Author Topic: Bird Arsonists  (Read 2020 times)

Ben

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Bird Arsonists
« on: January 13, 2018, 10:47:00 AM »
The research is not conclusive, but the hypothesis is interesting. Australian kites will start fires, then wait for rodents and other food sources to flee, at which time they go on a feeding frenzy:

http://www.sciencealert.com/birds-intentionally-set-prey-ablaze-rewriting-history-fire-use-firehawk-raptors
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MechAg94

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Re: Bird Arsonists
« Reply #1 on: January 13, 2018, 11:56:24 AM »
I am a little puzzled that some of the people were trying to say it might be accidental.  That the bird didn't realize it was carrying a smoking stick?
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Hawkmoon

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Re: Bird Arsonists
« Reply #2 on: January 13, 2018, 12:21:07 PM »
I can't resist commenting that "Avian Arsonists" would have given the title a nice, alliterative touch.
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230RN

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Re: Bird Arsonists
« Reply #3 on: January 15, 2018, 04:24:19 PM »
Apparently, it isn't observed all that often, but it is observed.  So why no videos?

"Even more proof Australian wildlife is nuts."

I don't see any proof, and that lead image just has a look of fakery about it.  So does the embedded one.

<drums fingers>

Pb

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Re: Bird Arsonists
« Reply #4 on: January 16, 2018, 10:10:43 AM »
Don't make one mad, or it might drop a flaming stick on your roof.... :O

French G.

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Re: Bird Arsonists
« Reply #5 on: January 16, 2018, 11:49:15 AM »
Little bird loved fire.
AKA Navy Joe   

I'm so contrarian that I didn't respond to the thread.

HeroHog

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Re: Bird Arsonists
« Reply #6 on: January 16, 2018, 11:55:50 AM »
Crows are VERY smart and known to use tools in the wild. It's not beyond the realm of possibility.
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230RN

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Re: Bird Arsonists
« Reply #7 on: January 16, 2018, 12:24:03 PM »
I dunno.  Any time someone expresses a divergent viewpoint around here, people start hollering "where's your proof," "there's no evidence," and start waxing all scientific-like.

Well?

I started to wonder whether the date of the article was Australia's April Fool's Day.

I'm not dismissing the possibility, but like Thomas, I want visual and if possible, manual confirmation.

Terry, feeling hardnosed today, 230RN

REF:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doubting_Thomas

Scout26

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Re: Bird Arsonists
« Reply #8 on: January 16, 2018, 01:49:35 PM »
I can't resist commenting that "Avian Arsonists" would have given the title a nice, alliterative touch.

"Avian Arsonists" would be a good name for a grunge rock garage band....
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Hawkmoon

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Re: Bird Arsonists
« Reply #9 on: January 16, 2018, 05:07:02 PM »

I'm not dismissing the possibility, but like Thomas, I want visual and if possible, manual confirmation.


What would manual confirmation be? Having a crow drop a burning brand on your head?
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230RN

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Re: Bird Arsonists
« Reply #10 on: January 16, 2018, 05:46:03 PM »
 
:rofl:

I was using that as a verbal link to Thomas putting his hand in Jesus' wound, that's all. "Visual and manual" demonstration. It's actually part of a line regarding "doubting Thomas" from one of Philip Wylie's books. Don't read it literally.

Hawkmoon

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Re: Bird Arsonists
« Reply #11 on: January 16, 2018, 06:24:58 PM »

:rofl:

I was using that as a verbal link to Thomas putting his hand in Jesus' wound, that's all. "Visual and manual" demonstration. It's actually part of a line regarding "doubting Thomas" from one of Philip Wylie's books. Don't read it literally.

So, in other words, you didn't literally mean "literally." So you didn't manually type "manual"?
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230RN

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Re: Bird Arsonists
« Reply #12 on: January 16, 2018, 07:28:57 PM »
I want to see a bird fly down to a smoldering spread of twigs and grass and branchlets, select a burning one, pick it up and fly off, then drop it in another place and start another fire.

Doesn't even have to "catch" anything at either fire.  Nor does the second fire have to "catch." Just watching the process in person or a non-CGIed video will do.

Hell, it doesn't even have to be the same bird dropping it as the one which picked it up.

That's all.  No big deal.  No parsing of meanings or Shepardizing case law for a legal definition of "manual." :)

Just show me.

Terry


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Re: Bird Arsonists
« Reply #13 on: January 16, 2018, 07:43:53 PM »
I'm with you. While POSSIBLE, it seems awful unlikely.
I might not last very long or be very effective but I'll be a real pain in the ass for a minute!
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just Warren

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Re: Bird Arsonists
« Reply #14 on: January 17, 2018, 12:49:49 AM »
Member in Good Standing of the Spontaneous Order of the Invisible Hand.

230RN

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Re: Bird Arsonists
« Reply #15 on: January 17, 2018, 01:03:22 PM »
You owe me two minutes and twenty seconds.

Actually, this-all reminds me a little bit of an example of where my doubting Thomas attitude was wrong.

Back in the 60s, early 70s, a shooting buddy of mine used to ice fish up on Gross Reservoir or one of the mountain lakes.  This outdoorsey pursuit was not for little old soft-skinned me as being too cold.  Not that I minded freezing my soft pink ass off in other winter pursuits, but I basically don't like fish anyhow...

...Anyhow, on coming back from one of his trips, he told me that he had fired a bullet from his 9mm pistol (I think it was a P-38 he'd brought back from WWII) into the ice to kind of start a pilot hole for drilling his ice-fishing hole, and the bullet just kind of bounced back out of the ice and stood there on its nose spinning like mad and he figured I might be able to explain this very odd behavior.  He had just fired the shot, made a little hole, and was getting his drill/auger ready and heard this buzzing sound and found the bullet standing there spinning.

Well, long story short, I thought he was BSing me --we joked around man-to-man a lot --but I didn't call him a liar since I respected him quite a bit.  After kicking it around for a while, I just said I didn't know what was going on and I forgot about it.

A couple of years later I read in one of the gun magazines where a writer had the same thing happen to him, a bullet spinning on ice, but he then went on to describe his five thousand yard shot in a strong 9 o'clock wind, in the fog, across a canyon, on a full-curl B&C mountain sheep.  Don't remember the writer or the outdoor mag, but I decided to try it out myself on the frozen creek on my little farm.  I fired maybe 10 shots into the ice with my 1911, 230 grain FMJs, and could not make it work.  Nines were not yet popular, this being about 1980.

Ahhhh, but then came the millenium and the internet and dot-MOVs and son of a gun, so many reports and videos of exactly this happening just about everywhere in the world, with so many different variables (frozen lake, farmyard puddle, MythBusters trying it) and so few opportunities for trickery (magnetic coils buried in the ice, etc), with so many different cartridges, that I had to believe that it was an actual phenomenon.

I couldn't explain it, especially since the expectation would be a ricochet or a penetration, but there it was.

Maybe Penn and Teller can explain the gaff, but I can't.

So maybe that's what's happening with the firebrand birds, but it's going to take a mass of evidence, like with the bullets spinning on ice, to convince me.

Terry, 230RN

« Last Edit: January 17, 2018, 02:13:23 PM by 230RN »