Clever Corvids: unique beaks for tool use (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, March 20, 2016, 18:26 (3170 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: I find it hard to believe that a crow using a stick to obtain its nosh will be unseen by other crows. In any case, there are crows all round where I live, and I see lots of them at a time. Perhaps yours are simply different from ours. I believe some species live in communities of thousands!-Hyperbole won't do! I've seen flocks of birds as they migrate. Our crows don't flock..-> dhw: As for the offspring, you say they would only learn if they “hung around to watch”, but they fly off when they fledge. I don't suppose either of us has a clue how long it takes for a young bird to learn how to grab a twig and forage.-That is why it is built in.-> [/i]
> dhw: And yes, I believe we inherited aggression, greed, territorialism from our fellow animals, just as we inherited parental love, social structures, and the need to explore.
> DAVID: I think they are parallel developments. Do we have specific genes for greed, aggression, etc.? No. Genes are the tools of evolution.
> 
> dhw: Evolution is not confined to genes. You have already devoted several threads to the evolution of language, for which there is no known gene. Here we are talking about the evolution of behaviour....If you believe in common descent, you can hardly argue that they are “parallel” developments: they have remained constant right back to whatever ancestry you can think of.-Since the simplest parts of our brain function are similar, I think the emotions we see, fear, interest, aggression, etc. can be common, but I'm not at all sure we evolved ours from the organisms that preceded us, but instead developed our own forms of them.