![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Recently, when I was reading The Name of the Rose, I was amused to come across this exchange:
Um, yeah, not "good birds." Unlike the tender creatures of God.
Then I read this article on a Canadian scientist who had tested birds on creativity to create a sort of "Bird I.Q." and put corvids (the magpie/crow/raven/jay) family on the top intelligence-wise that had this quote:
I was slightly less amused.
And now Sporting Shooter Magazine has offered a £500 reward for the farmer who kills the most magpies between now and July because while the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds says that "the justification the magazine gives flies in the face of all that we know to be the real causes of songbird decline. There has been a lot of work done into the reasons and in no case are magpies cited as the main reason for the decline." According to the actual research RSPB has done, it found that the population of songbirds in any given area was determined by availability of food and suitable nesting places and that the number of magpies made no difference to the number." But what's that in the face of the way everybody "knows" that "if you get rid of the magpies you get more songbirds," and the fact that the guy with the contributing editor has estimated they kill 80 songbirds a year. Because if there's one thing we've learned from history, it's that old wives tales and anecdotal evidence are totally more reliable than actual experiments.
I just can't help but wonder what it is about human nature to attach all these bad qualities to smarter birds as opposed to the pretty ones with prettier songs. I mean, isn't it logical to think that in an environment where food is limited you're naturally going to get more corvids because they're more adaptable and have many food sources? Then there's also this hatred of carrion eaters, which is especially ironic when you imagine people murdering each other and then calling the birds evil for cleaning up after them. Disgusting things. And what's with the black feathers? Don't they know that's evil?
I note that not one person in this article who's so horrified by declining songbird populations mentions anything about people possibly having anything to do with it. It's more like, "Dammit, we've destroyed the environment to make it the way we like it, and it's not fair that these disgusting things are able to survive better than the birds I like. I couldn't have killed off the sparrows--I LIKE sparrows! It must be those damn magpies. I see them up there on the phone wires, plotting, looking for songbird nests to destroy."
Wolves have to put up with this kind of thing too. (I remember one quote where someone said the wolf was "the Saddam Hussein" of the animal world. Right.) Bastards.
Also
English Genius
You scored 100% Beginner, 93% Intermediate, 93% Advanced, and 77% Expert!
You did so extremely well, even I can't find a word to describe your excellence! You have the uncommon intelligence necessary to understand things that most people don't. You have an extensive vocabulary, and you're not afraid to use it properly! Way to go!
"Have you been told about [St. Francis] preaching to the birds?"
"Oh yes, I've heard that beautiful story, and I admired the saint who enjoyed the company of those tender creatures of God," I said with great fervor.
"Well, what they told you was mistaken, or rather, it's a story the order has revised today. When Francis spoke to the people of the city and its magistrates and saw they didn't understand him, he went out to the cemetery and began preaching to ravens and magpies, to hawks, to raptors feeding on corpses."
"What a horrible thing!” I said. "Then they were not good birds!"
Um, yeah, not "good birds." Unlike the tender creatures of God.
Then I read this article on a Canadian scientist who had tested birds on creativity to create a sort of "Bird I.Q." and put corvids (the magpie/crow/raven/jay) family on the top intelligence-wise that had this quote:
Many of the birds that ranked high on the innovation scale are the least popular with the public.
"When you look at published reports on whether people like birds or don't like birds, they don't correlate well with intelligence," said the McGill researcher.
"People tend not to like crows, because they have this fiendish look to them and they're black and they like dead prey. Warblers and the birds that people tend to like are not the high innovators."
I was slightly less amused.
And now Sporting Shooter Magazine has offered a £500 reward for the farmer who kills the most magpies between now and July because while the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds says that "the justification the magazine gives flies in the face of all that we know to be the real causes of songbird decline. There has been a lot of work done into the reasons and in no case are magpies cited as the main reason for the decline." According to the actual research RSPB has done, it found that the population of songbirds in any given area was determined by availability of food and suitable nesting places and that the number of magpies made no difference to the number." But what's that in the face of the way everybody "knows" that "if you get rid of the magpies you get more songbirds," and the fact that the guy with the contributing editor has estimated they kill 80 songbirds a year. Because if there's one thing we've learned from history, it's that old wives tales and anecdotal evidence are totally more reliable than actual experiments.
I just can't help but wonder what it is about human nature to attach all these bad qualities to smarter birds as opposed to the pretty ones with prettier songs. I mean, isn't it logical to think that in an environment where food is limited you're naturally going to get more corvids because they're more adaptable and have many food sources? Then there's also this hatred of carrion eaters, which is especially ironic when you imagine people murdering each other and then calling the birds evil for cleaning up after them. Disgusting things. And what's with the black feathers? Don't they know that's evil?
