Magpies have outwitted scientists by helping each other remove tracking devices

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-22/magpies-show-cooperative-behaviour-by-removing-tracking-device/100851458

by clouddrover • 4 years ago

183 55 4 years ago

abc.net.au

danuker• 4 years ago

Amazing!

Maybe a better approach is to follow them from a distance with small autonomous drones.

bryanrasmussen• 4 years ago

I'm pretty sure 3 or 4 magpies working together can take down a small drone.

paranoidrobot3• 4 years ago

A Melbourne-based pilot vlogger/content creator had his drone attacked by some Magpies in 2020[1].

So, at least those, didn't like having a Drone around. No doubt they could take one down, but I suspect it'd result in some injury to the birds, too (from making contact with the props)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY71Fywr8Pk

clouddrover• 4 years ago

One raven giving it a go:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-11/wing-resumes-drone-de...

One wedge-tailed eagle being more effective:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2017-05-24/wedge-tailed-ea...

NamTaf• 4 years ago

In breeding season, magpies are notoriously territorial. To the point where cyclists all over Australia have zip ties tied to their helmets to act as spike-like deterrants to swooping magpies.

They would absolutely ruin a drone in about 3 seconds flat with no worries.

Anthony-G• 4 years ago

I liked the tip in your link advising people to

Attach fake eyes, or an image of eyes, to the back of a hat or helmet. Magpies will mostly attack from behind, so if they think you are watching them out of the back of your head, they will be less likely to swoop or attack. If you do not have a hat or helmet, try wearing your sunglasses back-to-front.

gonzo41• 4 years ago

That may not work out so well,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UU8sJ8aeyC4&t=0s

This is an Australian wedge tailed eagle all out against a drone.

paranoidrobot3• 4 years ago

For non-Aussies: This is talking about the Australian Magpie, which is distinct from other international birds.

They have some beautiful calls/songs, and are notorious for being extremely territorial and will swoop/attack any intruders during mating season. They also recognise individual humans - which can be good or bad depending on your relationship with them.

Examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n-d_u_jSJY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqSbDcks_uA

bradrn2• 4 years ago

Australian magpies truly are amazing birds. I recall once seeing two young magpies lying on their side and play-wrestling. [Image: https://imgur.com/CxRsLE3] When one got tired, the other kept following it around — it obviously wanted to keep on playing. And when I have lunch outside, I regularly have magpies trying to creep up on me to steal my food, though they haven’t yet figured out that it doesn’t work when I’m looking straight them. (Which takes some courage; having a magpie look down its beak at you is a fairly unnerving experience.) I am not surprised at all to hear that they can work together to remove a mere backpack.

mr_toad2• 4 years ago

they haven’t yet figured out that it doesn’t work when I’m looking straight them.

They don’t have forward facing eyes, so they might not understand that a human has to turn its head to see something.

waste_monk• 4 years ago

and will swoop/attack any intruders during mating season

This makes it sound like they're unreasonable or aggressive, which is very much not the case. They're just defending their nests from perceived threats.

They also recognise individual humans - which can be good or bad depending on your relationship with them

This also means that if you're a regular in the area, you will have a reputation with them and (assuming you don't go out of your way to harass them and ruin said reputation) they will not bother to swoop. When I was a boy I spent a lot of time playing in a park near my house which had a number of magpie families, and was not swooped or threatened once.

paranoidrobot3• 4 years ago

This makes it sound like they're unreasonable or aggressive, which is very much not the case.

That's a judgement/point of view call.

Having been swooped and attacked just for trying to walk down my driveway it's definitely easy to call it unreasonable and aggressive.

you will have a reputation with them and (assuming you don't go out of your way to harass them and ruin said reputation) they will not bother to swoop

Maybe true in some rare cases, but I've not heard of that happening frequently without some kind of active relationship (such as through feeding). The magpies I lived near as a kid never got used to humans, and never let me pass without swooping.

potatochup• 4 years ago

As a kiwi, I find their calls to be ugly sounding, but it's highly likely I'm biased against imported species :) I trap and kill all the imported mamallian pests I cone across (mice, rats, possums), but have left the magpies alone for now, although they do complete with native species and are too big to be hunted by local hawks/falcons/etc

jakear3• 4 years ago

Anyone else get bothered seeing wild animals tagged like that? I recall watching a documentary where they were tagging rhinos and elephants for “conservation” purposes, but oops some of them suffocated during tranquilization. Even if everything goes perfectly, it still feels like a massive invasion of privacy, and it’s pretty clear the animals really do not like it given how hard they’ll try to remove them.

