Re:Experimental evidence for compositional syntax in bird ca...
by jungletime on Saturday October 17, 2020 @10:47AM
(#24810327)
I did a hike on a mountain ridge in Hawaii (Stairway to Heaven), and was very shocked by how loud the highway below was. I was maybe 3000 feet above. The sound was amplified from from the valley below, the mountain sides almost acting like walls of a speaker.
It's something that I don't think gets enough attention, the way light pollution does. But its' definitely a problem in some places. And I can see how it would disrupt bird calls.
Re:Experimental evidence for compositional syntax in bird ca...
by hirundo on Saturday October 17, 2020 @10:38AM
(#24810263)
Humans have tonal components to meaning, e.g. in English, "You are hungry." doesn't have the lift at the end as does "You are hungry?". I wonder if any birds do something similar to distinguish, e.g. "Predator!" vs "Predator?". Maybe someday an app on our phones will be able to translate as we walk through the woods, like "A female Carolina chickadee in the sycamore at 10 o'clock says there's a raven coming from the south".
Re:Experimental evidence for compositional syntax in bird ca...
by neffy on Saturday October 17, 2020 @10:54AM
(#24810403)
There are features in the frequency ranges of bird calls that suggest this. Alarm calls are usually on frequencies that have better propagation (this also depends on the habitat that birds occupy - ground living birds have much lower frequency calls because the sound spreads better close to the ground. Calls that go to chicks tend to be on higher, less propagating frequencies. On the other side, the calls that hunting birds make tend to look like an all frequency sweep - possibly they are trying to get a response from other species to locate them.
Re:Experimental evidence for compositional syntax in bird ca...
by ineedasername on Saturday October 17, 2020 @06:44PM
(#24814040)
This is the case even though English isn't even considered a tonal language. Mandarin is a highly tonal language with four distinct formalized tones. Not only that, but the brain has to adapt to pick out those tones clearly. As a result, "perfect pitch" is much more common for Mandarin speakers than speakers of non-tonal languages.
Re:Experimental evidence for compositional syntax in bird ca...
by gibolt on Saturday October 17, 2020 @07:01PM
(#24814123)
Tonal here is very different. The tone in Chinese is a completely different word. Multiple words have the same tone and thus pronunciation with different meaning (and character). Tone usage on one word would not change the interpretation.
There are cases where this is kind of like English, in the case of buy/sell 买/卖, but still quite different
Re:Experimental evidence for compositional syntax in bird ca...
by ineedasername on Sunday October 18, 2020 @10:04AM
(#24817962)
Yes, that's why I referred to Mandarin as a "tonal language". It is a formal linguistic categorization. Speakers of all languages may use tone, but an actual tonal language is quite different, taking the concept of tone to a another level in terms of grammatic and lexical importance.
Re:Experimental evidence for compositional syntax in bird ca...
by tsimionescu on Saturday October 17, 2020 @10:21AM
(#24810158)
TLDR: they have studied two types of calls in a specific bird - one type is dubbed ABC and elicits a horizontal scanning behavior; the other, dubbed D, elicits approaching the loudspeaker. Then, they have shown that the sequence ABC - D elicits both behaviors at the same time (the birds scan the area and they come close to the speaker). However, the sequence D - ABC does not elicit this combined behavior - it only elicits one behavior or the other, but not both in the same individual.
The conclusion is that the birds interpret the sequence ABC - D as a meaningful unit, different from its constituent parts, which is a kind of interpretation only previously confirmed in humans.
Re:Experimental evidence for compositional syntax in bird ca...
by Swizec on Saturday October 17, 2020 @11:16AM
(#24810587)
Depends on the species. Mine doesn’t talk, he instead learned to whistle. His species (sun conure) doesn’t normally whistle, he picked it up from me. It’s more pleasant than the 80db screams so we encourage it.
He used to say his name sort of (if you added some human pattern recognition magic) but stopped after we moved apartments. No idea why.
