[QUOTE=Jonathan Chance]
This would give us an ability to further read the feathered tea leaves, I suppose. Here’s a question that should be asked:
“Does the incidence of ‘cheating’ by the bird referenced above decrease as the mates are higher up the ‘studly’ chain. That is, do more suitable, high-quality males have a higher percentage of their own offspring in their broods than low-quality males due to a lower ‘cheat’ factor by the females. If so than we find another means by which suitability leads to increased reproductive success.”
[/QUOTE]
According to various studies I have seen, yes. Females mated with high quality males are less likely to cheat; females mated with low quality males are more likely to sneak off to visit the hunky guy in the next territory over.
[QUOTE=Sailboat]
My pet birds will call for me to come pay attention to them, and when that doesn’t work, they will change their behavior and try new things, watching my reactions, until they get a reaction from me that they want. When confronted with problems they have never faced before, sometimes they will come to me and raise a ruckus and go back to the problem and look at me pointedly.
[/QUOTE]
An interesting point. This is also true of wild birds - so it can’t be pure instinct or part of domestication. The large sulphur crested cockatoos here are in the wild. We started putting out bird seed. They came in. Now, there is at least two individuals who will come and sit on the backs of the chairs on the verandah and peer in the kitchen window. As soon as they see any movement inside they start up the most raucous screeching until someone can’t stand it any more and feeds them. So they have discovered a behavior which ‘works’ and are deciding when to apply it.
Of course, the mating behavior is more critical and universal, so extrapolating may not be valid. But it is fun.
Our conception of how a human decides to do something on the presumption of planned personal benefit is way too much for a bird. For one, it requires a self concept, something I (and most neuroscientists) would argue against, since only primates have a lateral prefrontal cortex, and even then, only humans’ lateral prefrontal cortexes have access to broca’s area.
So although birds are capable of making “decisions” to sing or not to sing, in the respect that the bird (or any animal) has to do something and the brain is going to try to figure out what that is going to be, there is almost certainly no abstracted concept of a “me” that is trying to improve itself.
[quote=http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi
=B6VS3-4HG69KN-2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=
c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=d90d05b2ebf28ff2b286f4e2c2ab1887]
Both mammals and birds can flexibly organize their behavior over time. In mammals,
the mental operations generating this ability are called executive functions and
are associated with the prefrontal cortex. The corresponding structure in birds is
the nidopallium caudolaterale. Anatomical, neurochemical, electrophysiological and
behavioral studies show these structures to be highly similar. The avian forebrain
displays no lamination that corresponds to the mammalian neocortex, hence
amination does not seem to be a requirement for higher cognitive functions.
Because all other aspects of the neural architecture of the mammalian and the
vian prefrontal areas are extremely comparable, the freedom to create
different neural architectures that generate prefrontal functions seems to be very limited.
[/quote]
Someone report that post for me? I didn’t realize the horizontal scroll would be so bad.
Sorry, third post. I’m just not thinking straight right now, I’ve been studying nonstop for about twelve hours.
Don’t give too much credit to human decision making. Our day-to-day decisions aren’t very far removed from other animals. The majority of our decisions don’t bring forth our full effortful processing.