crows call me breadladyi’m convinced there are numerous non-human sapient species on earth but an anthropocentrism practiced at scale denies us the opportunity to discover or explore these frontiers
it’s been shown that you can teach various species intermediary languages (amy the gorilla speaking sign language, for instance) so pure translation matrices aren’t necessary for meaningful communication. moreover peoples around the world have historically developed complex material relationships with animal communities using what can be considered gift economies. for instance it’s actually pretty simple to establish trade relationships with crows 🐦
for those wondering how to establish trade relations with crows:
- feed crows food A regularly
- when crows decide to bring you gifts, feed them food B
- when crows bring you different categories of gifts, feed them a food-per-category, ex: food C for jewelry, food D for paper money, etc
- crows will recognize these exchange patterns and opt to bring you things in order to acquire desired treats
good luck! 🐦
Les Orchard@garbados these are very welcome tips, thank you
toxicodendron radicans@garbados
I wonder if you can do something similar with octopuses... 🐙
I wonder if you can do something similar with octopuses... 🐙
hagfish fancier v1.618@InvaderXan @garbados I have a feeling octopuses would figure out a way to hack their reward function
Francis 🏴☠️ Gulotta@InvaderXan @garbados octopuses are to be avoided as they are smart enough to turn even the most level headed human to their cause
octopus: 🐙
me: yes. you’re right. we must unionize!
Efi (nap pet) 🦊💤@garbados if a crows decides to start bringing me porter checks I won't be even mad
aka ginger@garbados gosh they’re so smart i love them so much
A dead bodyCrows at my college would bring me walnuts to crack for them.
<eleanor>@garbados heck i wish there were crows here i would have been the weird crow girl with 50 crows bringing me teeth and me being too terrified to figure out a way to stop it.
mcandre@garbados faster method: offer 90% breadcrumbs 10% exodia, hits that gambler bird psyche
[MESSAGE ME TO FOLLOW] green@garbados if my crows (the nesting pair outside my apartment that I've been feeding peanuts for the last couple of years) ever bring me *anything*, I'm going to give them SO MANY TREATS. like "WHAT DO YOU WANT, TELL ME"
@garbados ... of course, it's possible the crows are bringing me things and the squirrels are stealing them. HMMM.
not a lixard in a hyenasuiti came across this scp article the other day and screamed! its very good!
also,
WHERE IS THE ANOMALY
varx - social alt@garbados This allows the crows to indicate which are the most desirable treats, *and/or* what they can find most easily. But how do you figure out the right pairings? E.g. if they are to bring you money, which is scarce to them and valuable to you, you'd need to offer one of their most-desirable (and scarcest) treats.
Set out a buffet and see what they go for first?
It would also be useful to be able to ask for specific items, and have them indicate what they would want in return. 🤔
elomatreb (moved to cybre.space)@garbados Instructions unclear, my crows crashed the international stock market
Gabs, doggy dog@garbados crows are lovely birds and id love to give that a try with the group that lives in my yard.
though about gorillas ive seen questions on whether theyve actually been taught a language or have been trained to respond to the researchers with pseudo language, just somethings ive heard in passing from scientists i follow on twitter though nothing specific ive read
@daylight another person brought up the pitfalls of calling it a “language” because in practice it’s been more like a static set of symbols rather than a living comms construct. teaching a stranger an intermediary code to facilitate comms is just one of the tools in our xenodiplomatic kit, but i think the real trick comes when strangers pass the code among themselves and it *becomes* a language, facilitating complex dialogue. that will be an astonishing accomplishment.
@garbados big agree and i hope to be proven wrong on that front
Reeve who walks among the rows@garbados all I have is pigeons and vultures....
endless bummer@garbados boosting this daily, don’t mind me
idleDreams@garbados
So I know crows like peanuts but what are other foods that crows can eat?
So I know crows like peanuts but what are other foods that crows can eat?
veasey@garbados Does this work with seagulls?
kay
AlonealastalovedalongtheDouglas Adams put it better than anyone else
"For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons"
From my limited study of language and animals it seems one of the things that humans have that is rather unique is an insatiable, almost irrational desire to communicate and learn language.
When I read about animals like extremely intelligent birds it seems like any further "development" towards human benchmarks of intelligence and society are limited by a simple lack of incentive. In most cases it doesn't make sense to desire to communicate as much as a baby wants to.
[MOVED]femme-savon@garbados what should i give them for love?
Lord Bowlich@garbados I should give this a shot with the massive flock of ravens that hang out in my yard.
One thing that I like them for. They chase off the hawks and while they seem to get a hoot out of scaring the chickens, I've yet to see any of them try to hurt them.
Sydney “The Word” Falk 
okay so technically speaking would I be breaking laws if I trained hundreds of crows to bring me loose change and dollar bills, because like, hypothetically speaking, I'm not sure that's illegal
maybe it'd be a question of whether they could prove the birds were trained but even that sounds like a fool's errand, I mean, they're --
...THEY'RE DRONES
SHIT
RUN
Stanislaus Grumman@garbados Is this... true? Have you tried it?
Dan Killam@garbados
Sir Crow! I wish to parley
Sir Crow! I wish to parley
Sai Vishal@garbados The crows in my place is so demanding it will make sound until it's fed.
