Category Archives: Environmentalism & Animal Rights

Parrot Smarts

Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Intelligence, Science

Those of us who’re owned by a parrot know of their great intelligence and wish the general public would come to sympathize with their plight in the wild and in captivity. Scientists are slowly becoming hip to this remarkable intelligence. Hat tip to Marc Harper for “Cockatoos teach tool-making tricks”: “Cockatoos learn to make and use tools when shown by another bird, research reveals.”

And Goffin cockatoos have now shown an impressive ability to learn from one another how to use and even how to make tools.
A team of researchers has discovered that the birds emulate tool-making tricks when they are demonstrated to them by another bird.
The results are published in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B.
The researchers are interested in what they call “technical intelligence”, which is essentially animals’ ability to use objects to solve problems.
It confirms how innovative and how adaptable this species is to novel problems”
“Cockatoos are very interesting for this, because they’re very playful with objects,” explained lead researcher Dr Alice Auersperg, from the University of Oxford and the University of Vienna.
She and her colleagues had already noticed that one of birds in their research aviary, named Figaro, spontaneously used sticks to drag nuts under the bars.
Figaro also worked out how to make his “fishing sticks” by stripping long, thin pieces off a wooden block in his enclosure.

For me the more remarkable aspect of a Cockatoo’s fashioning of a tool to retrieve a treat is the superior intelligence of the one bird and the flock’s ability to learn advantageous behavior from this leader.

The one researcher, however, seem a little dim in his disbelief, postulating that the observed learning is but “trial and error learning,” as if the two were mutually exclusive faculties. I wonder how this skeptic thinks kids learn? Modeling, schedules of reinforcement, trial and error: has this guy heard of B. F. Skinner?

Parrots are flock animals: They watch each other, need each other and learn from one another as a matter of survival. In the absence of a flock, humans become their family. Thus nothing is crueler than isolating a parrot.

Read more.

Global Warming: An Unfalsifiable Theory

Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Private Property, Pseudoscience, Regulation

The theory of global warming is unfalsifiable, in other words, the theory cannot be falsified or tested and is, therefore, irrefutable. Evidence that contradicts the global warming theory, climate Chicken Littles enlist as evidence for the correctness of their theory; every permutation in weather patterns—warm or cold—is said to be a consequence of that warming or proof of it. Thus, “Snow In May In Chicago” will naturally be taken as evidence for the theory of catastrophic, man-made climate change.

As Karl Popper reminded us, “A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is,” of course, “non-scientific.”

This is not to say that man is not destructive to the environment, or that we should not cherish and take care of nature. We certainly should by understanding that government is not a panacea for the problem. (I don’t know about the wild fires in San Diego this year, but “the cause of a wildfire that burned nearly 150 buildings last summer in San Diego County” was a jeep ignited by the federal Bureau of Land Management):

The root of environmental despoliation is the tragedy of the commons, i.e., the absence of property rights in the resource. One of my favorite running routes wends along miles of lakeside property, all privately owned, and ever so pristine. Where visitors dirty the trail that cleaves to the majestic homes; fastidious owners are quick to pick up after them.

In the absence of private ownership in the means of production, government-controlled resources go to seed. There is simply no one with strong enough a stake in the landmass or waterway to police it before disaster strikes.

Entrusted with the management and regulation of assets you don’t own, have no stake in; on behalf of millions of people you don’t know, only pretend to care about, are unaccountable to, and who have no real recourse against your mismanagement—how long before your performance plummets?

… Private property rights in waterways, or riparian rights in water that abuts private property—these are the best protectors of the ocean and of other state-controlled expanses of water [and land].

Stealing And Killing’s All In A Day’s Work

Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Fascism, Government, Private Property

For federal agents, stealing and killing is all in a day’s work. Some of Farmer Bundy’s livestock was stolen by the Bureau of Land Management; some the same perps shot and left to die. Gratuitous cruelty is par for the course in government. Vandalized corrals and infrastructure augmented the cattle killed. They do it because they can.

Images courtesy of Benn Swan.

“[Cliven] Bundy told Swann that federal agents have fled the area and left a great deal of gear and equipment and that they aren’t likely to return any time soon for it. He also said that federal agents destroyed much of the grazing infrastructure on the land, including water lines, water tanks, troughs, corrals, and fences.”

The damage didn’t stop at just destroying infrastructure: Bundy revealed that their cattle, about 40 or so, had been killed by federal agents and thrown into a mass grave. “The mass grave that was dug was about 50 feet long, 18 feet wide, 10 feet deep, and about a third of the way filled back in with cattle.”
In these photographs provided to Benswann.com from the Bundy family, you can see that so called mass grave which was dug out with the use of a backhoe. Already inside that dirt grave you can see the body of at least one of the cattle.

MORE.