Squirrels Listen To Birds' Conversations As Signal of Safety (phys.org) 45
According to a new study published in the journal PLoS ONE, the "chatter" from multiple bird species can be a useful cue to squirrels and other animals that there is no imminent threat in the area. Phys.Org reports: To test this hypothesis, the researchers observed the behavior of 54 wild Eastern gray squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) in public parks and residential areas in Ohio in response to threat, which they simulated by playing back a recording of the call of a red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis), a common predator of both squirrels and small birds. They followed the predator's call with a playback of either multi-species songbird bird chatter or ambient sounds lacking bird calls and monitored the behavior of each squirrel for 3 minutes.
The researchers found that all squirrels showed an increase in predator vigilance behaviors, such as freezing, looking up, or fleeing, after they heard the hawk's call. However, squirrels that were played bird chatter afterwards performed fewer vigilance behaviors and returned to normal levels of watchfulness more quickly than squirrels that did not hear bird calls after the hawk's call. This suggests that the squirrels are able to tap into the casual chatter of many bird species as an indicator of safety, allowing them to quickly return to getting on with normal behaviors like foraging rather than remaining on high alert after a threat has passed. "We knew that squirrels eavesdropped on the alarm calls of some bird species, but we were excited to find that they also eavesdrop on non-alarm sounds that indicate the birds feel relatively safe," the authors said. "Perhaps in some circumstances, cues of safety could be as important as cues of danger."
The researchers found that all squirrels showed an increase in predator vigilance behaviors, such as freezing, looking up, or fleeing, after they heard the hawk's call. However, squirrels that were played bird chatter afterwards performed fewer vigilance behaviors and returned to normal levels of watchfulness more quickly than squirrels that did not hear bird calls after the hawk's call. This suggests that the squirrels are able to tap into the casual chatter of many bird species as an indicator of safety, allowing them to quickly return to getting on with normal behaviors like foraging rather than remaining on high alert after a threat has passed. "We knew that squirrels eavesdropped on the alarm calls of some bird species, but we were excited to find that they also eavesdrop on non-alarm sounds that indicate the birds feel relatively safe," the authors said. "Perhaps in some circumstances, cues of safety could be as important as cues of danger."
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Hah! Yea, that [youtube.com] was the first thing that came to mind for me, too.
Learned Ignorance (Score:5, Interesting)
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Agreed. We are so inclined to set our breed above and apart from all others. Yet, we are capable of both the base survival behavior of other animals, and (occasionally) the enlightened behavior of a better species than we have collectively evolved into... perhaps there's hope for us after all.
We're an immature race, not simply ignorant (Score:1, Informative)
We are superior intellectually and in terms of our capabilities to every species on Earth. And we shouldn't pretend otherwise this is because we have an ethical responsibility to every living thing on this planet. There are millions of creatures we have displaced through our ignorance of our own capabilities. And actions we have failed to preserve and protect the world out of our own denial of our place in the food chain.
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Cool story. Maybe you can enlighten the rest if us regarding its relevance to the squirrel/bird topic.
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We don't know yet that we're intellectually superior to whales. They don't have the opportunity to make tools and stuff, so it's hard for them to show off their intelligence in a way we'd understand.
Not that I'm sure they're smarter or anything, let's just try not to be biased. Obviously we're more capable than they are, regardless.
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We don't know yet that we're intellectually superior to whales.
"We are superior intellectually and in terms of our capabilities to every species on Earth."
read better.
so it's hard for them to show off their intelligence in a way we'd understand.
They can process audio better than we do. Now how can you link that to intelligence or consciousness? I doubt you can.
let's just try not to be biased.
And let's not waste time on dancing around a stupid position.
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George Carlin probably said it best. [youtube.com] Although Jim Jefferies also does a good take on it. I can't find a short clip of it though.
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We may not be supernaturally special but we are definitely special. There is nothing else even remotely close to a human known in the universe. We are the dominant lifeform, period.
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We may not be supernaturally special but we are definitely special. There is nothing else even remotely close to a human known in the universe.
Not by us.
If someone else is out there and not using radio (perhaps because they've discovered something better) then we have little hope of ever detecting them.
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We may not be supernaturally special but we are definitely special. There is nothing else even remotely close to a human known in the universe.
Not by us.
My wife tells me I'm special. I'm pretty certain it isn't a compliment.
Re: Learned Ignorance (Score:2)
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If we survive the shit storm of climate change we created I might agree with you. But at the moment it looks like we have put the period into our own lifeform's existence. When whatever lifeform survives (it won't be us) and evolves and digs up our remains in a couple thousand years the main thing they will be saying is "How the fuck is this McDonalds burger still fresh?" probably closely followed by "Who the fuck would eat this shit? No wonder they killed themselves
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--Thomas
I think
Even more interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
I was watching a documentary where some sort of underground rodent species listened to a certain bird's calls of danger and scurried to their burrow. But the interesting part is the time of year when food is scarce, the bird would fake the odd call (with no danger present) and swoop in and grab whatever food the rodents had found. The bird was reliable enough most of the year that it was still a beneficial relationship.
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I was watching a documentary where some sort of underground rodent species listened to a certain bird's calls of danger and scurried to their burrow. But the interesting part is the time of year when food is scarce, the bird would fake the odd call (with no danger present) and swoop in and grab whatever food the rodents had found. The bird was reliable enough most of the year that it was still a beneficial relationship.
