Baby bird communication (II)

This is Piolín:



(Piolín is pronounced [piɔˈli:n], and it is the Spanish name of Tweety)

My niece found Piolín in June, saving him (or her... I have here the same problem I had with Patxi) from certain death, as he fell from his nest on a very hot day (under the Sun it must have been around 40ºC), lying on one side of a road. You can see a small wound on his back, probably caused by the fall.

As I discovered later, after some research, and despite his aspect, Piolín was not an ET, but a baby sparrow. When we found him he was one to three days old. He could not be quite older than that, because he had not even opened his eyes yet.

We started feeding him with some water and wet bread, and, as this video shows, he was hungry:



I observed that Piolín, as every baby, used to sleep or rest a lot when there was no activity around. But when he felt my presence, he always opened his big mouth, asking for food. He was striving for life, and did not give up at all. Bird parents must be very hard workers, as these babies request a huge amount of food! But when Piolín's tummy was full, our friend simply started resting again.

There was a difference between resting alone and resting with mum: when he felt I was near, he used to tweet. When he felt he was alone, he used to keep quiet. Probably this is so, because he has to tell his parents in some way he is alive and OK. Otherwise, the parents could think he died, and so they would start worrying about the other babies.

But if you are a baby bird, and you are alone, you will get more chances to survive if you keep quiet, or otherwise you could be discovered by an undesired predator.

The experiment

Well, that was what I thought, but... was it really so? Or was just my imagination? After all this is a blog about experiments, no matter how simple they are. And every experiment needs an idea to check, predictions (we just guess something from our idea), measurements (to check if they fit what we predicted) and conclusions.

So, the idea to check here is:

A baby sparrow will tweet more often if he feels his parents' presence

The prediction is simple: if I touch Piolín, he will tweet more times per minute than if I don't. So, I started counting how many tweets he did per minute. In the next video you can see a sample:



Even if I was covering him with my hand, I was not pressing at all. I was just touching him.

And here are the measurements:

• On my hand (covering him) > 38, 42 and 54 tweets per minute in three different moments


• On my open hand (not covering him) > 18 tweets per minute


• Touching him directly, while being in his nest > 65 tweets per minute


• Touching him through some cotton in his nest > 63 tweets per minute

• In his nest, not touching him > 0 tweets per minute


• In his nest, not touching him, but with my hand near him (so he could perhaps feel my warmth) > 0 tweets per minute


• In his nest, covered with cotton, but not touching him > 0 tweets per minute


• In his nest, covered with cotton, two minutes after being touched by me > 26 tweets per minute

Every measurement has been made leaving enough time in between, so each time I started from "zero tweets per minute". This is important, as we will see soon that Piolín kept tweeting for a few minutes each time he had been touched.

And the conclusion: it is obvious that there is a big difference in his message if he feels the mild pressure of my fingers/hand than otherwise. By tweeting, he is trying to express something to his parents, probably just to let them know he is OK.

As I said, Piolín used to keep tweeting for a while after he was left alone (about two or three minutes). Here you can see him alone in the nest we made for him, a few minutes after the previous video (where he was in my hand):



What about Piolín?

Very unfortunately, this story has a very sad ending. He did not make it. The day later, while we thought he was sleeping, he started choking on his own vomit, and when we arrived it was too late. Everything happened in just five minutes. We felt really unhappy about this, but at least we gave him a chance and it has been a very enriching experience for us (even if it has been really exhausting, as they need to be fed every 20-45 minutes).


Piolín sleeping

However, if you ever find a baby sparrow, don't be discouraged, as you have many chances to help him become an adult, healthy sparrow. If you are in this situation, you can check these videos:

Video about a baby sparrow, with happy ending
Video about how to feed a baby sparrow
Video about how to make home made baby bird food
Eight baby sparrows asking for food!

