They have enough thought process to play. Watch them fly. They play in the thermals. Do all manner of aerobatics. They know how to steal from humans. That’s not “dumb”.
I think a lot of birds have more complex internal lives than people realize. I have chickens, amd all four of them have a distinct personality and feelings.
No kidding. My yard has had more chickens than I can count over the years. Every one an individual.
And all of them evil
There’s literally a Sea Chanty from the 1600s about this. “Three White Gulls Were Flying”
It was a Crow’s Nest Chanty. Not a rowing or pull and haul Chanty.
Idk if that’s like a weird spelling from another country, but I’ve always read it as Shanty.
There’s a number of spellings, since it’s a word from a time before standardised English. At least, that’s what I think.
Do tell!
Then wanted your French fries in the 90’s and they still want them today
I’m sure there’s some seagull out there with a 1000-yard stare who went through the most fucked up shit of his life in the 90’s and still remembers it like it was yesterday. He hangs out down by the bars and drinks discarded alcohol out of the trash, trying to forget, and then flies around drunk bumping into things.
The other seagulls look at him and shake their heads with pity “he used to be such a good gull… so full of promise.”
Seagulls play dumber than they are, ever since Johnathan Livingston
This reminds me of a talk I had with my dad, an equine veterinarian for 40 years. I’d seen that video of a horse eating a chick online and someone in the comments explained that horses are naturally opportunistic eaters and that’s why it took the chance to munch it down. I confidently told him this later on and he said, ‘nah, they’re just stupid’.
If you throw a blanket over a horses head, it will think it’s dead and starve to death if you don’t remove the blanket
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Are they stupid or do they know that death is just a dark void?
Got me wondering weather or not horses actually know something we don’t. They always had shifty eyes.
Someone on youtube said it therefore it must be true. I believe it.
I read a youtube comment once which said that comments on youtube are always accurate and trustworthy. So there you go.
The 90s are nothing. I remember a flock of seagulls from the 80s that are still flying around.
They just flew (so far away).
Spoiler alert: they couldn’t get away.
Hello, fellow old people. My 10 year old is sporting that cut, unironicaly.
Your 10 year old is cooler than most of us old people. Lord knows I couldn’t sport that cut ever. I have 1970s hair, and was born in 1980.
Like The Beegees type of hair. That’s what I had naturally.
“The greatest trick the devil ever played was making man believe he doesn’t exist”
Those seagulls remember… and they’ll have their revenge for that hot dog bun you scared them off in 04’. tick tok
Wait till this person hears about parrots
For real, there are at least some parrots that are likely to outlive their owners. Like if you get a pet parrot you do it considering you will likely pass it on to someone else in your fucking will.
My great grandad got a couple of cockatoos when he was in his 20s right after ww2 and they still managed to outlive him. Only by a few weeks mind you - poor things starved themselves to death out of grief after he died. He told us not to worry about rehoming them because he knew they wouldn’t be able to take the loss of loosing him at such an age.
He only had them because he took up conservation work and they’re just, native to Australia. They lived out in a big aviary he’d built with trees and bushes and even a water feature along with other birds he ended up aquiring. I adored those birds, but I genuinely can’t understand how or why you’d keep such a big beautiful intelligent bird as a pet in a cage on the other side of the world and it always weirds me out when I see these birds I grew up watching roam free eating all our damn lemons in someone’s house as a pet. It’s like if you an American saw someone keeping a racoon as a pet.
The sadder part of this is that many “pet” parrots live much shorter than their natural life in the wild because their owners don’t know how to care for them. They’re also extremely intelligent, some researchers argue that macaws can be considered sapient for example.
Even more widespread problem with koi and goldfish. They can live well into their 80s and can grow up to many pounds over that time, yet most people have their goldfish die after two weeks and just assume that’s their natural lifespan because they’re irresponsible owners. Hint: that glass bowl is not cutting it, there isn’t a single species of fish that can be healthy in a tank without an active circulation pump and filter. Also fun fact: the Western misconception that goldfish can be kept in bowls comes from the fact that in China and Japan where they originate, owners would sometimes put them in clay bowls to show them off (which were about a meter in diameter BTW, not the soccer ball sized bowls you see nowadays), they were kept in those bowls very rarely, they were traditionally raised in large ponds.
Do you mean goldfishes are like koi? I cannot fathom that, like… is it really?
Goldfish are very closely related to koi.
But… but they are soo small and fragile-looking!
So are all baby animals. Which is the only life stage of their species you’ve probably ever seen because most pet ones never live even close to their maximum lifespan.
Also, jellyfish are even more fragile looking yet some can theoretically live forever. Looking fragile to humans does not mean they aren’t well adapted to survive for a long time in their natural habitat.
I… I just cannot accept this reality. How did I, how do people, how… how could this misfortune happen???
They are related but not that closely. They share the same taxonomic family, but not the same genus. It’s like saying a fallow deer and a moose are very closely related. Or a panda and a grizzly.