I note that not one person in this article who's so horrified by declining songbird populations mentions anything about people possibly having anything to do with it. It's more like, "Dammit, we've destroyed the environment to make it the way we like it, and it's not fair that these disgusting things are able to survive better than the birds I like. I couldn't have killed off the sparrows--I LIKE sparrows! It must be those damn magpies. I see them up there on the phone wires, plotting, looking for songbird nests to destroy."
Wolves have to put up with this kind of thing too. (I remember one quote where someone said the wolf was "the Saddam Hussein" of the animal world. Right.) Bastards.
Also
English Genius
You scored 100% Beginner, 93% Intermediate, 93% Advanced, and 77% Expert!
You did so extremely well, even I can't find a word to describe your excellence! You have the uncommon intelligence necessary to understand things that most people don't. You have an extensive vocabulary, and you're not afraid to use it properly! Way to go!
Tags:
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
0_0 Stupidity abounds. Who the hell are we to judge animals? We kill each other every day. We`ve exterminated millions of our own species. We are seriously endangering the planet on which we live. Who the hell are we to decide who should be the Good animals and who should be the Bad ones? I could understand it when some of these animals were a threat to our survival or means of subsistence, but right now, we are a threat to *them*.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
There was a timely video game ad, of all things, which amused me no end -- a bunch of English hunters at full gallop. Explosions erupt all over their pastoral scene.... they flee....
The game's main character is a fox.
From:
no subject
I've always been fond of foxes. Granted, I'm not a farmer whose chickenhouse was just raided, but still. I wouldn't be happy about hunting one for sport.
From:
no subject
someone said the wolf was "the Saddam Hussein" of the animal world.
Ahahahahaha. That's right, in their free time wolves like to set up small dictatorships and crush democracy. Didn't you know?
Because if there's one thing we've learned from history, it's that old wives tales and anecdotal evidence are totally more reliable than actual experiments.
Of course. Only *evil* people don't care about anecdotes. >:o
I don't know what else to say, other than sigh, people, and that when I was wee my only conception of magpies was that they like to steal shiny things. Also that I imagine parrots etc would be the exception to the Bird IQ/love disparity? Hmmm.
From:
no subject
According to the article, "The crows, the jays, that kind of bird - the corvidae - are the tops; then the falcons are second, the hawks the herons and the woodpecker rank quite high."
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
We suggested that she try the sticky traps, instead. So Karina bought some of them and set them out.
The rat flipped them over, walked on the unsticky side, and got the bait.
We were pretty impressed. Karina went on a major cleaning rampage for about two weeks. Everywhere she found rat droppings, she would vaccuum and make sure that that area got thoroughly cleaned out. Eventually, the rat went to the attic, where there happened to be a long-forgotten bag of rat poison. He got into that and finally died.
Still, we think it's a pity, in a way. That was clearly a very intelligent and innovative rat. He even managed to elude Karina's two greyhounds, one of whom has caught rats before, outside.
Chantal
From:
no subject
Sticky traps are really horrible. What an awful thing for the animal to go through--I can't help but be glad the rat outsmarted it, if only because it seems like such a nightmare.
I know for a while my parents were having trouble with squirrels. They got some of those humane traps, I think, and had them relocated. In my apartment I have a little machine that lets out a high pitched noise that's supposed to keep mice away, though I still see them occasionally.
From:
no subject
Heh...I think, after reading "The Pit and the Pendulum," I was no longer in the right frame of mind to see Willard. (g)
Chantal
From:
no subject
And did you know that there's a character in Gary Paulsen's book Canyons named Magpie? Just wondering if you caught that, 'cause he's not one of the main characters but thanks to yourself the name just jumped out at me. Speaking of the intelligence of animals, one of the main characters was named "Coyote Runs".
Anyone else think it's horrible that the US government has not only subjected but also almost completely destroyed our continent's native cultures? Really! I mean, get 'em sick, shoot 'em, move 'em, and starve 'em are the tactics used, and they were pretty damn successful. These are cultures that respected the land, placed women at the center of the society in regards to just about everything but warfare, and had technology inferior to that of the Europeans. What do they have now? Poor reservations, high alcoholism, and casinos!
Without going into a gynocentric or anti-casino rant, doesn't that seem messed up to anyone else? (Rhetorically)
Umm... sorry I got off topic.