Extra Spooky Anne@garbados what food will make them destroy capitalism?
Martin Hoover :terrified:@garbados gave a chocolate bar to a crow once and it brought me a letter from its patents telling me to stay away or they'd call the police 
Jookia@garbados Wait is this real
Brett Leeper@garbados much like with feeding songbirds closer to winter, predictability and reliability in help are important because they'll become reliant upon you to an extent and that'll fuck em up if you drop out, at least until things are naturally abundant in spring or summer.. if you can design rewards into the environment that'll survive your attention span then that strikes me as more easily sustainable. Managing the landscaping for forage, and coincidentally improving plant abundance and diversity. Encouraging natural predators is another low maintenance scenario but that's less compatible with high domesticity.
transfaeries@garbados the crows around here are too skittish and I've never been successful feeding them cause they don't let me get close enough and they don't notice when I leave food further away.
Do you have any advice around this? or should I just accept that crows in this town don't necessarily want a relationship with me at the moment
Puppy Pi(wow that's so cool 8> )
(but)
wired: establish trade relations with crows
inspired: translate The Conquest of Bread into Crowlish
broke: get passenger pigeons to send microsd cards between operatives in the revolution
invoke: explain the situation to crows and watch as the ghost of Alfred Hitchcock descends upon the global police state
⸘John‽@garbados But if the crows start bringing me gifts I find sincerely valuable, it's probably stolen, no?
George Stokoe@garbados
The only area I have to feed crows is my backyard. But I'm in a basement, and there are massive high walls around it. There are crows in the area, but they won't come down. I've tried leaving bits of burger out for them. I think they don't like coming down as it feels like flying into an enclosed space, a box. When I practise singing in the park, though, the crows caww and croak back! 🐦 🏞️
The only area I have to feed crows is my backyard. But I'm in a basement, and there are massive high walls around it. There are crows in the area, but they won't come down. I've tried leaving bits of burger out for them. I think they don't like coming down as it feels like flying into an enclosed space, a box. When I practise singing in the park, though, the crows caww and croak back! 🐦 🏞️
I'm becoming more convinced lately (between the coins at the car wash and the opium of the poppy fields) that some birds are approaching sentience roughly akin to ours
@sydneyfalk i think what distinguishes humans is basically a million years of tool use, of developing and *passing down* technical knowledge. lots of species do this, but we have had a significant head start. that said i’m not exactly an expert on these matters 😬
Bakfietsouder@garbados This works with magpies too, right? I'm 100% up for trading with my window sill magpies.
anotheradventure@garbados there are SO many crows in my area. I see them on my way to work every morning, and I can't help thinking that they recognize me
Lizardsquid, maker of noises@garbados we can distinguish between communication systems and languages — in language, we can talk about things outside our environment, whereas non-lang communication cannot.
If you wake up on an island with someone who doesn't speak your language, you can still communicate, collaborate to build shelter, etc, but holding a conversation isn't possible. To our knowledge, Animals can communicate, but they're limited to their environment.
I hope we find a species with language…
If you wake up on an island with someone who doesn't speak your language, you can still communicate, collaborate to build shelter, etc, but holding a conversation isn't possible. To our knowledge, Animals can communicate, but they're limited to their environment.
I hope we find a species with language…
@garbados animals definitely can communicate, often in very complex ways, and calling them non-sapient is… wrong
Often, the capacity for language is the only difference between the intelligences of animals and humans
Animals do speak to each other. But for something to be language, it has to meet certain criteria. No known animal communication systems meets all the criteria, but all known human languages do — even languages that isolated children invented with no guidance.
Often, the capacity for language is the only difference between the intelligences of animals and humans
Animals do speak to each other. But for something to be language, it has to meet certain criteria. No known animal communication systems meets all the criteria, but all known human languages do — even languages that isolated children invented with no guidance.
@garbados (from the top of my head, one of the most important criteria is "recursion" — in English, we can embed sentences inside sentences with words like "that":
"I thought that (they were the farmer who (ate the jam donut))"
There's no limit to how deep we can embed sentences, except that our memory is limited and we can easily lose track.
Almost no animal communication systems allow for recursion or embedded sentences.)
"I thought that (they were the farmer who (ate the jam donut))"
There's no limit to how deep we can embed sentences, except that our memory is limited and we can easily lose track.
Almost no animal communication systems allow for recursion or embedded sentences.)
mathew 🦜☕@garbados I assume you've heard about the people teaching their parrots to read?
https://winter2018.iaabcjournal.org/?p=138
https://winter2018.iaabcjournal.org/?p=138
Nuisance Animal@garbados
Orcas have languages and dialects within those languages. They even code-switch when they travel.
Orcas have languages and dialects within those languages. They even code-switch when they travel.
occoris@garbados whenever someone tries to tell me that only humans have language i pretty much lose my shit.
Bread for the Bread God!@garbados unpopular opinion: sapience comes from space (and we're not the only animals to receive it)
&Kalmia@garbados I've read about magpies holding rites for their dead.
The Doctor@garbados It also makes it very easy to hide.
👨🏻✈️(Sky?)wanderer - Nicolas@garbados and then we also have the Californians who tried to teach English to a dolphin.