Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader@ by Bathroom Readers’ Institute Read Free Book Online

the tailor-bird threads the holes with the silk and literally sews the tops of the leaves together into a roof that that they put over the nest for camouflage and protection.
The average Hell’s Angels biker rides 20,000 miles per year.
    • Bowerbird: The male of this Australian species spends up to nine months building an attractive home (or bower ) to serve as a “love nest.” First, he gathers hundreds of stems and meticulously weaves them together into a hut on the ground with a wide opening; he uses a few larger sticks as pillars to hold up the massive roof, which can measure six feet across. Then he searches the forest for adornments to place inside and on top of his bower: colorful feathers from other birds, flower petals, autumn leaves, acorns, fruit, pebbles, shells, even human garbage. Outside, the bowerbird creates a “front lawn” using tufts of green moss and may even line the border with purple beetle wings. The final step: He performs an elaborate song-and-dance routine. When a female arrives at his colorful bower, he presents her with a flower.
    HATCHING A THEORY
    The big question among ornithologists (people who study birds): Do these unusual nesting skills come from mere instinct—as is the case with the nests of reptiles, fish, and insects—or is there something more intelligent at work? To find out, in 2008 a team of Scottish researchers studied African weaver birds. Because the males construct several nests each year, the team was able to study many constructions by a single weaver in a short period of time. If he was driven by instinct, then all of his nests would look roughly the same. But the weaver’s nests varied significantly, suggesting that experience plays some part in nest construction.
    That’s significant because only the most intelligent animals can plan, improvise, and learn from their mistakes. Exactly which factor rules birds most—instinct or experience—is still being determined. However, it’s becoming evident that (at least from an intelligence point of view) some bird species are more like us than even most of our fellow mammals are.
    For one, we’re both social animals. Biologists theorize that over time, the birds’ need to maintain a high place in their group’s “pecking order” has made their brains grow larger in proportion to their bodies. That’s how it worked with modern humans; it helped us become expert problem solvers. According to the results of one study, some birds are better at solving problems than we are.
Animal with the highest ratio of brain-to-body mass: the shrew (10%).
    PIGEON-HOLED
    The “Monty Hall Dilemma” (named after the Let’s Make a Deal host) is a logic test. You are given three doors to choose from and behind one of them is a prize. Let’s say you choose Door No. 1, but the tester opens Door No. 2 and says, “It’s not in here. Do you want to switch to Door No. 3?” Though it sounds counterintuitive to most people, switching doors actually doubles the probability of finding the prize. (For a more detailed explanation, see page 480 .)
    In 2009 researchers decided to try this dilemma on pigeons—and then try it again on humans. Their finding: “The birds adjusted their probability of switching and staying to approximate the optimal strategy. Replication of the procedure with human participants showed that humans failed to adopt optimal strategies, even with extensive training.” To translate (because it seems like we might need to), pigeons can be more logical than people.
    WHAT A TOOL
    According to legend, the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus was told by a soothsayer that he would die when a house landed on him. Frightened, Aeschylus hid in the desert—far from any houses. Then an eagle flew over him, mistook Aeschylus’s bald head for a rock, and dropped a tortoise on it, killing Aeschylus. The question among ornithologists: Was the eagle using the playwright’s head as a tool with which to break open the tortoise’s