Baby bird communication (I)

Last month my sister brought a baby duck to my mother. Its name is Patxi (pronounced [patʃi]), and apparently what he (or she, but I will say he until we know what he/she is) loves most in this world is... tomatoes.

He probably thinks he is a human, as he has always been among humans. So, when there are no humans around he starts feeling scared of this dangerous world, and asks for help. In his language "help me, I am alone!" is translated into a siren-like shrill sound, while "I am OK and happy with you" is a normal ducky chirp.

This gave the idea to check for this experiment:

If a baby duck (grown up among humans) is left alone, he starts making a siren-like shrill sound to ask for help

Apparently this is quite simple. As any experiment should have at least some objective measurements, I timed the siren-like sound.

You can see the result in the following video.



I don't mention timing in the video, but you can see easily with a stopwatch that Patxi used his siren-like sound for about 24 seconds in four sessions.

Then I found something interesting: there is an exception to this. When Patxi is home, he does not feel scared of being alone (for him home means the plastic blue box). Even if I leave, he just calls mummy for a few seconds (about six seconds) and then he stops and continues doing whatever he was doing before (usually just chirping, pecking at things or... ehm... leaving his droppings around). Everything is explained in the second video:



As I show at the end of the video, funnily enough both places are in close proximity to each other.

So, by way of conclusion, we can make the following diagram:



I repeated the experiment several times, and many times there was not even "panic interval" when I left Patxi alone at home.

There is another experiment about baby bird communication I made. But that will be for the next entry.

Between twelve and five

Two months ago or so I spent some hours at the Hodges Figgis (a bookshop I love, which is on Dawson Street, here in Dublin). I love to go to the second floor and leaf through the books of the scientific section. It is the closest thing to the Casa del Libro in Madrid. There I found a book, The Maths Gene, by Keith Devlin. On page 19 (of that edition) there is the following test:

---

You have to answer as quickly as you can:
1 - 1 = ?
4 - 1 = ?
8 - 7 = ?
15 - 12 = ?

And now, quickly, choose a number between 12 and 5!

---

Supposedly you have chosen seven (the full story can be found also here). I can't remember now what did I choose, but it wasn't seven. So the first thing I thought was "hm, this is not quite serious". But of course, you cannot say something like that and believe it straight away. An experiment is needed... hooray!

The idea: Let's test this idea:

When you ask somebody to make subtractions and then you ask him/her for a number between two numbers, he/she unconsciously keeps subtracting.

The "material": 36 people took part in my experiment (all of them friends, relatives and colleagues).

The set-up: To do this experiment, I spent one week asking people I know for subtractions and numbers. Obviously, I didn't tell them anything beforehand, or otherwise they would have been conditioned to give an "interesting" answer. I always asked them in the office corridors, at the end of a phone call and so. This way, they didn't have a lot of time to think.

Firstly I considered two groups, twelve people each:

Group A: I made the experiment exactly like in Keith Devlin's book, with the same subtractions to do.

Group B: I told them "give me a number between 12 and 5" (not asking them for any subtractions).

The measures: I made some mistakes, like asking for a number between 7 and 12, but obviously I excluded these cases.

Here are the results for the group A:

answer 5 --> 0 people.
answer 6 --> 2 people.
answer 7 --> 7 people.
answer 8 --> 1 people.
answer 9 --> 1 people.
answer 10 --> 0 people.
answer 11 --> 0 people.
answer 12 --> 1 people.

And here are the results for the group B:

answer 5 --> 1 people.
answer 6 --> 1 people.
answer 7 --> 6 people.
answer 8 --> 2 people.
answer 9 --> 2 people.
answer 10 --> 0 people.
answer 11 --> 0 people.
answer 12 --> 0 people.

May be it is clearer with a couple of graphs:

Group A:


OK, maybe it is not a 90% of people, but slightly more than one half picked up seven. This was surprising for me.

Group B:


I would say both graphs are very similar! With subtractions seven people answered seven, and without subtractions it was six people. Yes, if you say we cannot expect great statistics out of twelve people you are right. But anyway, this is indicative that asking for subtractions is not the key point here.

