There is no doubt that there is something that warms the heart in the idea of humans and animals (and maybe there is not as big a difference between the two definitions as we would like) living side by side and serving each other
One of the great wishes of humans nowadays is the return to the harmony of nature: that magical integration with wild animals, while giving and receiving mutual respect. This is a trend that started even before the Disney movies, among them the movie Snow White, in which a dark-haired young woman stars, with skin as white as snow™, and with a magical ability to sing to the animals of the forest. The birds descend from the branches of the tree to the sound of her singing and bring her silk and lace to adorn her body.
There is no doubt that there is something that warms the heart in the idea of humans and animals (and maybe there is not as big a difference between the two definitions as we would like) living side by side and serving each other. Disney came up with a winning formula that enchants the human imagination, and since then other beautiful examples of tear-jerking collaborations between animals and humans have appeared in the world, such as Flipper the dolphin saving human children in the open sea, or in the Middle East - Azit the parachute dog.
The truth is that the idea of symbiosis with humans should be closer to reality than we think. After all, humans and their ancestors lived in small tribes in Africa for hundreds of thousands of years. We know that animals tend to develop symbiotic relationships with each other. Where, then, are our symbionts hiding?
Well, they don't hide. In fact, they do their best to make their presence known. Meet the African bird known as the honeyguide, and translated into Hebrew for me - the honey guide.
The honey guide
The honey guide belongs to a small and select group of winged animals capable of digesting wax, the kind that is abundant in beehives. The bird would also have enjoyed the abundance of maggots in the hive, if only it had been equipped with the necessary tools to penetrate it without being stung. Unfortunately for her, she is unable to. It is small, weak and not covered with a coat of fur or hard skin to repel the bees. To penetrate into the hive she needs the help of her allies, the humans.
The tribesmen in Africa know the honey guide very well. They always keep one ear tuned to her whistles, and their eyes frequently seek her above their heads. They know that the appearance of the honey guide signals a sweet future. This is not a superstition, but a working assumption that has proven itself many times over, because the Honey Guide takes his name seriously and directs humans to beehives.
Sometimes the bird does this on its own initiative. She hovers over the heads of the tribesmen and chirps loudly to get their attention. When they refer to her, she flies a short distance, sits on a branch and waits. If the humans follow her, she rises from the branch and continues into the forest, making sure all the time that the little ones don't lose her tracks. The pursuit of the bird can go on for a kilometer or more, but at the end the reward is guaranteed: a beehive full of nutritious honey for the humans, and tasty maggots and moist wax for the honey guide.
This is a situation of symbiosis, in which two separate species benefit as a result of close cooperation between them. The bird takes advantage of the humans' ability to drive away the bees with fire and smoke, while the humans take advantage of the bird's ability to quickly locate the beehives from the air. The symbiosis reaches such a level that at least one of the African tribes uses special whistles that draw the attention of the honey guides around and allow them to understand that the humans are ready to go out and hunt beehives. The birds do come many times, and the intersex team goes into action, as an African snow-white with snow-colored skin in a heron.
Harmony and gardens
The honey guide's behavior raises two important questions - one philosophical, and the other more practical. The first hesitation may come from particularly naive philosophers of nature, who will argue that the behavior of the honey guide indicates the ability of harmony between the species to be realized in nature: a kind of wandering wolf with a lamb. After all, the humans could kill the bird if they wanted, and the honey guide could lead them on a false chase. But each of them seeks to help the other to the best of his ability. The bees lose, yes, but they are only insects and their inconvenience can be ignored compared to the more complex vertebrates. Is there a picture here, therefore, of the good and benevolent nature at its best?
The second delay is related to the practical way in which the honey guide behaves. Who taught him to cooperate with humans? Are these instructions inherent in the bird's genetic code, or is this an activity it learned from its parents and friends?
Both of these questions are answered by another unusual behavior of the honeyguide that was recently exposed in all its ugliness. Like the cuckoo, the female honeyguide also lays her single egg in the nests of other birds. She specifically scans for nests that are in burrows under the ground, and with her sharp beak pierces all the eggs she discovers there. She then lays the egg in the nest and leaves the place to continue her life as before.
Oftentimes the honeyguide fails to hatch all of the hosts' eggs, so the honeyguide's chick will have young adopted siblings. This is not a relationship he is willing to put up with. He wants the full attention of his parents, and he is also equipped with the tools to receive it. The chick hatches from the egg when it is much bigger and heavier than the other chicks, and when it is endowed with a heavy and deadly beak with a sharp spike at the end. He is completely blind, but he can feel the warm bodies of the other chicks around him, and instinctively pounces on them, grabbing their bodies with his sharp beak and shaking them from side to side until they blow their miserable little souls.
