If I could have my way with the cable company, I’d only have to pay for Comedy Central, all of the Discovery Channels, History, and TLC. Last night a friend of mine and I sat and watched this show for at least an hour about how smart animals are. They showed animals that use tools to get food, how animals can figure their way out of problems, and so on. It started with ravens picking up walnuts and dropping them on the road to crack them open. Not going to win a Nobel Prize, but pretty good for a bird, I guess. Then they showed some cows that figured out how to open the gate to their stalls, go over to where the food was, open the latch that held that door shut, and manipulate the dispensing lever with their tongues to deliver whatever it was they were eating. These were all pretty basic, but when they started showing the squirrels and birds, we got sort of worried about our position on the food chain.

Some scientist / behavioral studies type person set up this obstacle course for the squirrels. In order to get to the popcorn, they had to climb a pole, slide down a zip wire in a little suspended cart (just precious), push a button that activated another mechanism, breakdance, recite the Declaration of Independence, build a rocket, and some other non-squirrel stuff. Then they got to the food. They did a similar experiment with these parrot-looking birds that live in the snow. I had never seen one before, but I’m glad they don’t live where I do, because they seem to be smart enough to hold a grudge and plot revenge if you did them wrong. They set up this nine-foot high acrylic tube with a series of levers and switches and stuff that had to be activated in a certain order for the food to fall into a glass box at the bottom. Then they had to pull a string that was attached to the tray holding the food in order to get to it. Keep in mind that these are birds. They could see that there was food in there, but had to figure out how to get it.

They sat for about an hour before any of the birds approached the contraption, and lucky for me they edited that part out, because I would have sat there and watched it. The bird had the damn thing figured out in about five minutes, and I sat stunned. What’s keeping these birds from hot-wiring my car? Why aren’t they on line reading this right now? I know humans who couldn’t have figured out that puzzle, and I am related to some of them. My friend and I thought about this for a while before he brought up the solution.

The birds and rodents in question used every ounce of their mental capacity and half of their day to figure out a way to get a piece of popcorn. Not a bucket of popcorn, just one piece.

If someone put some beef jerky in a box, tied it to a string, hung it from a balloon, gave me a stick, toilet paper, some elastic, and a feather and told me to get it, I’d be like “Hey, fuck you, man. I don’t need the jerky that bad”, and I’d head off to McDonald’s. So the animal mind has food as its number one priority, and they do what it takes to get it. I felt really good about how advanced we humans are as a species, and how we have ways of coping with our needs. Then we further analyzed it and said “What if they put $10 in the box instead of the jerky?”, which quickly ruined my illusion.

Somewhere there is a flock of parrot like birds building an acrylic tube with a series of riddles, toggle switches, and equations to be solved that each in turn get the human one step closer to a dollar. They’ll sit there and watch me in awe as they eat the popcorn they stole from the trunk of my car while I was analyzing the situation. When I finally get the money, I’ll spend it on jerky because I am so much more evolved than they are.

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