Evolving magpies? Do they model different humans?

The magpies at my daughter’s, who demonstrated reciprocal altuism with humans, again surprised us, with what can only imply that they’ve not only modelled what humans can do physically, but when humans are capable and willing to do things (apart from supply food) for magpies, things no magpies can do for themselves.

Rather than the common cursory couple of pecks at the glass door that usually means "I’m here in case you’ve got some titbits for me", my daughter heard frantic hard tapping that didn’t stop until she went to the door.

After my daughter opened the door, the magpie ("Trav") warbled loudly and flew off in a straight line to a small, but very dense tree in the yard.  It was obvious the magpie desperately wanted my daughter to follow.

Sitting on a branch, but unable to escape from the dense foilage and branches in all directions, one of the fledglings was literally sh*tting itself.  The male parent warbled insistently, standing at my daughter’s side.

After she pulled back the branches so the fledgling could get out, the father and fledgling (which was on its first or second flight from the nest) went straight back home.  About half an hour later, a long set of (not very insistent) pecks at the door attracted my daughter, who opened it, upon which the magpie gave a quick warble, and then casually flew off.

(My grandson, who the magpies are wary of unless he is obviously constrained, was in his cot at the time, so the magpie did not go away immediately out of caution!)

This got me pondering whether magpies are evolving in a way similar to the co-evolution of dogs and humans.  Humans and dogs are very good at reading each other’s moods, even when the particular animal is unfamiliar.  Both humans and dogs have gained selective advantage over other members of their tribe or pack.  There are even hints that our hopeless sense of smell compared to other great apes is due to a long history of dogs acting as our noses when hunting or on guard at night for prowling predators.

Perhaps there has been selective advantage for individual magpies if they can model human capabilities, as well as differentiate between humans according to their friendliness to magpies.

I wonder what those magpies think they can do in return (apart from when they offer us nice juicy worms as described in a previous post).

About a week later (I stay at my daughter’s more weekends than I don’t), we were hanging around with the father magpie in the yard, and he exibited another behaviour I’d never seen before:

He was warbling a normal-sounding song for a couple of minutes, but incredibly softly: if I’d been much more than a metre away from him there is no way we would have heard it.  The fledglings were both within 50 metres and probably couldn’t hear their father above the wind and rustling trees, with the one that had got himself caught in the tree again being a bit of an idiot.

It was almost as if he was warbling for our ears only.  (He has since done this when it’s only him and me in the yard and the fledglings were with the mum or adolescent.)

My daughter cracked up when I said that I knew what he was probably saying: "Toddlers/fledglings, they’re such a bloody handful.  Sometimes you’d just like to be able to relax for a few minutes!  Do you know where I can get a good babysitter?"

I’ll admit that "translation" is a long shot, but I reckon it is almost odds-on that the magpie was trying to communicate something to us and didn’t want the kids to hear.

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See Also:

• "Mapie morality??" (2008-09-17)

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