Or crows, they reach roughly the same age and ravens can turn fucking 80 in captivity, not sure how long they live in the wild tho!
Any bird who lives primarily in the water is dumb as shit. They have unlimited protection above and around them, so they have zero adaptive pressure to put anything into their intelligence. Land birds have a lot to worry about so their brains are approaching human levels of intellect.
If the land birds get any smarter they’re going to have to start worrying about a whole lot more. Like taxes, or rent.
I mean some birds have been shown exchanging money for goods and services, so it’s not that far off.
Oh god no, someone needs to warn the birds about capitalism.
Birds are very good at stealing things, so I think it’s too late for that
Our Crops, comrade
Stealing requires the belief that other people can own things. They are simply taking what is rightfully theirs. Birds are billionaires.
A land bird flew into my window so hard I was worried it died this morning. This happens once a month to my knowledge and I don’t spend long in my bedroom outside sleeping. Land birds aren’t smart outside of a few select species lol
Wtf. Would you please do something about that?
Like what? It’s a bay window like any other, I have blackout curtains drawn across it most of the time so I can sleep past 6. I’m not putting any stickers or anything on it that the hoa will get pissy about
https://abcbirds.org/blog/truth-about-birds-and-glass-collisions/
I’d discuss options with the HOA, but you do you.
What color are they? That could be a determining factor.
The curtains are beige
Try a darker color, beige may be a bit too light. I dont know what is with birds a beige but it tends to cause some weird shit.
What do you want him to do, start a bird college?
The only course they run is bird law
Are you implying that helping birds avoid windows is an unsolved problem?
Yes. The only “solution” that we’ve found is to make the window with a “frosting effect,” which humans don’t like because we can’t see through that.
https://abcbirds.org/blog/truth-about-birds-and-glass-collisions/
Why would you say something so blatantly silly?
A land bird flew into my window so hard I was worried it died this morning. This happens once a month
The same bird???
Possibly, I didn’t see a corpse in my garden so I’m guessing it lives
Or the neighbors cat gets a free meal.
Funny story, never hit a bird with my car in Quebec, until I drove into Manitoba, where I proceeded to wack 3 in 2 days.
Birds seem to be stupid by region.
You probably should drive less or get an electric bike.
I agree, but not to go on a road trip to Manitoba :P
I actually did the math, and for how loaded the car was and how many people we brought, it was both cheaper and more eco-friendly to take a car that gets 42 MPG on that road trip than take a plane to Winnipeg.
That’s less them being stupid and more their eyes are on the side of their head so they can’t see directly in front of them.
Put some stickers on your window
That just gives them a target. They can’t see the window. This is a real problem in some cities. AFAIK no one has found a real solution other than frosting the windows, but then humans can’t see through the windows and get irritated.
It’s funny, I went to visit a place and the person who lived there was starting to get their life in order, so they cleaned the window. I knew this because while I was there I heard a THUD and there was a giant streak of bird shit trailing down the window from the impact point.
SOLYX film claims to reduce bird strikes by 90%.
In all seriousness that’s more of a sensory limitation than an intelligence limitation. IIRC birds’ eyes work differently from mammals and they can’t see glass pretty much at all.
Yea I know, more fun to just imagine they’re dumb though
Not true at all. There’s tons of adaptive pressure. If there weren’t, we wouldn’t see the thousands of pelagic and shorebird species that we do. But even if what you say about the threat from predation were true --its not-- there would still be adaptive pressure from differential reproduction rates and access to nutrients.
Which is why you see ducks with all their spec points into r—ing and not getting r–ed. Yes they’re adapting but not to the environment.
They wait for cruise ships to leave to grab fish trying to swim away. They’re probably smarter than most people.
Based on the 2020 US election, we know at least 74,222,958 people that fall under the seagull intelligence standard.
Not a single seagull voted for Trump. Not one. How do libs explain this, other than by voter suppression?
Daaamn. I never thought of that. Voter fraud confirmed.
Not a especially high bar!
Since there is videos of seagulls hunting pigeons i’d say they are pretty smart birds. They just dont give a fuck to pretend around people.
Just because an animal is territorial and good at killing does not mean it’s smart.
Yes but we already know about cops.
Good at killing if you count targets they didn’t mean to kill I guess!
The approach is pretty smart though and it isnt standard seagull behaviour, so they are inventive. Also they are about the same size as pigeons.
I dunno where you live, but on the coasts of the US, Seagulls are about 3 times the size of pigeons.
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This entire argument is a joke. They are birds, not even mammals, what can apes know about bird-logic? Einstein said you cant judge a fish for how well it can climb a tree but our bias for human smarts remains. Judge a seagull in the context of a seagull and the result will be the same as for every single other species, some are smarter/dumber then others, all have their own strengths and weaknesses. A smart seagull is the one most consistently successful and healthy as a seagull.
They’re probably just “dumb” in comparison to corvids and parrots and the like.
I don’t remember the 90s either.
Back then, the Internet was cool.
