Birds! You Should Fear Them!
People have said for years that after seeing Alfred Hitchcock’s film The Birds they could never look at a bird the same way. Well scientists have revealed something interesting that certain birds may really be watching us and changing their actions because of it. >:)
So to try and make you fear birds more than you would fear even Mesothelioma cancer, let’s see what they (scientists, not birds…lol) have observed in regards to a study involving Jackdaws, which are a related to crows and ravens.
“Jackdaws seem to recognize the eye’s role in visual perception, or at the very least they are extremely sensitive to the way that human eyes are oriented,” said Auguste von Bayern, formerly of the University of Cambridge and now at the University of Oxford.
When presented with a preferred food, hand-raised jackdaws took significantly longer to retrieve the reward when a person was directing his eyes towards the food than when he was looking away, according to the research team led by Nathan Emery of the University of Cambridge and Queen Mary University of London. The birds hesitated only when the person in question was unfamiliar and thus potentially threatening.
They are following our eyes! Pretty creepy eh? Even creepier? These Jackdaws have some odd looking eyes for birds. Their eyes have a dark pupil surrounded by a silvery white iris. Very similar to human eyes. The researchers said they believe jackdaws are probably sensitive to human eyes because, as in humans, eyes are an important means of communication for them.
In addition, the birds were able to interpret human communicative gestures, such as gaze alternation and pointing, to help them find hidden food, they found. The birds were unsuccessful in using static cues, including eye gaze or head orientation, in that context.
The findings are particularly notable given that most other species investigated so far, including our closest relatives the chimpanzee and “man’s best friend,” the dog, are not particularly sensitive to eye orientation and eye gaze, von Bayern said. Rather, she continued, chimps and dogs seem to rely on other cues such as head or body orientation in determining the looking direction of others and do not appear to appreciate the eyes as the visual organs. The results suggest that birds may deserve more respect for their mental abilities.
“We may have underestimated the psychological realms of birds,” von Bayern said. “Jackdaws, amongst many other birds, form pair bonds for life and need to closely coordinate and collaborate with their partner, which requires an efficient way of communicating and sensitivity to their partner’s perspective.”
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Filed under: Science by JMH
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Just Needed to express that this post has got some beneficial info….i dont completely agree with every thing that is explained..and would like to hear some other points of view on the matter