A Pic Shows How Living In Tahoe Is Different

This was August 22nd on Luther Pass. Although this is fun, you should probably be glad you are someplace else.

Throckmorton, The African Grey Parrot

Here is one more great story from Ackerman's The Genius Of Birds.

If you get the paperpack version, turn to page 146 and prepare to laugh and be amazed. Ackerman recounts the story of Throckmorton, an African Grey Parrot whose verbal ability is astonishing.

Throckmorton belongs to a couple, Karen and Bob, and his housemate is a miniature schnauzer. 

Throckmorton perfectly mimics the ring tone of Bob's cell phone. Then he mimics Bob answering it, "Hello? Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh." Then Throckmorton mimics the sound of Bob hanging up. From the other room, Karen thinks (knows) that Bob is in the next room and has been talking on the phone. 

Throckmorton's cell phone fluency is a great way to entertain himself, getting Bob and Karen both running, looking for their phones.

When Throckmorton wants some action, he mimics the schnauzer barking as if someone has knocked on the door. The schnauzer then joins, wondering, no doubt, how he missed the door knocker. No one, including Bob and Karen, can tell the difference between the parrot barking and the dog barking. Karen says that Throckmorton makes their house sound like a kennel.

When Bob has a cold, Throckmorton does his nose-blowing, coughing, and sneezing routine, exactly like Bob. Throckmorton mimics the sound of Bob slurping his coffee. He can do a perfect rendition of Karen gulping water.

And of course, Throckmorton has a comprehensive command of English, including those colorful words that can make certain dinner guests uncomfortable.

Further, he perfectly mimics both Karen's and Bob's voices. So if he wants someone to come, he calls out, "Bob" in Karen's voice, or "Karen" in Bob's voice. 

Never a dull moment in Throckmorton's house!

I highly recommend Ackerman's book.

Is GPS Making Us Dumber?

Last week, I wrote about Jennifer Ackerman's "The Genius Of Birds," an amazing collection of the latest science on bird intelligence. One of the studies was looking into similarities between the way birds learn to navigate and the way humans learn to navigate.

Birds learn how to navigate by watching their parents and communicating with other birds and flying around learning where places are and by figuring out through experience how to accurately go back to those places. It turns out that if you raise a bird without this experience, the bird, no matter how innately smart, does not learn navigation skills.

Humans are the same way.

The conclusion of the science was something that society has begun to witness anecdotally. When people spend time studying maps and putting the information in them to use (such as driving cross country, or engaging in the sport of orienteering, or finding one's way in the canoe wilderness of Northern Minnesota and Ontario using nothing but a topographical map and a compass) people get very good at navigation skills. Drop a person with such experience into the wilderness at night with nothing but the sun and the stars for information, and they will have a good chance of finding their way out.

By contrast, if a person goes everywhere by listening to the synthetic voice in the car give directions, saying "Turn right in one mile, then turn left at the next intersection," the person never really gets a sense of where anything is in relation to other places. The person never learns geography. Drop that person into the wilderness, they are helpless.

The two people may have equal intelligence, but the one who figures out where they're going is dramatically smarter than the one who just follows directions.

The Genius Of Birds

We all love birds. Of all the non-human animals on the planet, they are the only ones who are everywhere, all the time, tropics or arctic, and they flaunt their brain power as well as their beauty. Other animals, from meek mice to roaring lions, tend lie low or even hide, whether to avoid being eaten or to avoid scaring off their lunch.

Not birds. They are loud and in your face. They are bold. And they are amazing problem solvers, displaying a brilliance and a group of skills that no other animals possess.

I just finished reading a great book titled The Genius Of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman. I always knew birds were special. Ms. Ackerman explained why and how.

We often notice the smarts of our dogs. We notice the smarts of dolphins and elephants and apes. These animals can all do amazing things with memory (finding buried toys or food), searching (dogs and dolphins using scent to find and track explosives), communication (dolphins give each other names), making tools to get food (chimps make hunting spears), complex social interactions (elephants mourn their dead with specific rituals).

But birds are the only animals who do all of the above plus can learn to mimic other animal communication with astonishing fidelity, use tools to make other tools, build impressive homes using many kinds of materials, make dramatic, colorful art installations that have no functional purpose and are only designed to attract mates, and keep track of the calendar to the day. For example, Hummingbirds can memorize the location of thousands of flower/nectar food sources and the dates those flowers typically bloom. Then they show up each year on the same day after migrating hundreds or even thousands of miles.

One of their most amazing abilities is their navigation ability. Birds create a mental, geographic map of their world that includes vision, hearing, smell, and even magnetic field information. They are of course born with the right wiring. But it is their learning through observation of their parents and trial and error that gives them these skills.

In a notable experiment, scientists in Seattle trapped birds that have lived their entire lives on the West Coast. They attached tiny transmitters to the birds, then put those birds into a closed metal container (comfortable inside for the birds). The container allowed no information, light or sound or magnetism, from the outer world to seep in. Then, using a circuitous route, the scientists took the birds to the East Coast, 3000 miles from anyplace they'd ever been, and released them. The birds flew around a bit as if to do a little reconnaissance about their new area. After a day or so, the birds headed west. In a few days, the birds all returned home.

While many birds are born with certain innate understanding. Scientists have learned, and demonstrated, that most critical bird navigation is learned. And if you take away that learning, birds cannot navigate well at all.

Next week, I'll discuss the question of what that means for people relying on GPS to give them directions to their destination. Hint: It ain't good!