This was an incredible account of your visit. Thank you, Keith, for sharing it with us, and for including the creation story as well. The Everglades Kite, and endangered species, does the same thing with apple snails. The apple snail is a large freshwater snail with a rather thick shell. The kite drops them on hard objects to break the shell. I remember reading of other birds who do similar things with shellfish. I'm sure there's a shorebird that does this with clams or something. Does anyone remember? It'll drive me crazy until I do. I wonder how they discovered the process too. Was it an accident that ended up getting a good result? The positive feedback from that accident would be a good teaching method. A raven picks up a live mussel as a "prize" to hoard, drops it accidentally, getsthe yummy from inside. Happens again, the bird has the "I do this, get food" insight, so learns to drop shellfish on rocks. I've read that ravens (and crows) do teach their young and other members of the group how to perform complex behaviours...or maybe they just mimic each other. Is there a difference between mimicry and intentional teaching? Can you tell I'm a trainer? Wynne Americus, GA USA At 08:55 AM 7/15/98 -0700, Keith Kaste wrote: (Snip) >There we saw something that I thought was astounding. I >>watched a raven fly past me with something in its mouth. It flew up >>high and then dropped its treasure. I guessed even ravens get clumsy >>sometimes. Then it did it again, and again. I saw that the thing in >>the raven’s mouth was a mussel. It was trying to break open the mussel >>by dropping it on the stones below! How did this bird discover this >>process? Later on, in a different area I saw another raven doing this, >>so it is a teachable behavior. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************Received on Wed Jul 15 1998 - 11:32:16 PDT
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