I found that bird's colorful plumages reflect their needs for foods and enviroments (1 Viewer)

[chris butterworth]

Very funny! :t:

I could provide a photo of a whole herd of them grazing on Vinca major in my garden if that would help.

:'D :'D :'D I'm sure you could Mike. No chance of a couple of photos showing King Eider eating grasshoppers and Temmincks Tragopan tucking into a dozen Oysters? :t:

Chris

 

[Andy Hurley]

"And" yourself! The tone suggests you're taking issue with something I've said or implied in my brief to-the-point posting but I'm damned if I can figure out what it is. All I thought I was doing was making a pedantic little correction to an overly sweeping statement. I certainly wasn't defending morninglight's views on snails and eiders, if that's what you're thinking.

I'm very sorry Fugl, I didn't mean to come over as abrupt. I was expecting a little bit more from you. I very much doubt you would defend Morninglight's point of view in respect to molluscs and eiders either.
The and was there so that you might wish to expand on what you said, rather than so what.B

 

[morninglight]

I noted that, under the section marked 'shellfish' on the page you posted as evidence http://www.birdingbirds.com/encyclopedia/king-eider/ that they have included Common (sic) Pigeon and Fulmar as eating shellfish. There are at least 18 species included in the list that either are polyphagous or very rarely, if at all, eat shellfish. If, for the sake of argument, I accept that you have been speaking about marine molluscs and not fresh water ones ( never mind what you've actually posted ), and that the confusion was due to your 'broken English' ( something I'm slightly dubious about, given the evidence ) then why do the other 3 species of Eider, Long-tailed Duck, and the Scoters, who all select the same food items, who are all generally classed as boreal / Arctic marine ducks, look so spectacularly different? Same prey preference, same biotomes so why aren't they much more similar? We still have your claims for Wood and Mandarin Duck, Temmincks Tragopan, the problem of parrots, other than Macaws, that use clay licks, lacking bare cheeks, Woodpeckers and their alleged 'tunnel' patterns ( as well as why a single species of anteating mammal would develop, in your eyes, such a pattern - you were the one to bring it up ) and others to work through.
Bring them on.


Chris

You misundertand Darwin's evlotion theory.
First there is occasional variation, than Nature selects the variation.
I never said that birds' food determined thier plumage patterns.
Other birds with similar foods and haibits survived perhaps because they had other advantages.
I believe that the mandarine duck also like eating the river snail.
My proposition is A->B
A: The duck has snail-like head;
B: The duck must like eating the snail.
According to A->B, we cannot derive B->A, or not A->not B.

 

[morninglight]

OK, please provide me the evidence that animals have a sense of beauty. And please provide to me evidence that an animals perception of beauty has parallels with the human sense of beauty.

I'm a scientist (although I admit I'm no psychologist or biologist), so I have an open mind to new theories provided that sufficient evidence is provided, and would love to understand your theory better and even to acknowledge that it might be correct. But so far, no evidence you have provided is remotely accurate, convincing or rigorous. Whether you like it or not, that is how science works.

If you want us to believe your theory - and I am not convinced that this is actually what you want - then you need to provide better evidence. To put forward ideas and proposals for a link between a bird and its preferred food, and then to openly admit you don't even know anything about the bird or whether it really does have a preference for that food (and then to further state that it's not your role to even find out) is just appalingly poor science. :C

Your rebutation is not only for me, but also for Darwin.
I have to talk something about the philosophy of language.

I can understand that you and some other people do not believe that the mankind and the bird have similar sensations, so you think that the bird probably has no the sense of beauty. But I want to tell you that "the sense of beauty" and "red","green", "fragancy" were never difined by human sensations.
Actually, they were defined by human behaviors.
A sensation itself is ineffable.

For example, "red" is defined by the behavior that a grandmother points at blood of some flag or flower to teach her grandchildren. Even if two children natively perceive two opposite color perceptions from red flower and green grass, they will say "red flower" and "green grass" in the same way. Because the children never know others' sensations.

"Beautiful" is defined by the behavior that we watch or listen to an object again and again, even want to approach the object, for nothing alse.
"Ugly" is defined by avoiding behavior.

Common people believe that the bird has beauty sense because the bird has the same watching and approching behaviors to those colorful patterns.

About if A sensation itself is ineffable and how we define "red" and "green", there was a long time argument on LPIS(Logical Probability of Inverted Spectrum) in USA. The final conclusions are here
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-inverted/
I believe that those conclusions are already common views now.

I began researching this subject thirty years ago, and fortunately, I found a symmetrical color model with better explanations of color evolution and color blindness.

In philosophy, My effort is to resolve the fundamental problems in philosophy through clarifying the ostensive definition:
http://survivor99.com/lcg/books/color/english/preface.htm

The following gif animation is to illustrate color evolution. Please click it.

