Wild boars are able to open traps to free their fellows | Hacker News Reader

Wild boars are able to open traps to free their fellows

nature.com

>Rescue behaviour represents an extreme form of prosocial behaviour that has so far only been demonstrated in a few species. It refers to a situation when one individual acts to help another individual that finds itself in a dangerous or stressful situation and it is considered by some authors as a complex form of empathy.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/lone-goat-may-be-to-blame-for-new...

A goat who escaped a New Jersey livestock auction house more than a year ago may be the one to blame for helping more than 75 others escape, the facility’s manager said Thursday.

More than 75 goats and sheep escaped the Hackettstown Livestock Auction on Wednesday night. Hackettstown police officers responded to the scene and were able to herd up to 60 animals into their pen. About 15 animals were believed to be on the run still.

One goat who was able to escape the same auction house last year is believed to be behind the escape, according to the New York Post. The goat occasionally pops up around town.

After the escape, the goat showed up at the facility and headbutted the gate holding the animals that had been caught in an apparent effort to help them escape again, facility manager Bouwe Postma told the New York Post.

“It was him [last night],” Postma told the newspaper. “I think he’s the culprit. He must have banged that fence and let him out last night. I’m almost positive. He must have put a lot of force into that.”

The great escape came about a week after more than 100 goats escaped in a Boise, Idaho neighborhood.

> About 15 animals were believed to be on the run still

Missed opportunity for an "on the lamb" pun

Resident of the area reporting that the pun was deployed successfully in local media.

How is that even a pun that's supposed to work? 'lamb' sounds nothing like 'run'.

(also young goats are called kids, but that's a bit too much hairsplitting even for me)

Being "On the lam" means being on the run from the law

The original phrase is "on the lam" https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/on_the_lam

thanks for the spelling correction, updated

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/84871/why-do-criminals-g...

It's a pun on the phrase `on the lam` which means running away (from the law)

The article makes the joke in a caption

Thank goodness. How could a journalist not make that joke with this story?

“Kids these days” came to mind too.

Came here to post this. I once heard a scientist say that humans were his favorite species because only we will run into a burning building to save others, especially others who are not kin. The thing is, it's just not true. We're only beginning to understand the inner lives of animals.

I saw a wasp help another wasp get its leg out of a gap between a light fixture and some siding.

I saw the whole thing, I was watching the stuck wasp because it was trying to fly away but its foot was pinned. As I’m watching, another wasp flies by, slows down, turns around and lands by the stuck one. The helper just kind of bit at the foot and pulled on it. After a couple of tugs it broke free (or off) and they both flew away.

I went and found how many neurons they have in their brain, I can’t find it now but it was under a million maybe 500k or so. I thought it was remarkably complex behavior.

And then I killed them both. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Wasp brains are remarkable in their few neurons. Some species have only single-digit thousands.

https://www.nature.com/articles/480294a

Wow, 4,600 neurons. I wonder how large a neural net would need to be to replicate the same behavior

My guess is we'll need a model the scale of GPT3 to simulate a single neuron.

Worker male wasps in social colonies are more closely related to each other than in other species (like humans). They develop from unfertalized eggs so inherit more of the same genes (75%). This may have lead to more alturistic behaviour as the best way to propogate genes is through siblings rather than offspring.

Reply all had a great podcast on the wild boar problem in the US south, jumping off the “30-50 wild hogs” tweet

https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/n8hw3d

I feel bad for guy who tweeted as someone from East Texas. Main reasons I want to go into hunting is to the keep wild boar population in check, or at least slow their growth.

I'm from Central texas, own 50 acres in the hill country and own several ar-15's. This guy is delusional, no one is shooting 30-50 hogs on their property. I only read the first few paragraphs but so far the conversation is ridiculous.

The sharpest shooters can get a few as they scatter, they are damn smart and very capable.

Positive argument for the deployment of full auto weaponry and possibly mines and other mass murder hardware.

Don't encourage them

That is not a good idea. Innocent people will die when forgotten mines go off in a decade, and full auto weaponry is probably overkill. I can't imagine your aim is going to get any better when you're firing in full auto, unless you're far closer than you want to be.

Plus there are far easier solutions. Poisoned corn does about the same thing as mines, but with less risk (assuming you put up signs) and cost. Both are probably still bad ideas, though, because of the effect on other wildlife.

"forgotten" mines? Perish the thought. I'm thinking traps. like command detonated "kill the acre" measures.

I don't like poisoned bait for broadly similar reasons; I'd like more targeted slaughter. It's not easy to get a big gang that close together.

They fly in helicopters and can shoot that many in a day. Its usually very large areas (thousands of acres) with a surrounding game fence. Since the hogs have no natural predators they have to be removed somehow and this is one common route. Vastly different scenario then a small 50 acre place.

According to what I've read, hunting hogs from helicopters has made the problem worse. It's had the effect of scattering them across a wider area.

Unless you can guarantee you'll kill all the hogs that scatter due to the helicopter--not just the ones you see!--then it's likely counterproductive.

Reading the article had me wondering about these people who devise these things. ‘This conclusion was supported by a study in which rats opened a door and freed a distressed, soaked cage mate from a water tank. Moreover, rats did not open the door for soaked cage mates that were not in distress.’

They clearly tormented at least a few animals.

I thought the locking mechanism of the trap was clever.

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