The illusion of harmony in nature, therefore, is shattered when we become acquainted with the full lifestyles of the honey guide. And beyond that, it can be understood that the honey guide does not acquire his ways of behaving - neither cooperating with humans, nor killing adoptive chicks - from his parents who abandoned him even before he hatched from the egg. These ways of behaving are rooted in his mind by the power of the genes that guide the development and growth of his nervous system. And the gardens themselves were shaped by the power of evolution that the honey-guide passed side by side with humans, with whom he reached a symbiotic relationship of honey in exchange for wax, and by the power of evolution that passed alongside the birds that host his chicks - and there we are dealing with parasites for its own sake.
or that…
There is also another option. There is no doubt that the chick's aggression comes from the genes that shaped his young mind. But it is possible that in adulthood the bird learns to guide the humans to the hives by imitating the actions of the adults, which it finds on the off-road in the African forests. That is, she is able to learn about the benefit that comes from humans, similar to humans who learn that following the honey guides yields a delicious meal. This possibility seems less likely, because it is hard to imagine the young honeyguide emerging from the nest and finding mature birds of his own species to follow and learn from. Even in this case, the mind of the honey-guide is directed so that he learns from the actions of the adults from him, and recognizes their calls and form as a model for imitation. The gardens win again.
The morality of nature
The story of the honey guide shows once again how careful we must be of simplicity and attributing moral qualities to nature and animals. The Honey Guide is neither good nor bad, selfish or altruistic. He is just an animal, with a simple brain compared to that of humans, guided mainly by instincts that have formed over thousands of years of evolution alongside humans and other birds.
The action of the honey guide, therefore, is not altruistic. Evolution directed the development of his mind to the realization of the deal with the humans in Africa. And what will happen if the humans break the oral deal and do not leave the hive open for the honey guide, will the bird prevent the future from helping the humans? This probably won't change her behavior at all. She will continue her blessed activity, as a perfect 'nurse', even if this results in consuming a lot of energy needed for other needs. In the end, the bird may become extinct because the environmental conditions will no longer match the way of behavior that its genes impose on it.
Perhaps there is a lesson here for humans as well.
16 תגובות
Interesting information..
Hiking and birding routes in Israel.
the last camila,
I almost agreed with the majority...but suddenly in the last two lines, you denied everything you said when you talked about the religious...
I will.. let's concentrate on the instinctive part of the killing that is described in the name of the stepbrothers (and if I may be allowed to miss a beat) do you agree with me that it is embedded in the genes? And if it's embedded in the genes...if they were born with it and it's definitely not something that could be taught to them (not even the first bird that passed this ability on in the genes, he couldn't learn it either - because it happens immediately)
–So something gave them this knowledge. This directive when you are born do what needs to be done.
And even if in a few years the instinct will change and the bird will completely change its face... the ignorant will argue that this is how it should be. Everything has a role and she as such a bird has fulfilled her destiny and continues her new assigned role.
????? Why say that religious people fill the holes in all kinds of ways... Religious people choose a certain direction according to thousands of denominations.
Right
They will never know for sure. But certainty negates belief. What good is faith if it is absolutely certain...that you only know that God loves the struggles. And in general believing without thinking in my opinion is empty.
Appropriately.. as long as it has not been proven otherwise (regarding God), it is true that it has not been proven for sure.. but it has not been proven otherwise - don't say about religious people that they fill holes.
There is an explanation for everything on this earth of ours - the specifically mentioned is about the secrets of the universe - the things can all be read in the book.
The thing is that no one can read them without going crazy. Knowing more could lead to very, very bad places.
We understand what our limitations are. We're just being realistic.
I'll give you an example,
A few months ago I had to press a bunch of buttons in a sequence of events that would not embarrass any Hollywood creator and that included quite a few participants. Everyone was XNUMX% sure that some act I did was what he thought he was thinking... a-ma-what.. the problem... that I was aware of what everyone was thinking and I tried, really, to skip between the eggshells (and the soft bones), I had to maneuver between There, there, there, there.. I prefer what someone from number seven thinks about it and not for seventeen to think differently... and I'm sure that to each one of them the things seemed more bizarre and disconnected than the other... They didn't come to ask me... and therefore I couldn't come and explain... A bunch of completely incomprehensible actions... but the truth is that I just knew too much. As a joke, apart from the irrelevant conclusion that you don't need to know everything..
I can honestly guarantee that there is an explanation for everything.
And in our case, a thousand thousand thousands of differences, when we don't have answers, we won't vote and rule out, or we vote and say I know for sure there is nothing to know here in a way that would be certain and therefore I don't need to know it.