You are referring to the relationship between meerkats and drongos. There are similar occurrences that happen in prairie dog towns when flying grassland sparrows chirp then dive for cover if a raptor is overhead or they spot a coyote from the air. I have seen small woodland birds cleaning gray jays of parasites the same way cleaner fish clean wolf eels. If a raptor or other predator shows up birds of other species sound and the alarm they all instantly dive for cover in the same direction as the bird that s
Listening to birds (Score:1)
As humans we ignore the primitive origins of living intelligence at our peril. There is much yet to learn about the creation and evolution intelligent systems.
Oh, yes. We should definitely pay more attentions to the "trill-chirps" sung by the common "scambird" ("Internetus nigeriansis") to alert when it sees a scam mail trying to trick users into clicking deploying a ransomware.
We don't have any predators left. We've either made them completely disappear or brought them to the brink of extinction (in addition to all the other unrelated animals that we've also extinguished).
(Well almost no/predators except for other humans. But we might extinguish those too, depen
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We don't have any predators left.
We do still have some predators. We can usually kill them before they kill us if we're paying attention, and moderately well-equipped, and most of us are well-segregated from them. But there's a few things left that will happily kill and eat us if we're lost in their territory, and they're hungry. Grizzly or polar bears. Any big cats. Tusked pigs. Wolves. Hyenas.
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Well technically we prey on each other a lot, so we do have a LOT of predators left. Then there are the people killed by animal predators, poacher killed by elephant [iol.co.za] one does not usually think of an elephant as a predator, since it won't eat you, but more people are killed by elephants than sharks. Don't get me started on Hippo's, fuckers are nocturnal, nothing like getting up for a toilet break at 3 in the morning to find one outside your tent. They look all cute and cud
As a squirrel hunter (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: As a squirrel hunter (Score:2)
This is not news (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess this is one of those that everyone knows in certain areas. It was taught to me at a very young age when I went hunting with my grandpa and his cronies.
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Yes. Startle a Blue Jay and the entire forest will go silent.
just wait... (Score:2)
Quiet? Quite! (Score:4, Interesting)
A few years ago I was outside doing something around 2PM, and suddenly I stopped -- and heard and saw absolutely NOTHING. There was the hum of the freeway in the distance, a slight wind in the trees, but basically absolute quiet and no movement at all. I'd never heard it that quiet before outside.
So I stopped what I was doing and looked around. Nothing. A few clouds in the sky, nothing else. That's not completely unusual, but the quiet was so I started walking around the house. A third of the way around I stopped and noticed a tree in the distance, 150' away maybe, 75' high, (Had been there for at least 50 years) only branches were showing.
After a minute or three, I turned around and was going back to my chores, and saw a single small bird (sparrow?) flying North to South. I also saw when the bird noticed them, it immediately made a 120 degree right turn and didn't flap, just kinda hovered away from them. After about an hour I noticed things were back to normal and the trees were empty again. I don't know what they were, but everything around me was completely scared of them while they were there.
So yeah, I'll easily believe that critters use background bird sounds and such as warnings, even more so the LACK of them.
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Agreed, when you are outside and they all stop chirping at once and it goes dead quiet.
You instantly wonder what spooked them and is it something I should be concerned about?
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OTOh, sometimes the birds go nuts here, usually the Robins making one hell of a racket. Usually if you look, you can usually spot a Barred Owl sitting in a tree. One morning it was the Stellar Jays chasing an owl, big racket then too. In town, it's the crows screaming at and bugging hawks.
There's also a Stellar Jay here that mimics a hawk. I think it does it to scare the other birds from the bird food.
The loggers used to talk about the old days doing high lead logging. They used whistles to communicate (the
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from the mr-obvious dept (Score:2)
In other news (Score:3)
Governments listen to the conversations of their citizens as a signal of safety.
Everybody already knew this (Score:3)
How is this "news?"
New study? - *Another* study. (Score:2)
I thought that was common sense ... (Score:2)
No idea why you need to do "research" for something you learned as a kid ... well, I did.
Birds have distinct warning sounds for basically every predator. Why one wonders if a squirrel is smart enough to know them is beyond me.
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No idea why you need to do "research" for something you learned as a kid ... well, I did.
Birds have distinct warning sounds for basically every predator. Why one wonders if a squirrel is smart enough to know them is beyond me.
See, we agree on something.
Squirrels are pretty smart, and really clever. But they can be distracted easily. I've thrown peanuts to some, and they seem to forget they are looking halfway hunting for it.
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We agree on many things, otherwise I had not added you as a friend decades ago ... :P
Now I have to re-watch Predator (Score:1)
Who knew? (Score:2)
Squirrels are actually pretty smart. They are just distracted really easily. Like the ADHD poster child of the animal kingdom.
Well DUH (Score:1)
Jesus, this is news? This ain't new.
Several times a week the birds (mostly the crows) go ape shit in my backyard. It's either the Bob Cat/Bear walking through or a raptor flying overhead. The squirrels have been going nuts too, especially in the morning while the local predator's are out and about. Unfortunately the Bob Cat, Bear and raptors are not keeping the bunnies/moles/squirrels under control.
Cliched movie scene (Score:1)
Little Nutkin (to himself, VO): It's quiet. Too quiet.
I think I might be a squirrel (Score:2)
Shit, maybe growing up in Africa turned me into a squirrel or something, but when birdsong changes you stop and check your surroundings.
It's just logical, they have a higher vantage point.
They also get used to people, I can walk through my back garden and the birdsong will stay the same, if a stranger tries that it will change.
Nothing makes you pay attention to your environment more than when the cacophony of birds settling in at dusk stops dead.