So my friend’s kid has celiac and dyslexia and reading labels is difficult for them (also they’re like 7) so he’s teaching their pigeon, Grey Boy, to read the labels and identify ingredients with gluten. It’s going well, other than Nick thought it would be a good idea to make the behavior when the pigeon does find a bad ingredient to just fucking…wing slap the box. Just beat the shit out of it like, “no! BAD gluten! BAD!”
I see a lot of “they taught a pigeon to read?” comments and thought I’d explain a bit more.
So it’s not really like their friend’s pigeon now knows how to read. He’s not going to be terribly interested in a novel you hand him (unless he decides it looks like a good nest.) However pigeons are remarkably good at pattern recognition, especially visual patterns. They out-perform humans when it comes to things like identifying artwork/distinguishing between different artist’s works. So it is pretty easy for them to recognize a visual arrangement of ink, such as a printed word, and be taught to respond to that particular pattern. So when looking at an ingredient list the pigeon learns to pick out the specific pattern(s) he’s been taught to react to among the other patterns (words.)
So he sees “wheat” and doesn’t read it the way humans do (w-h-e-a-t spells wheat), but rather sees the arrangement of pigment that he has been trained to slap. So he slaps it.
He will have to be taught every single gluten containing ingredient for it to be super useful, but it is definitely possible, which is super cool! Plus it makes a little kid’s life easier, and enriches Gray Boy.
Skinner did experiments with pigeons that showed how a pigeon can learn to respond to a visual pattern cue, if your interested more in the science behind it.
A Star Trek idea: A comedy sitcom where instead of a Vulcan on a mostly human ship it is a human on a mostly Vulcan ship
All the Vulcans are fiercely protective of the ‘fragile, illogical, prone-to-danger, smart, reckless little human’.
To make the human feel more accepted (as it is only logical) the Vulcans try to include aspects of terran culture in the ship’s day-to-day life, failing spectacularly at it.
The human loves them even more for it.
They’ll get better at celebrating the human’s birthday next year. It’s the thought that counts.
@jvlianbashir THAT’S A GOOD END TO THAT EPISODE THOUGH…
the vulcans put together awful, bland decorations. they make a cake because it’s of “significant importance”. they go through the process of putting together this party and Studying this Human Ritual and the entire episode is setting up to what you KNOW will be a horrible result. they do a bad job!!
then when the human’s birthday comes, and they reveal the off-the-mark, underwhelming looking birthday bash, the human just. starts crying. because they had no idea their crew would go through all this trouble to celebrate their birthday, and even put up DECORATIONS, or make a CAKE, and there’s a birthday card with extremely polite impersonal messages written and a hundred perfectly tidy signatures.
and the vulcans are just standing around like “you appear upset. the Birthday Party was unsatisfactory”.
Oppy came into the office while I was working, and while she has on occasion bumped into my chair and moved me a whole half inch to the left (wtf, why is it so strong), she’s always given up after a moment of realizing that headbutting the immovable object isn’t a good idea, and goes off under the guest bed in search of dust to consume. Except for right now when she apparently recognized my feet as an obstacle, but rather than go round them like she normally does, she engaged her “I’m stuck and need to hop” function, and quite literally hopped onto my foot.
If you’ve ever wondered what it feels like to have an 10lb robot roll over your toes, let me tell you, not good.
So yea, note to self, keep my feet out the way and not assume her sensor will know the difference between “an obstacle I should go around” and “I bet I can climb that”.
She was trying to get on your lap!
We gave the robot too much sentient power when we gave her googly eyes. God knows what the ribbon ETD bought for her is going to do when it arrives.
You guys with your earthquakes, tornadoes, and hurricanes are all crazy. As much as I grumble about snow I’ll take the blizzards and occasional flooding of the northeast any day over that chaos.
Look sometimes the sky decides ‘you know what fuck this’ and tries to kill you, and that’s just how it is.