This is the—–hole plugging for the sake of it—————!!! This is an oversight. It is easy.
But, every "thought fallacy" has an explanation behind the panucho, if we don't think about what it is at that moment, the sign is not that there is no explanation, the sign is that we don't know what it is.
If you walk away from it like it's infected, you're just afraid to check if it's real or not, that's why you're the one who doesn't want to learn anything about the world you live in. To learn you will have to experiment, as long as you don't experiment don't make claims to others who have experimented and claim they know. (Regarding the experiment that you rightly said but did not stand by yourself... you do not accept the conclusions of the religious experiments - here I am testifying to an actual experience - but this is not a fact that is "worthy of publication", you are invited to "our side" and just for a moment, maybe you will teach us What are the conclusions that should be published. The scientific tools that exist today are too outdated. God is super advanced. Help me adapt evidence to the present, such that will impress the tools that you scientists of today have)
And forgive me if it sounds too ironic, I prefer the certainty...that if I am religious, I will certainly not experience what is promised to me in the situation if I am not religious.
Among the religions, which one to choose... so many flavors... from here it's already easy... Judaism without a doubt. But that's a matter for another thread.
In any case, again, there is no such thing as a standard filler for religious people!! You disrespectful, take the words!!! The "mush" in question is what we have taken it upon ourselves to agree to admit that we have no ability to know—- and the truth is quite legitimate. We are all human beings of today, in a few years we will change into a slightly different person, perhaps also more developed in mind... evolution and all that... maybe then we will know more about the omnipotent... most likely not (because of what I said about faith) but what do I care to say maybe ..
And now after your response, the fact that this is some kind of instinct sounds more likely to me than before.
In general, I understand that the people who studied this way of behavior did not rush to draw any conclusions, and they examined the matter from the ground up, it's just that in the article itself it didn't go over well enough, at least that's how I felt.
The last Camila, thank you very much for the response.
Everything you wrote is absolutely true, and it's things I definitely act on.
And the truth is that I am actually using your words towards the article, I felt that there is a conclusion here without checking all the other possibilities.
I guess not many people come to research something they are completely neutral, even with their knowledge of the subject is pretty negligible. Everyone has gut feelings and some kind of thinking that makes them expect certain things, of course as long as these things are not thoroughly tested and scientifically confirmed they really have no validity.
And to reinforce the fact that I am a person who is really not in a hurry to draw conclusions, and always tries to examine all things in a broad scope. There was an article called: "On the origin of religion and why chimpanzees are smarter than humans"
There, once again, I felt that things were being concluded a little too quickly rather than examining things more deeply, and I proposed (at least 2 claims) that should be taken into account:
1. A 4-year-old child has already been exposed to many areas, magic acts are things that really stimulate their imagination, and food and sweets are not the only things that occupy them, compared to chimpanzees who will not be amazed by the whole matter of tapping the stick on the box and all that (of course, the argument is not formulated well enough, and it should to examine in depth the child's behavior and his creativity, who is 4 years old, and also the behavior of the Sphinxes, and for sure there are other additional factors, but the general idea is understandable).
2. What happens when an older chimpanzee shows a younger chimpanzee the same process (perhaps out of the possibility that a chimpanzee gives less trust to a human being).
And for discussion, who said that each and every individual learned this behavior? Maybe it's just one of many who really managed to acquire this knowledge?
Again, this requires testing.
I just want to emphasize that I am not ruling anything out or declaring anything, on the contrary I am looking at all the other possibilities and not rushing to draw any conclusions.
The fact that I come up with my own opinion is good and beautiful, this way I create a stronger sense of curiosity in myself, because if I find out that what I thought was trivial and logical at the beginning does not really exist, it will excite me.
I read on Wikipedia under the entry Greater Honeyguide that in urban areas people buy more sugar
and abandon the search for honey, a behavior described in the article is disappearing.