 

[chris butterworth]

So, the duck has a snail-like head, but the 'fact' that it's head supposedly resembles a snail ( A ) has nothing to do with the appearance of the snail, but its solely due to the 'fact' that the duck likes eating the snail ( B )? Is that correct? If that is what you're claiming then, even allowing for variation, two species, such as King Eider and White-winged Scoter, that share the same distribution in the North Pacific, that share the same habitat, that share the same food preference should have a passing similarity in colouring. Its the ducks liking for snails that has governed the head colouring, right? A-> B right? But there again, in the post above, you clearly state, unequivocally, that "I never said that birds food determines their plumage patterns". Hasn't this been the whole thrust of your entire 'theory'? A bird's 'beauty sense' tells it that this foodstuff, or this habitat is beautiful which then drives evolution to cause the head pattern to resemble that foodstuff / habitat?

Chris

BTW I thought Mandarins Duck, in your world, liked eating clams, not snails. Please try to keep up.

C

 

[chris butterworth]

I think you have little idea of what constitutes 'beauty'. Beauty is solely cultural. Each culture defines its own interpretation of beauty. To link this cultural concept to the philosophical argument of how individuals perceive colours is, and I think you know it, blatant sophistry.

Chris

 

[fugl]

I'm very sorry Fugl, I didn't mean to come over as abrupt. I was expecting a little bit more from you. I very much doubt you would defend Morninglight's point of view in respect to molluscs and eiders either.
The and was there so that you might wish to expand on what you said, rather than so what.B

Fair enough. I guess I was just reiterating a point I've made in previous posts, namely the impossibility of invalidating even the most far-fetched of morninglight's supposed resemblances. There's just too much wriggle room. If one scenario doesn't hold up, it's easy to invent another one, so that "victory" is simply a matter of stamina, of who get's bored and deserts the field first. I've had personal experience of Chris's bulldog grip on subjects of contention and normally my money would be on him , but morninglight's been showing some real staying power and in this case I'm not so sure.

 

[chris butterworth]

I've had personal experience of Chris's bulldog grip on subjects of contention and normally my money would be on him , but morninglight's been showing some real staying power and in this case I'm not so sure.

I remember it well. We were both on the same planet, which made it easier for both of us though.

Chris

 

[Andy Hurley]

There is a bird on Papua New Guinea that builds amazing displays to attract a mate. (Bower Bird?) They don't use this "house" however, and different male have different ideas about what materials to use. Some choose red blossoms, others faecal material, others blue flowers, etc. The female arrives and has a look and then chooses a mate (or not). Personally, I think that is all about quantity and diversity and little about colour. How would you explain the efforts and materials used by the males in an attempt to attract a mate? Clearly however, as a species they don't share the same "sense of beauty".
I grew up in a family of nine. We were all taught the same values of what is beautiful, but no 2 siblings had the same favourite colour, a favourite car, or a favourite food. Surely this suggests that beauty sense is personal choice and not a perceived norm handed down from one generation to another. Birds on the other hand don't have an active "beauty sense" choice. They don't have time to think about beauty, even if they had the capacity to do so. They spend all their waking time foraging and in the mating season, attracting/selecting a mate and raising the next generation. A strong healthy male with a good plumage attracts a mate because it shows by it phyical presence and tireless song that it finds enough food to raise a family.

 

[chris butterworth]

Bowerbird females could be assessing the amount of 'labour' that goes into a bower and collecting the accompanying items. The more 'work' the male puts into the bower, the 'fitter' it is as a partner. No need to imbue an aesthetic value. Human values of 'beauty', although quite disparate they may seem on an individual level, are quite different between cultures. You only have to look at the variety of body modifications we, as a species, carry out on ourselves. To most western eyes scarification, lip stretching or female moko are not considered beautiful. It is within living memory that Japanese women with artificially blackened teeth were considered beautiful. Speaking of Japan, the nape of a woman's neck is still considered sexy - check out the patterns on a geishas neck when she is in full costume. Cultural differences of beauty.

Chris

 

[morninglight]

Your 'broken English' slipped a bit there.

I know of no duck that feeds on corpses ( or coffins, if that was a typo ) and, I'm almost sure the rest of us on here don't either. Which species would that be? ( Waits, with baited breath. Not. ).

Chris

Thank you for your reminding. I meant that duck is flesh-eating, it more likes eating small animals, such as frogs, river snails。

 

[morninglight]

How do explain the Barnacle Goose then? A few clicks here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnacle_Goose

suggests

Nature produces [Bernacae] against Nature in the most extraordinary way. They are like marsh geese but somewhat smaller. They are produced from fir timber tossed along the sea, and are at first like gum. Afterwards they hang down by their beaks as if they were a seaweed attached to the timber, and are surrounded by shells in order to grow more freely. Having thus in process of time been clothed with a strong coat of feathers, they either fall into the water or fly freely away into the air. They derived their food and growth from the sap of the wood or from the sea, by a secret and most wonderful process of alimentation. I have frequently seen, with my own eyes, more than a thousand of these small bodies of birds, hanging down on the sea-shore from one piece of timber, enclosed in their shells, and already formed. They do not breed and lay eggs like other birds, nor do they ever hatch any eggs, nor do they seem to build nests in any corner of the earth.[7]

It is strange. I think that needs other theory to expain instead of aethetic theory.

