How many of you have seen the Alfred Hitchcock film "The Birds"? Any of you get really freaked out by that? You might want to leave now.
Koliko vas pozna film Alfreda Hitchcocka - Ptiči? Se je komu zdel zelo strašljiv? Morda želite zapustiti to predavanje...
(Laughter)
(smeh)
So this is a vending machine for crows. Over the past few days, many of you have been asking, "How did you come to this? How did you get started doing this?" It started, as with many great ideas, or many ideas you can't get rid of, anyway, at a cocktail party. About 10 years ago, I was at a cocktail party with a friend of mine. We were sitting there, and he was complaining about the crows that were all over his yard and making a big mess. And he was telling me we ought to eradicate these things, kill them, because they're making a mess. I said that was stupid, maybe we should just train them to do something useful. And he said that was impossible.
To je avtomat za vrane... V minulih dneh me je veliko udeležencev vprašalo, kako sem se sploh lotil tega? Kako sem se začel ukvarjati s tem? In kot mnogo krasnih idej, ki se jih ne moreš znebiti, se je tudi ta porodila na cocktail partiju. Pred približno 10 leti sem bil na zabavi pri prijatelju. Sedeli smo in prijatelj se je pritoževal o vranah, ki jih je začel videvati, kako svinjajo po njegovem dvorišču. Rekel je, da bi bilo treba ta problem rešiti. "Ubiti jih moramo, ker so z njimi same težave." Odvrnil sem, da je to neumno. Mogoče bi jih morali samo naučiti česa uporabnega. On je trdil, da je to nemogoče
And I'm sure I'm in good company in finding that tremendously annoying, when someone tells you it's impossible. So I spent the next 10 years reading about crows in my spare time.
Prepričan sem, da gre tudi vam zelo na živce, če vam kdo reče, da je nekaj nemogoče, zato sem naslednjih 10 let v svojem prostem času bral o vranah.
(Laughter)
(smeh)
And after 10 years of this, my wife said, "You've got to do this thing you've been talking about, and build the vending machine." So I did. But part of the reason I found this interesting is, I started noticing that we're very aware of all the species that are going extinct on the planet as a result of human habitation expansion, and no one seems to be paying attention to all the species that are actually living; they're surviving. And I'm talking specifically about synanthropic species, which have adapted specifically for human ecologies, species like rats and cockroaches and crows.
In po 10 letih branja mi je žena rekla, da le moram narediti to, o čemer vedno govorim: namreč avtomatu za vrane. In tako sem ga naredil. Toda na nek način me je to zanimalo tudi zato, ker sem opazil, da se vsi zavedamo tega, da vrste živali izumirajo zaradi širitve človekovega življenjskega prostora, nihče pa ne posveča pozornosti vrstam, ki dejansko živijo - ki preživijo. V mislih imam predvsem sinantropne vrste - to so tiste, ki so se posebej prilagodile življenju v bližini človeka. To so denimo podgane, ščurki in vrane. Ko sem jih opazoval, se mi je posvetilo, da so hiper-prilagojene.
And as I started looking at them, I was finding that they had hyper-adapted. They'd become extremely adept at living with us. And in return, we just tried to kill them all the time.
Postale so izjemno vešče življenja z nami, mi pa jih že ves čas skušamo iztrebiti.
(Laughter)
And in doing so, we were breeding them for parasitism. We were giving them all sorts of reasons to adapt new ways. So, for example, rats are incredibly responsive breeders. And cockroaches, as anyone who's tried to get rid of them knows, have become really immune to the poisons that we're using. So I thought, let's build something that's mutually beneficial; something that we can both benefit from, and find some way to make a new relationship with these species. So I built the vending machine.