The worst is when he mimics human speech patterns. You can tell it isn’t words but it’s close enough to distract you every time.
Main thing with parrots is that they’re more work than people think. Like human children they get bored, have tantrums, internal emotional states, and respond to the same stimuli differently based on mood. And unlike children they cannot be reasoned with. Some are smart enough to lie and obscure because they have theory of mind.
And they stay like that for 30 years. Some species even longer.
Re:Experimental evidence for compositional syntax in bird ca...
by jacquesm on Saturday October 17, 2020 @01:27PM
(#24811568)
I'd suggest you do some 'parrot sitting' first, look after someone's parrot for a while to see if it is something that you will really like. A lot of parrots get bought as impulse buys by people who have absolutely no idea what it is like to actually have a parrot and to have to take care of it.
Re:Experimental evidence for compositional syntax in bird ca...
by yowlingcat on Sunday October 18, 2020 @08:59AM
(#24817551)
Yeah, that's always the right answer. I've gone through this mental exercise multiple times before -- I want to get a parrot! But they live a long time and are extremely intelligent. They're very independent and when they are unhappy can become destructive. Am I a good enough beast-keeper to pull that off? Not really. I agree with you that parrot sitting is a smart idea.
Re:Experimental evidence for compositional syntax in bird ca...
by danenania on Saturday October 17, 2020 @01:11PM
(#24811440)
I wonder how generalizable research on parrot language would be to other bird species? They seem to be pretty unique in their capabilities, but perhaps that's just from a human perspective.
Re:Experimental evidence for compositional syntax in bird ca...
by Swizec on Saturday October 17, 2020 @01:24PM
(#24811540)
Some corvids can learn how to speak but I haven’t heard whether they understand the words. With parrots there’s evidence that some species learn meanings of the words they use.
Re:Experimental evidence for compositional syntax in bird ca...
by tombert on Saturday October 17, 2020 @02:53PM
(#24812222)
Every time I read one of these articles, I start feeling increasingly worse about not being a vegan.
I still eat meat, but I do wonder what paper is going to get released that is the tipping point for me; it's easy for me to justify eating meat if I think these animals are so stupid that they can't feel higher-level emotions, but if we have legitimate evidence of animals having "uniquely human" traits, I can't help but think that us eating them is sort of ungodly cruel.
Re:Experimental evidence for compositional syntax in bird ca...
by tombert on Saturday October 17, 2020 @03:28PM
(#24812475)
It is a factor I think about; I'm not saying that it's never ethical to eat meat; I don't condemn a lion for eating an antelope, since I'm not even sure it's possible for a lion to be a vegan if it really wanted to [0]. Similarly, I don't have a problem with birds being carnivorous.
That said, anyone reading this post is probably not a lion or a bird, and has some level of self-reflection as a result. Just to play devil's advocate for a bit, couldn't you argue that if it's possible for me to live a fairly healthy life without killing any higher-minded creatures, then I should? If we are smart enough to have an entire philosophy of ethics, then shouldn't we be using this ethical framework to minimize suffering in the world?
I should reemphasize, I'm not a vegan, or a vegetarian, I have a fairly typical American diet of "it's not a meal without meat" sadly. I'm just saying that these kinds of papers make me question that.
[0] I'm not a biologist or doctor or anything, but my understanding is that cats (at least house cats) cannot product their own vitamin A out of Beta-Carotene like humans can, and must get it out of animals. I certainly cannot blame any animal that is doing what it absolutely has to for survival.
Re:Experimental evidence for compositional syntax in bird ca...
by Twisol on Saturday October 17, 2020 @03:41PM
(#24812573)
Thanks for the thoughtful response! To be clear, that wasn't a loaded question -- as someone who hasn't thought too hard about this, I really did want to hear your opinion. :)
Re:Experimental evidence for compositional syntax in bird ca...
by exdsq on Saturday October 17, 2020 @03:41PM
(#24812572)
I believe humans still require vitamin B12 which we can only get from meat, however you can supplement this via plant-based milk and other ingredients.
