They've started cooperating.
We're doomed.

DOOOOOOOOOoomed!

Bird: "Hey, that's my foot, jerkwad!"

jazz710: OnlyM3: Marshall Willenholly

Remind me not to go to their house for dinner if the bird is allowed to stand on the stove and eat out of the pots.
I think of videos like this every time the office has a "pot luck". I "ain't" eating what folks make at home. :ox


On a side note... why's the bird doing this? What's in it for him?

Can't answer the why for sure but our African Grey feeds our three dogs fruit treats from his food bowl as well. They beg, he comes out and drops them. Parrots are probably smart enough to realize that they're smarter than the dogs, so maybe it's the same reason we feed things dumber than us? Not sure, but it's always funny.

[Departing from my usual attempts to say something funny, and instead giving a serious answer, for a change.]

Actually, it's instinctive behavior. For millions of years, birds that saw an open mouth and did whatever they could to put food in it had success in raising offspring (who automatically inherited their genes that told them to put food in open mouths). Most of the open mouths that a bird is likely to see will be its own offspring. So if a bird has a "root" program that says "put food in whenever you see an open mouth," the majority of the time, it's going to feed its own kids. As a result, surviving lineages of birds were those who put food in open mouths whenever they saw one.

Any bird that saw an open mouth and didn't put food in it ended up with starving chicks, so that gene is extinct now, and only those birds with the "put food in open mouths" genes are still alive.

This is an example of a genetically valuable program in the bird's DNA being "hijacked," in a sense, by the dog. The dog has figured out a way to get the bird to act in the dog's interests, even though the bird is thinking that it's feeding its own babies.

It's the same trick that magpies do to other birds. It's kind of cool to see a mammal figure out the same trick.

Iggie: Ceiling Moran: More like "dog steals pasta from bird," right? Right?

Part of me thought so the first time the dog grabbed some, but since the bird kept returning to the edge where the dog was I think it was doing it to share. Some birds like to bring food to others that they consider part of the nest, like this guy here: Link (new window)


Ok that was cool, thx. I liked the owl comming up the lady, "YOU NEED TO EAT!". That owl had one job in that house and by god he was going to feed everybody.

TheMega:

Soooooooo.... sort'a like the dog that shows its wiener in the video a few days back... or not?

Somehow I managed to miss that thread... and I suspect that might be not such a bad thing! :-D