these kinds of things for fun, and because it has some weird and twisted yet surprisingly consistent logic to it (by which I mean, not very consistent but still surprisingly so). I've never read anything (outside the explicitly fictional) about it being hurtful to cats, though. And somehow I doubt you'd be able to provide me with a source either :)

[carapace]

I understand your concern. I am very careful. Ahimsa and non-coercion are primary to my nature. <3 ;-D

The cat will "blow me off" sometimes if he's stalking or napping and doesn't want to come in.