A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
In short, yes. They're way smarter then you give them credit for.
From my observations they hate being watched as much as you do. If you look ostensibly at one for too long they'll fly away.
And don't think birds don't see you. They have way better distance sight with multiple macula (high resolution spots on retina). If he looks straight at you, at ~45 angle or at 90 degree angle, it's very likely he looks at you specifically.
Used to care for a bunch of hens. The leader hen was wicked smart.
One day, she was mad as hell. She was charging at me, screaming her head off, stopping right in front of my feet and then looking at me sideways. She started slowly walking away, and then turned around to charge at me again. She repeated this about ten times and I was bewildered.
Finally, a kid told me "I think she wants you to follow her." So I did. She lead me to a neighbor's house, someone who had just moved in. Finally it clicked for me. I'm like, "excuse me miss, I think my hen is filing a complaint that a new cat has moved to the neighborhood. Is your cat going to be a problem for the hens?" She answered no. So I turn to the hen and I'm like "she says it's fine." Hen keeps looking at me sideways for a minute and then walks back to her group.
Almond-sized dinosaur brain by the way.
Before we adopted them, our hens belonged to my school’s principal. She would sometimes take home leftovers from the school cafeteria to feed the hens. The cockerel we adopted had a habit of whenever stroganoff was served, he’d run up, pick out all the sausage pieces and line them up on the ground for the hens to eat.
Papa Stroganoff was a fantastic bird. I miss having hens.
I wonder what that neighbor thought lmao
Domesticated cats meow, a primarily kitten behavior, to communicate with humans. Dogs display behaviors common to wolf pups because domestication has throttled some developmental traits from their wild ancestry.
Interesting that wild birds are starting to figure out their own tricks to manipulate humans.
Dont forget that dogs developed eyebrow muscles in order to do the puppy eyes better.
Or bred that way? Or both?
My theory is that while humans addomesticated the dogs, they choose the cuter ones, the ones that where cuter were the ones that did puppy eyes better, so the ones that developed eyebrow muscles won
That makes sense
It's all fun and games until the crows start getting ideas
Don't trash talk crow friends. They might hear you.
TBF the Tufted Titmouse is an adorable borb!
Adorable tit
Happy cake day :)
Huh. Apparently it's been one year since I made this account. Tq
Tintin the bird
Can certainly also see why it got named that... 🙃
Oh my gosh, this is so validating! A few different species of birds will flutter in front of the living room window when the feeders are empty to get my attention. They are smart little things!
So they left a seed block for long enough for it to get moldy, before realizing that it might need a change? Fuck me.
Ugh, this was the case when I worked at a nursing home. There were bird feeders placed in spots near windows, so the residents could watch the birds. The residents noticed no birds ever showed up, and when I learned that, I went out to the feeders to inspect them. Mold, mold everywhere.
I took them in, cleaned them out, sanitized them, and refilled them... but I think the birds in the area were too smart to bother with those feeders anymore. It was obvious they were neglected all the time, and I imagine the birds were well aware that the feeders weren't worth the trouble.
Sorry birds, sorry residents. I tried.
Birds at my feeder are the opposite. The millisecond it runs out of seed the yard turns into 28 Days Later.
Zombies invade the yard?
This tufted titmouse was the winner
Birbs be smart. They know what's up, they just play it cool. Don't want to give away the game.
So long and thanks for all the ~~fish~~ birdseed
Hummingbirds will poke at the window for you to refill it. Cute goes a long way.
It has been nice weather this weekend. I learned that my chickens will just come walking into the livingroom if I leave the door open. Very cute, but they shit everywhere.
My mom had a rooster that hated me. He wasn't super mean but would attack after warning me if I didn't leave quick enough.
I solved the problem by saying repeating "I'm going to pick you up" and catching him anytime he started getting aggressive. I'd wrap him up in a towel, take him inside, and we'd watch "How it's Made" while I pet his head and talked to him. He calmly but unhappily accepted the situation.
After a few days of that he mostly left me alone. If he started puffing up I'd tell him "I'm going to pick you up": he'd instantly deflate and run away making unhappy noises.
Nice! You're like the Cesar Milan of poultry. The "cock whisperer".
You'll have to get them their own TV and Barcalounger
Hmm.. my chickens are very spoiled but they aren't “have their own tv” spoiled… yet…
Im not sure how much good a tv does with birds though, they see at over 120hz, to our 60hz so most of what we see as motion on tv they see as a series of still images
To be fair, movies are 24fps!
So movies might be too low framerate for a chicken, but 60+ fps game footage'd probably be alright.
Birds know who refills the feeder. Who is friend and who is foe.
I had woodpeckers bang on my siding next to the window to let me know the suet was bad for about 10 years.
It was steel siding at the time, and they left several nice dents.
As much as I’d love to keep feeding them, I had my siding replaced by insurance with vinyl (unrelated issue) and don't really want holes all up it… so i weaned before it was replaced. Just attending their demands less frequently.
Hasn't been an issue in the last year.
Some of us paid good money to be bullied by titmice.
They didn't even have tufts when I was a lad.
It was an hour walk to the nearest dungeon, and we were thankful for it.
Back then the Cat O' 9 Tails only had seven because the Kaiser took two of em' when... :zzzzzzzzzzz:
Never had a bird beg, but they do seem attracted by the sounds of filling the feeder.
Is “Came Up” capitalised as in “coming up on E”?
I think it's just a stylistic choice to show emphasis, like how every word in the last sentence of that paragraph is capitalized. Might be a tumblr thing.
Notice how every word in the second-to-last sentence of the first post is capitalized, and how a lack of capitalization is the default. This is to add emphasis and meaning in a way I can't quite describe. Like there's a big difference between referring to someone as "the boy" and "The Boy", but I can't explain it.
I think it's just typical bad writing. The poster uses "it's" wrong just before using "its" correctly, doesn't capitalize at the start of sentences, weirdly capitalizes "own", etc.
"it's" is an actual mistake, but the rest is Tumblr dialect
I don't speak Tumblr dialect natively and therefore can't explain it, but I do recognize it and can confirm that the capitalizations are done with explicit intent and meaning. None of them are random or accidental.
Huh, apparently it’s my curse to try to read meaning into every nuance of writing, regardless of whether any was intended. Stupid authors for training us to do this.
I'm pretty sure it's common for people to write phonetically. I commonly write "are" instead of "our", but I fix most of my mistakes during an edit. The "it's" mistake is also common, although that's usually a problem with my phone's auto complete.
The age old question: who watched who first the birb or the hooman?
yes!