I adopted a then-8-week-old kitten less than two months ago, and it's been an eye-opening delight watching him adapt just to things in my home.
During his first week he managed to hop onto a window sill, and then fell off when he tried to turn around to walk along it the other way. Less than a couple weeks later he was effortlessly walking along the edge of a pillow stood on its side, a much narrower, unstable surface.
It's amazing to me that a tiny creature like that can learn to adapt in that way with so few days of life under his belt.
Re:Do You Love Me? [video]
by KineticLensman on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @04:44AM
(#25580167)
> It's amazing to me that a tiny creature like that can learn to adapt in that way with so few days of life under his belt.
I work at a raptor conservancy. The young birds can fly as soon as their wings/muscles are suitably developed, but learning to master the air takes a lot longer. E.g. they initially fail downwind landings on a gusty day.
Re:Do You Love Me? [video]
by drzaiusapelord on Tuesday December 29, 2020 @11:34PM
(#25578581)
It is! Of course we animals are standing on the shoulders of hundreds of millions of years of evolution's fine-tuning. But to see it in action like this is incredible. Or a child from ages 2 or 3 to ages 4 or 5, is night a day. At 2 or 3, they're drowning risks in the tub. At 4 or 5 they're playing mario kart with you.
Granted, the first time I took him to a rocky riverside all four paws fell into cracks between the boulders like some early Boston Dynamics prototype (he's from Texas and I guess never encountered terrain like that before) but he's a pro now. And he's mastered "soft human interaction" right out of the box (is just amazing with toddlers).
Seeing all this firsthand makes me appreciate how fine-tuned the product of evolution is and how much work must go into achieving basic behaviors we take for granted.