Bird Intelligence
Some Videos of the the different orders of birds we talked about
Birds of prey fighting for an Ostrich Egg
Because of bird's great eyesight and the female's ability to simply fly away when she is not interested in a mate, many of them have complex mating rituals. Here is a video of the blue footed boobie.
Herons and other Ciconiiformes are very effective hunters. They use their harpoon like beak to spear animals. Usually fish but they will eat anything that will fit in their mouth. Here is a video of a heron waiting and watching gophers peak their heads out of their holes.
The golden eagle is one of the worlds toughest birds. A golden eagle can hunt and kill wolves and many other strong animals. Golden eagles can be found all over the world. The Mongolian people train golden eagles to hunt for them. Here is a video of a father and son taking their golden eagle fox hunting.
Golden eagles can even hunt large goats by dragging them off cliffs. Once the goats land and die the eagle can scoop them up and take them off to eat. Here is a video of eagles hunting mountain goats.
Golden Eagle Drags Goat off Cliff
Parrots have some of the best language skills
What does it mean to talk?
-If you had to come up with a definition for talking what would it be?
-Can parrots talk?
-Can some other orders of birds talk?
-Is there any animal other than humans that can talk?
This is an African Grey Parrot. African Greys are usually used for language experiments because they are so good at vocabulary building.
There is a parrot named Einstein who has been trained with a large vocabulary and sound response. Here is a video of Einstein on TED Talks.
What did you notice about Einstein? Was he really talking? Or was he just responding to ques? If you watch other videos of Einstein he seems to have the same routine. Here is another video of Einstein that you can watch on your own.
Alex is another African Grey. Alex was considered the most linguistic parrot until she died in 2007. Watch this video of how Alex responds to questions. Alex is answer questions. Is that different than Einstein?
After Alex died the same professor became training another African Grey parrot. The new parrot is named Griffin. In this video you can see the different between Griffin and Einstein.
So what do you think...can parrots talk? What does it mean to talk?
The lyre bird cannot talk but it has the best mimicry ability. From car alarms to chainsaws
Here is a video of the Lyre Bird copying a camera shutter and chainsaws.
The Genus Corvus
Crows might not have a large vocabulary but they are one of the smartest animals on the planet. Their ability to problem solve is extraordinary. If there is time we will start this crow documentary in class. Your homework is to finish the documentary. You will have a quiz on the documentary one Friday.