Na ta način smo jih samo vzredili kot zajedalce. Vedno znova smo jim dajali povod za prilagoditev. Tako so na primer podgane izjemno plodne, ščurki - to ve vsak, ki se jih je kdaj hotel znebiti - pa so postali izjemno odporni na naše strupe. Tako sem prišel na idejo, da bi morali narediti nekaj, kar bo v obojestransko korist, nekaj, kar bo dobro zanje in za nas in nam s temi vrstami omogočilo vzpostaviti nek nov odnos. Tako je nastal avtomat za vrane.
But the story of the vending machine is a little more interesting if you know more about crows. It turns out, crows aren't just surviving with human beings; they're actually thriving. They're found everywhere on the planet except for the Arctic and the southern tip of South America. And in all that area, they're only rarely found breeding more than five kilometers away from human beings. So we may not think about them, but they're always around. And not surprisingly, given the human population growth, more than half of the human population is living in cities now. And out of those, nine-tenths of the human growth population is occurring in cities. We're seeing a population boom with crows. So bird counts are indicating that we might be seeing up to exponential growth in their numbers. So that's no great surprise.
A zgodba o tem avtomatu je zanimivejša, če vemo nekaj več o vranah. Kot se je izkazalo, se vrane niso naučile z ljudmi le preživeti, pač pa so pri tem sobivanju celo izredno uspešne. Najdemo jih povsod, razen na Arktiki in južnem koncu Južne Amerike, le redko pa živijo in se razmnožujejo več kot 5 km stran od ljudi. Morda se jih ne zavedamo, a vrane so vedno nekje v bližini. In glede na rast človeške populacije - več kot polovica človeštva živi v mestih in približno 90 odstotkov rasti populacije se dogaja v mestih - ni presenetljivo, da tudi število vran naglo narašča. Preštevanje ptic kaže, da je to naraščanje skoraj eksponencialno. A temu se niti ne gre čuditi.
But what was really interesting to me was to find out that the birds were adapting in a pretty unusual way. And I'll give you an example of that. This is Betty. She's a New Caledonian crow. And these crows use sticks in the wild to get insects and whatnot out of pieces of wood. Here, she's trying to get a piece of meat out of a tube. But the researchers had a problem. They messed up and left just a stick of wire in there. And she hadn't had the opportunity to do this before. You see, it wasn't working very well. So she adapted.
Kar pa se mi je zdelo zanimivo, je bilo odkritje, da se vrane prilagajajo na zelo zanimiv način. Naj vam pokažem primer. To je Betty, novokaledonska vrana. Te vrane v divjini uporabljajo palčke za bezanje insektov in še česa iz kosov lesa. Tukaj poskuša dobiti košček mesa iz cevi. Ampak raziskovalci so očitno imeli problem, nekaj so zamočili in ji pustili samo košček žice. Pred tem še ni imela priložnosti početi česa takega, vidite lahko, da ni bila ravno uspešna. Pa se je prilagodila.
Now, this is completely unprompted; she had never seen this done before. No one taught her to bend this into a hook or had shown her how it could happen. But she did it all on her own. So keep in mind -- she's never seen this done.
Tole dela popolnoma sama od sebe. Pred tem tega še ni naredila. Nihče je ni naučil ukriviti žice, nihče ji ni pokazal, kako se to lahko naredi. Vsega se je domislila sama. Še enkrat: nikoli prej ni videla, kako se to počne.
(Laughter)
Dobro.
Right.
(Laughter)
(smeh)
Yeah. All right.
Mhm, v redu.
(Applause)
(aplavz)
So that's the part where the researchers freak out.
To je del, kjer se raziskovalcem naježijo dlake.
(Laughter)
(smeh)
It turns out, we've been finding more and more that crows are really intelligent. Their brains are in the same proportion as chimpanzee brains are. There's all kinds of anecdotes for the different kinds of intelligence they have. For example, in Sweden, crows will wait for fishermen to drop lines through holes in the ice. And when the fishermen move off, the crows fly down, reel up the lines, and eat the fish or the bait. It's pretty annoying for the fishermen.