Grace,
The experiment you suggested is in the right direction. On the other hand, the claim you made, based on your gut feeling (what makes sense to you) is not bound by reality, in fact that is exactly what experiments in science are for, to test claims about the world that originate from gut feelings. My gut feeling is that your education on the subject is not very broad. If it were broad, you would know that animals sometimes display very complex instinctive behaviors that do not require learning (although life experience can improve the performance even more later on). This fact alone should be enough so that we do not dismiss outright the possibility that it is only an instinct that has been ascertained during evolution. In addition, the fact that the chick does not grow up with its parents significantly reduces the chance that this is a learned behavior since it has no one to teach it in its immediate environment (unless it turns out that in adulthood it is joined by other individuals of its kind who are already experienced in this knowledge and as far as I know that is not what is happening here). So what you're saying is that it makes more sense to you that each and every individual manages to independently learn to perform this non-trivial behavior. It is very illogical for the simple reason that a being with such a high mental capacity would be expected to display very impressive learning abilities in many areas of his life, as shown for example by certain species from the parrot and crow family, but it seems that the "wisdom" of this species only suits him in very specific situations , which is a very strong hallmark of instinct. Therefore, unlike you, and although I did not perform the experiment you suggested, my gut feeling, which is at least probably based on a somewhat broader and deeper knowledge of the subject, is that it is an instinct. However, I believe that the experiment you proposed is appropriate (with a slightly more strict and detailed wording, of course). The main message I am trying to convey to you here is that claims are easy to make, especially when they are backed up by a strong gut feeling, but fortunately science, unlike religion for example, is not satisfied with this. Science is not even satisfied with the gut feeling of someone who is very knowledgeable about the subject (even if it is Stephen Hawking himself). Of course, a person who knows the field a little more in depth, it is likely that his gut feeling will be more relevant, but under no circumstances will this be a substitute for a real experiment and peer review before the conclusions are worthy of publication. I recommend that you downplay as much as possible the very shaky foundation of "it doesn't make sense to me" especially if you don't have an in-depth background on the same subject. To the lay observer it does not make sense that the sun is not the one that circles the earth, it does not make sense that we are on a huge globe and not on a surface, it does not make sense that several tons of steel can fly in the air, or float on the surface of water. There is no substitute for the recognition of many facts to formulate a position, and there is no substitute for serious experimentation to determine whether something is possible or not. Take care of these two and you are guaranteed to increase your knowledge and understanding of this world significantly. If you don't act like this, you won't be much different from those religious people who rush to plug every hole of ignorance and thought failures with standard filler that doesn't teach them anything about the world they live in.
Successfully.
A very interesting article with an extensive moral.
If the genes dictate my basic behavior, how can I change it?
Happy for comments, I will be lonely and take.
Anyway, I read the article and the comments.
And what is important is that they understand my intention, and I believe that the majority will succeed.
And I will repeat the experiment:
If I take 50 birds of the same species in question that have just hatched, isolate them in a place where they cannot be influenced and learn from their more mature counterparts, then the same process where they are helped by humans has not occurred.
This is my argument.
In conclusion, my argument says that the ability to use and communicate with humans and create this kind of cooperation is not an evolutionary phenomenon that is currently rooted in their genes, but a phenomenon of learning.
And "Ish" claims like me.
Do you have anything to say about it? As one who may pretend to understand..
to Chen
Even in order to respond or interpret, you should know the difference between sex and type,
If you had read the comments before you, if you had carefully read the article,
If you understood what was being read, if you had an inkling of the subject,
You could spare the readers the nonsense in dirty language:
("I will take" - "I will isolate"),
I'm sorry, but the claim that the birds help humans is something rooted in genes sounds very improbable to me.
They grow up and learn it from the environment.
I am almost convinced that if I take 50 birds of this type that have just hatched from the egg, isolate them in a certain area, this thing will not happen.
Unless they call every animal they see and guide it to the hive, which is funny.
Short second article in which I feel that conclusions are drawn too quickly.
It's things you learn from the environment, usually it's watching the behavior of adult birds or others of the same type.
Or watching an animal messing with the hive and then what is rooted in the genes is the ability to communicate and lead that animal to the hive.
Your interpretation simply does not make sense.
The honey guide loves honey and is not afraid of humans. And although some people think that birds are stupid, we already know about bird species that have learned to use the proximity of humans to their advantage. It is likely that if the person no longer uses the services of the bird, but continues to eat honey, it will reach the hives from which the honey is extracted. And if humans don't hunt the bird it won't become extinct either.
Nice
There are several species of birds that lead large mammals to food sources,
The "guide" knows how to lead badgers in Africa and Asia, and another "guide" leads
Bears in America and presumably "learned" that humans are also used
As hive openers, since the guide does not care who opens the hive,
There are similar shows in fish and other series.
Roy,
Why is it unlikely that the young honey guide encounters adults of his kind and learns from them?
After all, it is reasonable to assume that if both he and they are looking for the same food, their paths crossed, just like foreign eagles
They gather on the same carcass.
And if the young honey guide has already encountered members of his species, it is likely that he recognizes them as such (after all, eventually he will have to breed).
Hence the jump to the conclusion that cooperation with humans for example is an imitation of the adults, smaller.
It is possible that there are honey guides also in the area where a company produces honey from beehives, it would be interesting to know if the guides there also operate in a similar way as described in the article.
I'm familiar with the story, but I really enjoyed the article! Thanks!
Very interesting article!! Thanks!