Ravens Can Identify Cheaters

The miscreants were not sorry, however. On the rare occasions they were given another chance they were “even more likely to cheat again,” the authors note, “suggesting that if they had learned anything, then it was how to cheat.”

When ravens become hawks…

There was some research done a while ago into the behaviour of dogs in domestic settings, indicating they had the ability to measure. It a dog was given the same quantity of food each day it settled into a pattern. However give it slightly less and it would change it’s behaviour in a similar way as if it had been punished.

Such behaviour was like that of the ravens in this study, thought only to have been seen in primate groups previously.

It begs the question as to if, animals are actually not as intellectually challenged as we’ve previously believed, just that our poor observational skills are improving…

Clive Robinson • October 26, 2015 5:30 PM

Rats… I misspelled “Blockquote” in my above post, thus the first paragraph after my opening line, –which is from the article– was not indented…

ianf • October 26, 2015 6:26 PM

ADMINISTRIVIA @ Clive, you may have misspelled <bloCKuote>, but in reality you fell into Tim Berners-Lee’s linguistic trap… he designed the HTML using the SGML syntax, but without paying attention to (future) non-native-English/ Germanic languages speakers/ and/or any-flavour dyslectic users’ ease of writing such compound consonant-rich words as “blo-ckq-uote”. It simply did not appear to him that it could have been shortened, or even replaced by e.g. <bloc> or <quote> because of that.

Another thing that I put to him in 1992 was that the “www” was basically unpronounceable over the phone (the most common being “dab-dab-dab”).

To that he replied: “wish it were so, but in practice we have to struggle with “double-u-double-u-double-u” (27 letters ;-)) It seems the consensus on the <www-talk@info.cern.ch> mailing list was that what was lost in loquaciousness, would be gained in typing w-w-w.

That said, Bruce’s posting robot that only permits a subset of HTML, could easily be refined to mend simple typing errors, just as it already terminates all tags at the end of paragraph whether the closing tag is there or not.

JMC • October 26, 2015 11:44 PM

Apparently, colts are another animal that can identify cheaters.

Joe K • October 27, 2015 12:12 AM

@clive, regarding dogs behaving as if the provision of less food were intentional

It begs the question as to if, animals are actually not as
intellectually challenged as we’ve previously believed, just that our
poor observational skills are improving…

You seem to suggest here that a species’ tendency towards fundamental attribution error is evidence of intelligence.

FTR, I find myself in full agreement with your conclusion, but laughing at how you arrived there.

🙂

65535 • October 27, 2015 4:36 AM

Talking about cheaters, it appears that the NSA has cheated its way into resurrecting a new “Patriot Act” that has more offensive upstream spying on Americans [and everybody else].

Emptywheel explains how full-take upstream collection of American’s data will be fed directly to the FBI with no scrubbing:

“…under CISA, data comes in through DHS and — assuming NSA and FBI veto its data scrub, as they are sure to do — gets circulated immediately to NSA, FBI, Treasury, ODNI, and several other agencies. Unlike under the current regime, FBI and other agencies that can imprison or sanction Americans will get raw data, without US person identifiers “relevant to” the threat indicator (as they will be, by virtue of being collected with them) minimized. Once FBI gets it, the data will be shared promiscuously [with every other Agency in the Federal Government and mostly likely with local police]…” -emptywheel

https://www.emptywheel.net/2015/10/26/anonymous-former-intel-official-confirms-cisa-is-about-bypassing-nsa-minimization/

There is a half day before the Senate vote. If there was a time to contact your Senator now is the time to do it.

Steve • October 27, 2015 6:53 AM

“among their unkindness?” Maybe “among their own kind?”

Vetch • October 27, 2015 9:37 AM

@Steve – a group of crows is called an unkindness

Vetch • October 27, 2015 9:39 AM

@my other post
A group of ravens*
My bad

ianf • October 27, 2015 11:21 AM

@ Vetch, it’s easy to get confused: I grew up with the “murder of ravens,” but it turned out to concern crows (still “birdie nom nom”).

Best to rely on expert advice of group names for birds:
http://baltimorebirdclub.org/gnlist.html

(missing there: a tele-conduit of magpies [in “The Birds” by Alfred Hitchcock]).

Bob • October 27, 2015 1:02 PM

Humans can identify cheaters as well. Somehow, though, we keep voting them in to office.

Clive Robinson • October 27, 2015 3:11 PM

@ Bob,

That’s because there is no good lizard to vote for…

tyr • October 27, 2015 4:11 PM

Clive is right about, the level of intelligence is a
function of size not a function of quality, you get
less thought with less brain.

Now you know why the most famous Ravens are named
Thought and Memory.

Justin • October 27, 2015 6:41 PM

@ ianf, Vetch

“Crow” and “raven” are common names for various species of the genus Corvus. Which are said to congregate in an “murder” and which in an “unkindness” is a rather whimsical semantic distinction, and I don’t think there is enough evidence to claim that a “murder of ravens” is incorrect per se, seeing as how the birds are of the same genus.

Justin • October 28, 2015 12:36 AM

Having said that, of course, ravens do tend to be more solitary than crows, so perhaps the circumstances of their eventual gathering together are sufficiently different to warrant different nomenclature for their flocks.

Ravens Can Identify Cheaters

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