I’ll eat my fair share of farmed meat so maybe I should just keep my mouth shut, yet I remain bothered seeing wild animals forced into a constantly monitored and physically uncomfortable situation.

Perhaps my concerns could be alleviated by papers showing direct positive outcomes for the species under observation?

Sharlin• 4 years ago

I would be astonished if they had a concept of privacy that could be violated by a tracking device, and even more astonished if they could somehow deduce that the device is actually sending invisible rays that contain information about their whereabouts to humans. Moreover, I've seen no evidence that tracking devices in general cause discomfort or stress, or that animals tend to try hard to remove them, before these magpies. Indeed that would defeat the whole purpose of a tracking device by changing the animal's behavior, which is why they're obviously designed so as to minimize any such change in behavior.

jakear3• 4 years ago

Are you equivalently comfortable tracking humans who do not ponder privacy and/or realize they are being tracked? Honest question, I know some developers will give an unequivocal “yes” to the above.

As for the discomfort, I don’t have a link but it was a Love Nature episode focused on rhinos. They stated they needed to invest in heavy duty materials affixed to the horn by drilling through it otherwise the rhinos would remove the device. In the same episode a rhino died of suffocation after the tranquilizer knocked them unconscious in an undesirable position, and the verdict was that such occurrences were unavoidable costs of doing business.

throwanem4• 4 years ago

Interesting. I'll admit this isn't my area, and as a hymenopterologist I'm really only an interested amateur in any case; I will say that I've never observed any wasp to be obviously dismayed by my camera flashes, and only once even by my presence - a bald-faced yellowjacket who was surprised to find me inches away upon emerging from a flower where she'd been nectaring, and circled my head a few times before zipping off about her occasions.

But then, on the other hand, I'm not really interfering with them, and certainly not attaching a semi-permanent tracker - the most you ever see in that direction with wasps is a dab of paint on the dorsal thorax, as with queen bee marking, which if perhaps not perfectly innocuous is still certainly much less intrusive than the devices typically applied to mammals and in this case at least to birds.

Can you cite the claim that the subjects of tracking studies typically find the trackers innocuous?

jstanley• 4 years ago

I agree they likely have no knowledge or concept of privacy, but just wanted to point out:

astonished if they could somehow deduce that the device is actually sending invisible rays that contain information about their whereabouts

The fact that the victim is unaware does not excuse the crime!

djtango• 4 years ago

Given that birds exhibit magnetoreception, it's not outside the realms of probability that they could sense EM radiation

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_auditory_effect

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroreception

micromacrofoot• 4 years ago

Elephants and Rhinos are endangered due to poaching and habitat destruction, some on an extremely critical level. I'm sure conservationists would rather not tag them, but given the alternative might be extinction, what else is there to do?

KineticLensman• 4 years ago

One example of tethered animals that have a choice are falcons and other raptors that are tied to a perch during the day when they are not being flown. These birds usually return to their handlers at the end of a display (admittedly food is involved) and submit to be being re-perched. Either they have appallingly bad memories or don't mind the perch, which is understandable given that many of them are sprint predators who when fed would naturally perch in a tree for hours.

fiftyfifty• 4 years ago

For birds when they are trapped and banded they are not tranquilized, typically they can be placed in a sock or otherwise wrapped up to restrain them and keep them calm, so the chances of them dying or getting hurt are very low. I’ve been involved in several bird banding outings and never saw a bird get hurt or die. The privacy thing is another issue I’ll leave to other experts.

harpersealtako• 4 years ago

In the US, a lot of wildlife conservation work involves trapping and tagging wild animals. I listen to a popular hunting podcast where wildlife biologists are often brought on as guests, and a LOT of the information they get seems to be directly from GPS collars. Science is the primary and proper tool for wildlife management policy under the North American Model of conservation, and GPS collars are the primary way of tracking things like mortality, migration, etc. that inform such science.