Bolj in bolj smo ugotavljali, da so vrane zares zelo inteligentne. Njihovi možgani so sorazmerno približno tako veliki kot šimpanzovi. Obstaja več anekdot o njihovi inteligenci. Na primer: na Švedskem prežijo na ribiče. Ko ti odvržejo trnke skozi luknje v ledu in se umaknejo, priletijo vrane, izvlečejo trnke in pojedo ribe ali vabo. Precej nadležno za ribiče.
On an entirely different tack, at University of Washington a few years ago, they were doing an experiment where they captured some crows on campus. Some students went out, netted some crows, brought them in, weighed and measured them, and let them back out again. And they were entertained to discover that for the rest of the week, whenever these particular students walked around campus, these crows would caw at them and run around, and make their life kind of miserable.
Čisto drugače pa je bilo na Univerzi v Washingtonu, kjer so pred nekaj leti izvedli poskus, v katerem so nekaj vran iz kampusa ujeli. Študentje so šli ven, v mreže ujeli nekaj vran, jih prinesli v laboratorij, jih stehtali, izmerili in te stvari in jih izpustili. Zdelo se jim je zabavno, ko so odkrili, da so te vrane še ves teden, ko so se točno ti študentje sprehajali po kampusu - zaradi njih krakale, tekale okrog njih in jim na nek način grenile življenje.
(Laughter)
Bistveno manj zabavno je to bilo... naslednji teden.
They were significantly less entertained when this went on for the next week. And the next month. And after summer break. Until they finally graduated and left campus, and -- glad to get away, I'm sure -- came back sometime later, and found the crows still remembered them.
In naslednji mesec. In po počitnicah. Dokler niso končno diplomirali in zapustili kampusa - prepričan sem, da so bili veseli, da so šli. Ko so se kasneje vrnili, so ugotovili, da se jih vrane še vedno spominjajo. Poanta zgodbe: ne razjezite vran!
(Laughter)
So, the moral being: don't piss off crows. So now, students at the University of Washington that are studying these crows, do so with a giant wig and a big mask.
Ko zdaj študentje na Univerzi v Washingtonu preučujejo vrane, to počnejo z ogromno lasuljo in masko.
(Laughter)
(smeh)
It's fairly interesting.
Zelo zanimivo.
(Laughter)
Zdaj vemo, da so te vrane res bistre,
So we know these crows are really smart, but the more I dug into this, the more I found that they actually have an even more significant adaptation.
ampak bolj kot sem ril po tem, bolj sem bil prepričan, da imajo še pomembnejšo prilagoditev.
Video: Crows have become highly skilled at making a living in these new urban environments. In this Japanese city, they have devised a way of eating a food that normally they can't manage: drop it among the traffic. The problem now is collecting the bits, without getting run over. Wait for the light to stop the traffic. Then, collect your cracked nut in safety.
(Pripovedovalec) Vrane so razvile izjemne spretnosti, ki jim pomagajo preživeti v novih, urbanih okoljih. V tem japonskem mestu so iznašle način uživanja hrane, ki jim je sicer nedostopna - z višine jo spustijo na cesto. Zdaj je problem to, kako pobrati koščke, ne da bi jo zbil avto. Počaka na semafor, ki ustavi promet. In tako pobere lešnik popolnoma varno.
(Laughter)
(smeh)
(Applause)
(aplavz)
Joshua Klein: Yeah, pretty interesting. What's significant about this isn't that crows are using cars to crack nuts. In fact, that's old hat for crows. This happened about 10 years ago in a place called Sendai City, at a driving school in the suburbs of Tokyo. And since that time, all the crows in the neighborhood are picking up this behavior. Now every crow within five kilometers is standing by a sidewalk, waiting to collect its lunch.
Joshua Klein: Ja, ja. Še kar zanimivo. To, da vrane uporabljajo promet za trenje lešnikov, niti ni tako pomembno. Pravzaprav je to zanje star trik. To se je zgodilo pred približno 10 leti v avtošoli v Sendai Cityju, predmestju Tokia. Od takrat dalje, so se vse vrane v okolišu naučile tega obnašanja. Zdaj vsaka vrana v razdalji 5 kilometrov stoji ob pločniku in čaka, da bo kosilo nared.
