Species consciousness & instinct. Blue tits are back (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, January 22, 2017, 23:11 (2862 days ago) @ David Turell

In the 1920's in England Blue/Great Tits learned how to raid milk bottles for cream. After a WWII hiatus they learned all over again, faster than the first time, as discussed by Sheldrake. Now they are the subject of colored feeder training:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/flying-high-research-unveils-birds-learning-power-1484762376

"Dr. Aplin and her colleagues studied the Great Tits in Wytham Woods near Oxford. Biologists there fitted out hundreds of birds, 90% of the population, with transponder tags, like bird bar codes, that let them track the birds’ movements.

"Dr. Aplin showed the birds a feeder with a door painted half blue and half red. The birds lived in separate groups in different parts of the wood. Two birds from one group learned that when they pushed the blue side of the feeder from left to right, they got a worm. Another two birds from another group learned the opposite technique; they only got the worm when they pushed the red side from right to left. Then the researchers released the birds back into the wild and scattered feeders throughout the area. The feeders would work with either technique.

"The researchers tracked which birds visited the feeders and at what time, as well as which technique they used. The wild birds rapidly learned by watching those trained in the lab. The blue-group birds pushed the blue side, while the red group pushed the red. And new birds who visited a feeder imitated the birds at that site, even though they could easily have learned that the other technique worked, too.
Then the researchers used a social-network analysis to track just which birds liked to hang out with which other birds. Like people on Facebook, birds were much more likely to learn from other birds in their social network than from birds they spent less time with. Also like humans, young birds were more likely to adopt the new techniques than older ones.

"Most remarkably, the traditions continued into the next year. Great Tits don’t live very long, and only about 40% of the birds survive to the next season. But though the birds had gone, their discoveries lived on. The next generation of the blue group continued to use the blue technique.

"We often assume that only animals who are closely related to us will share our cognitive abilities. The new research suggests that very different species can evolve impressive learning skills that suit their particular environmental niche. Great Tits—like honeybees, humpbacks and humans—are sophisticated foragers who learn to adapt to new environments. The young American graduate student and the young Great Tit at her door both learned to become masters of the British bottle."

Comment; Not so much instinct as learning what they see and passing it on. The issue is whether it gets encoded into DNA, or whether surviving adults show the youngsters the trick. Humpbacks in the middle of the century taught themselves in Alaska how to bubble feed: a circle of them blow a circle of bubbles and surface within the circle eating everything there. They have done it ever since.