Bird brains

An interesting observation from a book I'm finishing up:

Newly hatched chicks, ducklings, and goslings “imprint” on, or form an attachment to, the first moving object they encounter, and they then follow it around. Under normal circumstances, this imprinting instinct causes them to bond with their mother, but if the eggs are hatched in an incubator and young birds first meet a person, they will follow that person around instead. In laboratory experiments they can even be induced to imprint on moving balloons or other inanimate objects.

In his experiments, Peoc’h used a small robot that moved around on wheels in a series of random directions. At the end of each movement, it stopped, rotated through a randomly selected angle, and moved in a straight line for a randomly determined period before stopping and rotating again, and so on. These movements were determined by a random-number generator* inside the robot. The path it traced out was recorded. In control experiments, its movements were indeed haphazard.

Peoc’h exposed newly hatched chicks to this robot, and they imprinted on this machine as if it were their mother, Consequently they wanted to follow it around, but Peoc’h stopped them from doing so by putting them in a cage. From the cage the chicks could see the robot, but they could not move toward it. Instead, they made the robot move toward them (Figure 16.1). Their desire to be near the robot somehow influenced the random-number generator so that the robot stayed close to the cage. Chicks that were not imprinted on the robot had no such effect on its movement.

In other experiments, Peoc’h kept non-imprinted chicks in the dark. He put a lighted candle on the top of the robot and put the chicks in the cage where they could see it. Chicks prefer being in the light during the daytime, and they “pulled” the robot toward them, so that they received more light.

Peoc’h also carried out experiments in which rabbits were put in a cage where they could see the robot. At first they were frightened of it, and the robot moved away from them; they repelled it. But rabbits exposed to the robot daily for several weeks were no longer afraid of it and tended to pull it toward them.

Thus the desire or fear of these animals influenced random events at a distance so as to attract or repel the robot. This would obviously not be possible if animals’ desires and fears were confined inside their brains. Instead, their intentions reached out to affect the behavior of this machine.

(Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming
Home: And Other Unexplained Powers of Animals
by Rupert Sheldrake :271-272)

Related books: The Quantum Brain
Related posts: The Quantum Brain

*Note, there is no such thing as a random number "generator." I.e., the programmer has to find a source of entropy outside the computer to use as a sample of the degenerate. Then we call that "random" and make use of it.

(From the perspective of "beings of light" what we call random in all probability wouldn't be random, but that would be based on a frame of reference that we cannot see or know. As for us, things are often random and uncertain enough that our choices matter. So you're supposed to make choices about things that are already known and predestined to be or to use a metaphor, run a race that is already layed out. And so on, so let the sniveling about how can we choose if things are already known and predestined begin...I suppose the sniveling about it on the one hand vs. the silly arguments about knowledge that one cannot have on the other was all predestined too? Don't mind me, I was probably predestined to make fun.)