So they're learning from each other. And research bears this out. Parents seem to be teaching their young. They learn from their peers, they learn from their enemies. If I have a little extra time, I'll tell you about a case of crow infidelity that illustrates that nicely. The point being, they've developed cultural adaptation. And as we heard yesterday, that's the Pandora's box that's getting human beings in trouble, and we're starting to see it with them. They're able to very quickly and very flexibly adapt to new challenges and new resources in their environment, which is really useful if you live in a city.
Učijo se druga od druge. To podpirajo tudi raziskave. Starši učijo mladiče. Oni so se naučili od vrstnikov, ti od sovražnikov. Če mi bo ostalo kaj časa, vam bom povedal o primeru vranje nezvestobe, ki to dobro ponazarja. Dejstvo je, da so vrane razvile kulturno prilagoditev. Kot smo slišali včeraj, je to ta Pandorina skrinjica, ki spravlja človeka v težave, in to se kaže tudi pri vranah. Vrane se zelo hitro in zelo fleksibilno prilagajajo novim izzivom in virom v svojem okolju, kar je posebej koristno, če živiš v mestu.
So we know that there's lots of crows. We found out they're really smart and they can teach each other. When all this became clear, I realized the only obvious thing to do is build a vending machine. So that's what we did. This is a vending machine for crows. And it uses Skinnerian training to shape their behavior over four stages. It's pretty simple. Basically, what happens is that we put this out in a field or someplace where there's lots of crows. We put coins and peanuts all around the base of the machine. Crows eventually come by, eat the peanuts, and get used to the machine being there. Eventually, they eat all the peanuts. Then they see peanuts here on the feeder tray, and hop up and help themselves. Then they leave, the machine spits up more coins and peanuts, and life is dandy if you're a crow -- you can come back anytime and get yourself a peanut.
Vemo, da je vran veliko. Ugotovili smo, da so precej bistre in tudi, da lahko druga drugo učijo. Ko se mi je to posvetilo, sem vedel, da je zame edina logična poteza to, da naredim avtomat za vrane. In to sem naredil. To je avtomat za vrane. Pri avtomatu sem uporabil trening po Skinnerju, ki vrane uči v štirih fazah. Je zelo preprost. Najprej avtomat postavimo nekam ven, nekam, kjer je veliko vran. Okrog naprave razstresemo kovance in arašide. Vrane priledijo, pojedo arašide in se na napravo nekako navadijo. Kmalu pojedo vse arašide, a opazijo, da so še na vodilu, zato skočijo gor in si postrežejo. Odidejo stran in avtomat izpljune še več kovancev in arašidov in življenje je prav krasno, če si vrana. Vrneš se kadarkoli in si privoščiš arašid.
So when they get really used to that, we move on to the crows coming back. Now they're used to the sound of the machine; they keep coming back and digging out peanuts from the pile of coins that's there. When they get really happy about this, we stymie them.
Ko se vrane tega res privadijo, jih naučimo vračanja. Navajene so tudi zvokov avtomata, še vedno se vračajo in izkopavajo arašide iz kupa kovancev, in ko so s tem povsem zadovoljne, gremo korak naprej in jih uženemo v kozji rog.
We move to the third stage, where we only give them a coin. Now, like most of us who have gotten used to a good thing, this really pisses them off. So they do what they do in nature when they're looking for something: sweep things out of the way with their beak. They do that here, and that knocks the coins down the slot. When that happens, they get a peanut. This goes on for some time. The crows learn that all they have to do is show up, wait for the coin to come out, put it in the slot, then get their peanut.
