Tom Cox @cox tom

Almost certainly the best thing I wa ever told about owls was when I met an owl handler and he told me that the wild owls in the sanctuary where he worked worried about the tame show owls there and sometimes stopped by to leave them shrews and mice as presents.

  • TruthAintEasy@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    77
    ·
    9 months ago

    Birds are way smarter than we give them credit for. Im possitive that the smarter ones have a rudimentary language, specifically corvids. Owls are so cool, where I live I can go spot great horned owls just hiking around.

    • atomicorange@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      55
      ·
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      Parrots are definitely capable of using human words and phrases in context. Stuff like “bye bye” when someone leaves a room, or “want some water?” when they see you drinking from a glass and want to have a taste. Attaching sounds to concepts and using them to communicate those concepts seems like basic language stuff to me!

      Source: had parrots my whole life. +bird tax

      • Zirconium@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        12
        ·
        9 months ago

        That’s like the first beautiful tamed picture of a parrot I’ve seen. My aunt has a 27 year old parrot so he’s an old fuck and I used to have a friend who’s emotional state was so fucked up that her bird looked like she was on crack. Please more picture of your parrot please

    • Olmai@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      19
      ·
      9 months ago

      Isn’t bird singing a rudimentary language ? They have different songs with different meanings

      • TruthAintEasy@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        38
        ·
        9 months ago

        I mean as in they can describe appearances and events to each other, but probably not formulate any plans more complex than eat here, avoid that place, attack guys dressed up in Jason Voorhees costumes because three generations ago a guy dressed like that messed around with our nests… stuff like that

      • angrystego@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        9 months ago

        It definitely depends on the species. Parrots and corvids are the most intelligent groups as far as we know.

    • jimerson@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      9 months ago

      My immediate thought was imagining an owl hopping from boulder to bush, hiking around a forest.

      My second thought was that I’m an idiot.

    • III@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      9 months ago

      Anecdotal story for you. I worked at a restaurant where our dumpster was across the parking lot. So when we took out trash it was a little walk. One time when taking out the trash, as I opened the door to go outside I heard a bird start chirping. It then flew over the dumpster, and as it passed over about 10 other birds flew out of the dumpster. He was the lookout.

    • LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      9 months ago

      I have ducks, and they’re way smarter than people think. I have them trained pretty well. They follow some basic commands that make handling them easier. My favorite bird also helps me wrangle any ducks who aren’t listening. I just tell him to help me and he does lol.

    • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      9 months ago

      As I understand it Owls sit a little on the derpy side of the bird spectrum. A friend of mine was a vet tech for a sanctuary and appearantly they are divas who get very attached to a single person. She said owls as a rule are very easy to confuse and dupe.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      11
      ·
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      Owls might be interesting birds but they’ve got the brains the size of a grape.

      • angrystego@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        9 months ago

        Bird brains are small in general. Therefore the high intelligence of some species was quite surprising. There’s some fresh research showing that bird neurons are way smaller than mammal neurons - so quite an impressive number of them can be fitted in a small brain. They have a small brain with a big computational power. My pet theory is that this characteristic could have been present already in the dinos, making them smart instead of dull.