seriously though
“What we learned is there’s something that keeps the birds from becoming fully machinelike in their responses,” says Wasserman, the study’s corresponding author. “Maybe it’s in their best interest to keep some variability in their behavior. You don’t want to be too locked in, because things happen, and the world could change.”
The study also extends the notion of the edge of chaos beyond evolutionary biology, where flexibility to a changing environment can be beneficial to a species’ survival.
“Might other, more intricate and innovative behaviors like playing an instrument, composing music, and creating visual art involve similarly adaptive variation?” says Odysseus Orr, study co-author and third-year graduate student in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences who earned his undergraduate degree from Iowa in 2023. “Only time will tell, but the pigeons provide a convenient gateway for answering those questions under highly controlled circumstances.”
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“Such dramatic behavioral instability is most definitely not consistent with the Law of Effect,” says Wasserman, who has studied pigeon cognition and behavior for more than five decades. “The pigeons maintain this exploratory tendency and keep trying multiple sequences. They do not abide by the familiar maxim: ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’”
source of shitpost https://now.uiowa.edu/news/2026/04/edge-chaos-pigeons-keep-their-options-open
Odysseus Orr. All I can see in this article is that there’s someone in this weird little world named Odysseus Orr. And now I’m singing “Maria” from West Side Story. “Odysseuuuuussss… I read ‘bout a guy named Odysseuuuusssss…”