Sledi tretja stopnja, v kateri jim damo samo kovanec. In to jih, kot večino nas, ko se enkrat navadimo na dobre stvari, zares razjezi. In začnejo se obnašati tako, kot se obnašajo tudi v naravi, kadar kaj iščejo - s kljunom odmikajo in razmetavajo stvari. To počnejo tudi tukaj, zaradi česar kakšen kovanec zleti tudi v režo. In ko se to zgodi, dobijo arašid. Po določenem času se vrane naučijo, da je vse, kar morajo storiti, to, da pridejo, počakajo na kovanec, ga vržejo v režo in dobijo arašid. In ko to res obvladajo,
When they're good and comfortable with that, we move to the final stage, where they show up and nothing happens. This is where we see the difference between crows and other animals. Squirrels, for example, would show up, look for the peanut, go away. Come back, look for the peanut, go away. They do this maybe half a dozen times before they get bored, and then they go off and play in traffic.
sledi zadnja stopnja. Vrane pridejo, nič pa se ne zgodi. In tukaj lahko vidimo razliko med vranami in ostalimi živalmi. Veverice, na primer, bi prišle, iskale arašid, neuspešno, in odšle. Čez nekaj časa bi spet prišle, iskale arašid, neuspešno, in odšle. To bi naredile mogoče 6x, nato bi se naveličale in se šle raje igrat na cesto med avtomobile. Vrane, po drugi strani, pridejo in zadevo poskušajo razvozlat.
Crows, on the other hand, show up and they try and figure it out. They know this machine has been messing with them through three different stages of behavior.
Jasno jim je, da jih ta avtomat vleče za kljun, obnašal se je že na tri različne načine, (smeh)
(Laughter)
torej mora biti še kaj na tem.
They figure there must be more to it. So they poke at it and peck at it. And eventually some crow gets a bright idea: "Hey, there's lots of coins lying around from the first stage, hops down, picks it up, drops it in the slot, and we're off to the races. That crow enjoys a temporary monopoly on peanuts, until his friends figure out how to do it, and then there we go.
Zato drezajo vanj, ga kljuvajo itd., dokler ene od vran ne prešine, da naokoli leži precej kovancev - na tleh so še iz prve stopnje - skoči dol, pobere kovanec, ga vrže v režo in ... ... naj se zabava začne! Ta vrana nekaj časa uživa monopol nad arašidi, potem pa postopek dojamejo tudi njene kolegice.
So, what's significant about this to me isn't that we can train crows to pick up peanuts. Mind you, there's 216 million dollars' worth of change lost every year, but I'm not sure I can depend on that ROI from crows.
Pri vsem tem se mi ne zdi najbolj pomembno to, da vrane lahko naučimo pobirati arašide. Naj vas samo spomnim, da vsako leto izgubimo za 216 milionov dolarjev drobiža, a vseeno nisem prepričan, da bi se lahko zanašal na ROI (donos na investicijo) vran.
(Laughter)
Instead, I think we should look a little bit larger. I think crows can be trained to do other things. For example, why not train them to pick up garbage after stadium events? Or find expensive components from discarded electronics? Or maybe do search and rescue? The main point of all this for me is, we can find mutually beneficial systems for these species. We can find ways to interact with these other species that doesn't involve exterminating them, but involves finding an equilibrium with them that's a useful balance.
Namesto tega bi po moje morali pogledati širše. Mislim, da se da vrane natretnirati tudi kaj drugega. Zakaj jih, na primer, ne bi naučili pobirati smeti po prireditvah na stadionih? Ali pa med elektronskimi odpadki poiskati drage komponente? Kaj pa iskanje in reševanje ponesrečencev? Menim, da je pri vsem tem najpomembnejše to, da lahko najdemo sisteme, ki bodo v korist nam in drugim živalskim vrstam. Najdemo lahko načine medsebojne interakcije, ki ne vključujejo iztrebljanja, pač pa iskanje za vse koristnega ravnovesja.
Thanks very much.
Hvala za pozornost.
(Applause)
(aplavz)