Just dropped!
This is a long one, but interesting!
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Songbirds !
He taught me a term: clades.
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Itâs alright Matt, I laughed at your âmotor projectionâ joke. It was a good one.
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leaving a trail of broken jokes behind meâŚ
I expect to see that motor projection drawing framed somewhere in his office.
Great interview! Iâm inspired to build a pair of shoes that emit a random footstep sound sample from a bank of thousands whenever you put a foot down. I wonder how long it would take the brain to tune that out?
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As long as there is a strong sense of self your brain will us it. In this case a consistent time delay should be enough. Might sound weird tho âŚ
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13 posts were split to a new topic: Learning how birds teach themselves to sing Dadâs song
This is a nice relevant video I found while looking up more info on this.
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This was enjoyable to watch. It made me smile a lot, nice synergy.
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It might be useful to contact Dave Schneider and ask if they have an idea on how the song is learned by the bird to see if it is better to learn snippets first - or something else.
Asking for a friend.
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I bet you were already familiar with the notion. Modern âcladisticâ approach to taxonomy simply takes the view that it is almost meaningless to speak of âAll mammals but Matt Taylorâ.
Well⌠meaningless is maybe a strong term, but, say⌠it opens for more insights in the end, to rigorously constrain ourselves to the view that all allowed names should be clades.
Whenever it is still somewhat significant to speak of âAll mammals but Matt Taylorâ, or to refer to historic classifications, weâd speak specifically of âstem groupsâ, or sometimes âevolutionary gradesâ for, eg, all which did not evolve your haircut yet.
Those are simply ways to refer to a non-phylogenetic name, that is, a name which is not a clade.
Remaining allowed cladistic names can still be divided in two categories⌠crown groups (the most often implicit meaning⌠such as when speaking colloquially of âmammalsâ), and total groups. Sometimes same name can be given that terminology explicitly.
Okay maybe the above example could not apply since âAmniotaâ definition seems to benefit from an embedded âcrown groupâ status. But you get the idea.
Somewhere along the line linking the total group to the crown group for Amniota, youâll be lucky to find the real first âamnioteâ in the biological sense, of an animal not requiring water to lay his eggs⌠that got the clade its name in the first place. And that can be a third understanding of a colloquial âamnioteâ term. Tricky, huh ?
When branching into total groups, an acceptable cladistic tree always has to be âbinaryâ. A split group always ought to split into exactly two branches : one group and its so called âsisterâ-group. Although gaps in our knowledge, and debates over where to branch what, often lead to many remaining shady areas where we still refer to stem groups globally, or allow one branch to have further splits, until those concerns are settled. Also, since modern classification is based on computer-aided statistical studies across many many species, and given that the prevailing hypothesis get rearranged quite often⌠it is quite common nowadays to find branches without a name.
Also, I guess modern views on the evolution of genus Homo itself casts some doubts as to whether that classification really ought to be a binary tree (and for that matter, an acyclic graph at all). But if you dezoom somewhat, I think the cladistic view makes sense, still.
Anyway⌠shall we delve into some more details about your ancestry ?
I think paleontology and comparative studies across species have much to tell about brains too
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A nice talk about birdâs brain, its relation to ours, auditory pathways and all that
I had not taken the time to actually watch it. Now I have and it was well worth it 
Iâve just learned a lot from such âcomparative studiesâ about our differences but more importantly similarities⌠and it echoes nicely with David Schneiderâs interests.
Some of the functionality of our âlayersâ is finally very similar in birds, and without the laminated structure !
I found that video on same source that the brains schematics I used above : Go have a look yourselves
http://people.eku.edu/ritchisong/birdbrain.html