From:
no subject
And yeah, if we're going to talk about killing off native inhabitants of a place, we should probably start with the actual people of the US. I used to be on a Native American messageboard a lot (I'm not Native American but I was researching something and wound up just being interested) and it's pretty chilling to think how they were wiped out without much thought.
From:
no subject
That said, it's still legal to hunt crows in my state. I think it's a pretty stupid thing, as you can't eat them and they are hardly the crop raiders that deer are.
From:
no subject
It is legal to shoot magpies in England and I'm sure there are times when it's fine or necessary, like with crows here, but this is just insane.
You know an odd crow law? You know the show Six Feet Under? The opening features this crow sitting in a cemetary, but it's not really true crow, it's a pied crow, with a white chest painted black. Because it's illegal to film crows for commercial purposes in the US.
From:
no subject
That’s why they are feared. Because they have memories, and they can work strategically together. And they are big enough and bold enough to pose a physical threat to humans. Unlike the pretty wrens or lyric robins.
While I can understand (just) the need to humanely cull some animals where real threat is detected, I have never, ever been able to accept the idea of killing something for the sake of it. Just for fun. That’s not sport, it’s murder.
(I recently saw a book called ‘One for Sorrow, Two for Joy’ by Clive Woodall. Naturally the magpies are the baddies…)
From:
no subject
Fun fact about that, btw, people figure that birds in the crow family are one of the oldest named birds because their names are very primative; they're usually imitations of what they sound like. Crow, rook, etc. I forget what the older name for raven is, but magpie in Latin is pica pica, like how it talks.
The article is just so obnoxious the way these people are stubbornly insisting they're doing something necessary in the face of all the evidence they're not. I think the part where they say they just "don't want to government telling them what to do" is pretty telling.
LOL--poor magpies in the book. Always the bad guys, even in Batman.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Btw, yesterday I was watching MST3K's "Angels Revenge." Mean anything to you...?
From:
no subject
Pearl and Bobo and the Observer were just not as funny as TV's Frank and Dr. Forrester.
From:
no subject
I, uh, thought maybe that's where your name came from.
From:
no subject
I think it's the wrong Strauss, though. I'm all about Richard, not Johann Sr. or Jr...
From:
no subject
And the good creatures are usually the most attractive, or the ones that are subservient to humans.
Heh. Like how in Disney movies, the predatory animals are the Evil ones, since they kill humans.
(My only problem in the film 'Ice Age' which is actually pretty adorable overall.)
As if giraffes and things love us, and choose to eat vegetables to protect us, rather than because that's what they need to eat.
I dunno, I like vultures, myself. We saw some at the zoo when I took my little cousin, and she adored them.
Which is weird, because she usually thinks all animals are trying to eat her (we literally had to turn off the tv once, because my other cousins, bless them, put on PoA thinking that this would please their nerdy older cousin ;) - they're junior shippers in the making, I tell ya, and Evie was petrified of Buckbeak.
We couldn't convince her that it didn't eat humans. And of course, everyone looked at me like I'd persuaded her into it, since my opinions are usually well known ;)
She can't even look at nature programmes, because she cries over the zebras eaten by lions...
Anyway, Magpies are considered good luck in China, apparently.
From:
no subject
I have to admit I got upset just reading the description of that book that Sam linked to--and I notice that of course in that book the magpies and crows are thuggish and the robins and other animals are more noble.
Corvidae, the Slytherins of the bird world!
From:
no subject
Heh, exactly.
From:
no subject
(I did the biggest 'oh tut' noise when I saw it in the bookshop.)
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
It's quite unfair to the birds, really. I mean, the point of nature is they aren't really stupid enough to want to kill an entire race of birds intentionally--they don't think in those terms. And then giving them these particular human attitudes etc., it's very strange and makes you wonder why people need to tell this story over and over nowadays. Sometimes it seems like it's just an easy way to recognize a villain, like it's the only thing you can get people to automatically understand is very very bad and scary.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Though you see the Raven Warder is classy and looks for crows that are sick, and has a good reason to be thinning them out.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/08/0808_020808_crow.html
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
one for sorrow,two for joy,
three for a girl and four for a boy,
five for silver,six for gold,
seven for a secret never to be told,depending on how many magpies you saw together.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Out of interest,I went to Benham's book of Quotations to find the original bit about magpies,and I found this;
one's unlucky,two's lucky;
three's health,four's wealth;
five is sickness,and six is death. Nice!Also applies to crows.
From: (Anonymous)
no subject
From:
no subject