Re:Experimental evidence for compositional syntax in bird ca...
by yowlingcat on Saturday October 17, 2020 @10:53AM
(#24810383)
Obligatory reference to Raymond Smullyan's seminal To Mock A Mockingbird [1], one of my favorite books and a great introduction to the lambda calculus. I guess the resemblance to actual bird language is more than just passing.
Re:Experimental evidence for compositional syntax in bird ca...
by mikro2nd on Saturday October 17, 2020 @10:58AM
(#24810434)
Am I the only one wondering what the National Institutes of Health has to do with ornithological research? Isn't this a little outside their mandated field?
Re:Experimental evidence for compositional syntax in bird ca...
by hprotagonist on Saturday October 17, 2020 @11:28AM
(#24810678)
This work was done with a combination of funding from the US national science foundation and Japan's JSPS (see acknowledgements) and doesn't involve the NIH directly. PubMed/PMC are hosted there, though.
That said, animal models are extremely common for NIH-funded work, and birds feature prominently in studies of language and auditory processing.
It's something that I don't think gets enough attention, the way light pollution does. But its' definitely a problem in some places. And I can see how it would disrupt bird calls.
It does in German speaking parts of Europe - highways on weekends and during the night have speed limits set to reduce noise.
There are cases where this is kind of like English, in the case of buy/sell 买/卖, but still quite different
Should have gone with "Friendship!" VS "Friendship?"
If your parser can't handle that, then it's literally dumber than a tit.
Video is 5 years old. Seem pretty cool. Steampunk parrot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mxSl06IZaY
Edit: I guess this is the guys original channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esSbc4phCjk&t=34s
The conclusion is that the birds interpret the sequence ABC - D as a meaningful unit, different from its constituent parts, which is a kind of interpretation only previously confirmed in humans.
Of course it could also be because he correlates environment cues to bed time.
Either way, birds are smarter than you think until you spend time observing them.
[1] https://www.mlive.com/news/2020/09/zoo-separates-foul-mouthe...
He used to say his name sort of (if you added some human pattern recognition magic) but stopped after we moved apartments. No idea why.
The worst is when he mimics human speech patterns. You can tell it isn’t words but it’s close enough to distract you every time.
Main thing with parrots is that they’re more work than people think. Like human children they get bored, have tantrums, internal emotional states, and respond to the same stimuli differently based on mood. And unlike children they cannot be reasoned with. Some are smart enough to lie and obscure because they have theory of mind.
And they stay like that for 30 years. Some species even longer.
I still eat meat, but I do wonder what paper is going to get released that is the tipping point for me; it's easy for me to justify eating meat if I think these animals are so stupid that they can't feel higher-level emotions, but if we have legitimate evidence of animals having "uniquely human" traits, I can't help but think that us eating them is sort of ungodly cruel.
That said, anyone reading this post is probably not a lion or a bird, and has some level of self-reflection as a result. Just to play devil's advocate for a bit, couldn't you argue that if it's possible for me to live a fairly healthy life without killing any higher-minded creatures, then I should? If we are smart enough to have an entire philosophy of ethics, then shouldn't we be using this ethical framework to minimize suffering in the world?
I should reemphasize, I'm not a vegan, or a vegetarian, I have a fairly typical American diet of "it's not a meal without meat" sadly. I'm just saying that these kinds of papers make me question that.
[0] I'm not a biologist or doctor or anything, but my understanding is that cats (at least house cats) cannot product their own vitamin A out of Beta-Carotene like humans can, and must get it out of animals. I certainly cannot blame any animal that is doing what it absolutely has to for survival.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Mock_a_Mockingbird
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/about/intro/
That said, animal models are extremely common for NIH-funded work, and birds feature prominently in studies of language and auditory processing.