What is the real reason? I would say lots of people like number seven, the "lucky number", and would have answered that even if I had asked for a number between 1 and 100. There is a group of "fans of number seven", but how large is this group?

What if the main point is the order we ask for the numbers? I kept asking all the time for a number "between twelve and five", but it would be more natural asking for a number "between five and twelve". So, I extended the experiment and considered a third group:

Group C: I told them "give me a number between 5 and 12" (in this more natural order, not asking for any subtractions).

This sub-experiment was to check the following sub-idea:

If you ask for a number "between twelve and five" most of the times you get seven; if you ask for a number "between five and twelve" you keep getting seven.

And this was the result:

answer 5 --> 1 people.
answer 6 --> 1 people.
answer 7 --> 3 people.
answer 8 --> 2 people.
answer 9 --> 4 people.
answer 10 --> 1 people.
answer 11 --> 0 people.
answer 12 --> 0 people.

Or, more graphically,

Group C:


Funny, isn't it? Seven is not any more the preferred number! It would be interesting to check this with a larger group of people, to make sure that fluctuations are not fooling us.

Conclusion: Recognising that groups of 12 people to choose between eight numbers is not a great deal, we can provisionally say that

• asking for subtractions before making the "important" question is not the key point for the number the people has to pick up when asked for a number between twelve and five (though there can be some influence smaller that the error of this experiment)
  
  
• it seems that it is more important here the order we ask for the numbers.
  

Maybe this is because are used to subtract when we have a larger number preceding a smaller number. Of course, to check this idea a bit better... an experiment with different numbers (other than 12 and 5) is needed.

Of course!

Smelling or tasting?

I have seen I can summarize my philosophy about these small experiments in just one word: EMOTION, which means

• Enjoy = fun!
  
• Measurements = objectivity
  
• Observation
  
• Thought = we need a (specific) idea/belief to test
  
• Incentive = we need a motivation
  
• Originality = creativity
  
• and the four Noes:
  
  
  
  1. No great, revolutionary ideas required
     
  2. Not a lot of time required
     
  3. Not a lot of material required
     
  4. Not a lot of knowledge required
     
  
  

So, the last weeks I have been quite busy, but that's just a cheap excuse (see the second no). The real reason I was not posting anything here is not time, it is just because I am not very used to it. Accepting it is the first step. The second step is doing something about...

So I will speak about a small experiment I did some weeks ago.

I was curious about the interaction between gustation and olfaction. Everybody knows that blocking your nose it is much more difficult to detect the flavour of everything, but I wanted to check this. I chose a specific idea to test:

I can tell the difference between the taste of olive oil and sunflower oil when I block my nose

So, to do this, and to make an objective measurement, I couldn't simply block my nose and try both oils, as my mind could still make me think I can tell something, just because I know the answer. I also needed not to know which one it was.

I put in two cups a little bit of each oil. To make it completely random, I closed my eyes and I asked my girlfriend to flip a coin. Then, she had to leave the cups in a place depending on the result.

After that, I tried one of the cups while blocking my nose. It was a very strange feeling! A viscous fluid in my mouth. No taste at all. It could have been bicycle oil. But I thought I still could tell something. So I tried the second cup (still nose blocked, eyes closed, of course). This was amazing: exactly the same sensation! (It might seem obvious, but making the experiment is really interesting, as you don't have to believe in that: you feel it).

Actually you can still "cheat", as olive oil seems to be more viscous than sunflower oil. But you have to practice a bit, and I didn't. So I went out on a limb and said something. I can't remember what I said, but I was wrong.

Then I did the same, but without blocking my nose. Even before trying the oil it was completely obvious which one was the olive oil. It was as clear as telling blue from red.

It was an interesting experiment. Maybe next time I will check if it is possible, with some practice, to tell who's who by their viscosity.