 

[morninglight]

You know you'll lose the bet, no matter how you phrase it - and then welch on it, just as you've done before. ( BTW. I'm a lecturer in Applied Malacology as well as a birder. Just think about it )

Chris

I like to bet with you again!

 

[chris butterworth]

It is strange. I think that needs other theory to expain instead of aethetic theory.

It does indeed need another theory. The one that used scientific methodology, repeatable evidence-based observation and a basic knowledge of biology were the ways in which the real methods of reproduction of Barnacle Geese were discovered. The quote you are replying to was based solely on someone thinking "This is what my imagination can come up with. Barnacle Geese look like Lepas anatifera therefore they must be adult barnacles". A bit like your method. Don't you think? That you, once more, fell into an obvious, simplistic trap shows you have learned nothing, and are determined not to. You are going nowhere with this conceit of yours. You supply no evidence, no logic, no knowledge of the subjects you're purporting to theorise about. I would have expected a certain amount of self pride to have kicked in by now.

Chris

 

[morninglight]

:'D :'D :'D I'm sure you could Mike. No chance of a couple of photos showing King Eider eating grasshoppers and Temmincks Tragopan tucking into a dozen Oysters? :t:

Chris

"No chance of a couple of photos showing King Eider eating grasshoppers and Temmincks Tragopan tucking into a dozen Oysters"
Also, King Eider never presents the pattern of a grasshopper, and
Temmincks Tragopan never present the pattern of a quatic snail. This is an evidence for my theory.

 

[morninglight]

I think he meant flesh eating from the Greek.
.

Yes, Thank you!

 

[chris butterworth]

I like to bet with you again!

No, my friend. If you offer to bet someone - and lose, you pay up. You don't carry on regardless and ignore the bet. You have shown by your previous behaviour that, apart from having a complete disregard for science and scientific methodology, you show the same level of disregard for what is required of someone who loses.

Chris

 

[chris butterworth]

"No chance of a couple of photos showing King Eider eating grasshoppers and Temmincks Tragopan tucking into a dozen Oysters"
Also, King Eider never presents the pattern of a grasshopper, and
Temmincks Tragopan never present the pattern of a quatic snail. This is an evidence for my theory.

But if photographs were produced that purported to show Eider eating grasshoppers and the Tragopan eating molluscs you would accept that as proof? After all you accepted the one of a Tragopan and a grasshopper, didn't you?

Chris

 

[morninglight]

So, the duck has a snail-like head, but the 'fact' that it's head supposedly resembles a snail ( A ) has nothing to do with the appearance of the snail, but its solely due to the 'fact' that the duck likes eating the snail ( B )? Is that correct? If that is what you're claiming then, even allowing for variation, two species, such as King Eider and White-winged Scoter, that share the same distribution in the North Pacific, that share the same habitat, that share the same food preference should have a passing similarity in colouring. Its the ducks liking for snails that has governed the head colouring, right? A-> B right? But there again, in the post above, you clearly state, unequivocally, that "I never said that birds food determines their plumage patterns". Hasn't this been the whole thrust of your entire 'theory'? A bird's 'beauty sense' tells it that this foodstuff, or this habitat is beautiful which then drives evolution to cause the head pattern to resemble that foodstuff / habitat?

Chris

BTW I thought Mandarins Duck, in your world, liked eating clams, not snails. Please try to keep up.

C

"but its solely due to the 'fact' that the duck likes eating the snail ( B )? Is that correct?"

B is neccessary condition of A, rather than sufficient condition of A. You confused two.

 

[morninglight]

So, the duck has a snail-like head, but the 'fact' that it's head supposedly resembles a snail ( A ) has nothing to do with the appearance of the snail, but its solely due to the 'fact' that the duck likes eating the snail ( B )? Is that correct? If that is what you're claiming then, even allowing for variation, two species, such as King Eider and White-winged Scoter, that share the same distribution in the North Pacific, that share the same habitat, that share the same food preference should have a passing similarity in colouring. Its the ducks liking for snails that has governed the head colouring, right? A-> B right? But there again, in the post above, you clearly state, unequivocally, that "I never said that birds food determines their plumage patterns". Hasn't this been the whole thrust of your entire 'theory'? A bird's 'beauty sense' tells it that this foodstuff, or this habitat is beautiful which then drives evolution to cause the head pattern to resemble that foodstuff / habitat?

Chris

BTW I thought Mandarins Duck, in your world, liked eating clams, not snails. Please try to keep up.

C

I think that Mandarins Duck likes eating both clams and snails. It can only present one for convenience.