mar_k [he/him]

  • 41 Posts
  • 1.06K Comments
Joined 3 years ago
cake
Cake day: February 19th, 2023

help-circle





  • Similarly, European colonizers assumed societies with huts and simpler technology were less intelligent. Meanwhile countless indigenous societies like that turned out to have languages far more complicated and sophisticated than European languages, cultures and traditions more vast and diverse, and their values generally far more altruistic and socially connective. (And they focused on community and connection over material advancement, were limited by environmental or chance factors, and/or philosophically/ spiritually opposed to artificial means of living that disconnected themselves from nature)


  • My late grandpa nursed an injured crow back to health in his 20’s, and 60 years later, crows would still occasionally land on his shoulder when he sat on the park bench. No one else’s

    My friend also told me a murder of crows would consistently harass and try to peck his childhood cat whenever they saw her walking anywhere outside, so often that the cat was forced to become an indoor cat (crow beaks are very sharp). Their family spoke to a couple neighbors and found none of their cats ever had a problem with crows, even an outdoor cat of the same color. Suggesting his cat tried to pounce on a crow and the whole flock waged war against her specifically


  • Yeah corvids have been proven to have some level of culture as well as dialects across flocks, and it’s well-established they pass knowledge about oddly specific things across generations. Scientists obv can’t (yet) translate crowspeak, but computer analyzing subtle differences in pitch, spacing, rhythm, cadence, tongue clicks, etc. proves their chatter has complex structures, patterns, and rules to it

    Crows have even recently been proven to be capable of recursion (structurally nesting abstract concepts inside other abstract concepts), which linguists previously assumed was strictly unique to humans, and recent research has shown crows “know what they know” and ponder the contents of their own minds

    I think the grey area for many species of birds and sea mammals is not if they have complex communication systems, but how complex some of them truly are. Humanity’s spent ages arrogantly assuming every chirp and whistle and click on the planet is just meaningless, primitive noise, and modern science is only just starting to catch up


  • Ask a simple question on most subreddits and you’ll get 6 downvotes and a reply like “Google is free” or “this question’s been asked here before…” as if I didn’t already search for it and couldn’t find anything

    Also a lot of gatekeeping. One time I was planning a hike in a niche area in the White Mountains and made a post in the subreddit asking if there were any cool spots off trail… some mf replied “put in the work to find it yourself, nobody’s giving away their special spots.” Went to the account and it was a weirdo centrist advocating for raw milk and a carnivore diet