The main thing to remember is that, practically speaking, conservation is about a population, not the individuals within the population. The point isn't to save the individual deer, rather the point is to make sure that 100 years from now, deer are still around. This is how things like the the Pittman-Robertson Act are justified -- funding wildlife conservation from tag/license sales to hunters to kill wildlife. The results (the foundation of arguably the most successful wildlife restoration programs in human history, responsible for bringing dozens of major species back from near-extinction) speak for themselves.

dwheeler• 4 years ago

This is a great story. Frustrating for the scientists. Amusing for the rest of us.

ourmandave• 4 years ago

Next presser: "We've changed our research and are now studying how Magpies defeat tracking devices. No further questions."

jbotz• 4 years ago

"This research may in the future lead to new ways humans can help each other remove surreptitiously placed Apple AirTags."

forgotmypw176• 4 years ago

The scientists should themselves try wearing a 1-pound weight (proportional to this tracker compared to the magpie's weight) strapped to them 24-7 and unable to take it off before they make any further designs.

I do understand that this is about trying to help the magpies, but it still seems a bit hard-headed, like many other efforts to "help" those whom we're also harming with our activity.

philliphaydon3• 4 years ago

The device weighs 0.0022 pounds.

Humans carry orders of magnitude more weight in fat on their body. I doubt people Would notice 400 grams after 10 minutes.

forgotmypw176• 4 years ago

Would you notice it if you could never remove it, around the clock, even when sleeping, bathing, having sex, etc.

mmastrac• 4 years ago

Putting it that way makes it sound pretty trivial. I don't see a single pound of extra weight being something onerous and I consider myself to be more sentient than these animals.

forgotmypw176• 4 years ago

Don't forget, you can never remove it. And you have to fly with it, bathe with it, have sex with it, never being able to remove it, with it continuously wrapped around you and rubbing against your body, even when you're tired, even when you're wet.

hobs• 4 years ago

that would not encumber a human at all nor make a human pick a different outcome - there's a dozen places you could nicely nestle a pound and never realize it.

You clothes weigh more than that, your shoes WAY more than that, and we walk around all day with it... this is a weird point.

forgotmypw176• 4 years ago

Remember: You can never take it off, 24 hours a day, even sleeping and in the shower. And it is not necessarily attached where you would choose to attach it.

kwhitefoot• 4 years ago

I am aware of my shoes and clothes all the time. If someone forced me to wear something unfamiliar, ill fitting, and likely unbalancing, I would be seriously pissed off.

It doesn't seem weird to object to it to me at all.

reaperducer• 4 years ago

We do this to people all the time. Right now there are hundreds of thousands of people in America who have been charged with a crime, but not yet been tried, and are released to go about their lives with GPS trackers attached to their legs while they await their day in court.

It became even more common in the COVID era because the jails had to be thinned out to reduce infection rates.

forgotmypw176• 4 years ago

Thank you for supporting my argument.

tannhaeuser• 4 years ago

Magpies, like all crow-like birds (or at least that's how they are historically lumped together under Rabenvögel in German along with crows, ravens, and jackdaws, probably because they're scavengers) are fascinating, intelligent creatures. I've heard European magpies bring gifts when they take away food, like small decorative ensembles of sticks, stones, shells, and pieces of metal they picked up.

Shatnerz• 4 years ago

at least that's how they are historically lumped together under Rabenvögel in German along with crows, ravens, and jackdaws, probably because they're scavengers

Corvidae or Corvids in English (from the Latin word for "raven" I believe): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corvidae

Fnoord• 4 years ago

Corvidae or Corvids in English (from the Latin word for "raven" I believe): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corvidae

The other way around: Raven is an English word, a species; Corvidae the Latin one of the family of species which includes the species raven (words ending on 'ae' is multiple in Latin, and typically denotes a Latin etymology (Latin origin)).

dangerbird2• 4 years ago

This article is about Australian magpies, which aren't related to European Magpies and other corvids. They're known more for their extreme territoriality than for their intelligence, but OP's article clearly shows they're no dummies either.

u2077• 4 years ago

Mag pi-hole?

mr_toad2• 4 years ago

Magpies have learned to remove tracking devices, but we haven’t. Makes you wonder which is the smarter species?

Magpies have outwitted scientists by helping each other remove tracking devices

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