r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/yoyome85 • 3d ago

Video Crescent pigeon performing its courtship dance to a shoe with pink "feet" like his own

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u/UnRespawnsive 3d ago

I wish people knew more about beetles fucking beer bottles and how it relates to addiction.

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u/Letters_to_Dionysus 3d ago

how does it relate to addiction i didn't see it in the article. also that bit about the beetle continuing to fuck the bottle while his pecker was being eaten by ants was wild

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u/UnRespawnsive 3d ago

So you happened to give an example of it yourself, where their biology tells them "thing is good" and it makes them ignore how it actually screws them over if they keep doing it. Very often related to human addictions.

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u/Letters_to_Dionysus 3d ago

its a good analysis i just thought i missed something from the article maybe. also, i think porn is another one of those biology traps. we are meat robots too just like the bugs

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u/Jack0Blad3s 2d ago

Weird to see someone saying porn is a trap with Dionysus in their username 😅. That aside, that incident about the beetles-and-bottles incident has had other interesting implications as well. Donald Hoffman, a cognitive scientist, proposed that evolution favors fitness over truth. Which meant organisms evolved perceptions for survival and reproduction, not for seeing reality as it truly is. Makes me wonder what we can’t see because of our own evolution.

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u/Letters_to_Dionysus 2d ago

hey just cuz it's a trap doesnt mean you cant enjoy the bate

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u/Jack0Blad3s 2d ago

True true.

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u/smurb15 2d ago

I know some with the iq of a bug and it's not a joke.

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u/BatFrequent6684 2d ago

There's a video it there of a praying mantis, that, while eating something herself, is being cut in half (I think by ants as well?) and is completely unbothered.

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u/highcommander010 1d ago

sips out morning coffee in a mist

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u/Radiskull97 3d ago

There is a neuroscientist that developed a model that judged the survival rate of certain species by changes in their perception. Basically no species could survive if they fully perceived the world as it actually exists because of all the biological advantages that come from perceptual shortcuts. He used that beetle as an example as a failure from too many shortcuts. He has a Ted Talk

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u/UnRespawnsive 3d ago

Yup. We are BUILT to filter out information and to find a balance between what we know and don't know. Unfortunately, we can get unlucky and still some vital information is missing.

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u/CMDR_ACE209 3d ago

That's fascinating stuff. But I can't follow his conclusions about the nature of reality in the end?

Only thing I got from the first part is that we don't see reality like it is but what our brains make of it. Something that can be demonstrated in the living room with the many optical illusions out there.

The conclusion I draw from that is more like we can't rely completely on our senses as objective measuring devices. I can't see how that leads to his conclusions about reality.

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u/Radiskull97 3d ago

His argument is essentially: Our realities are formed by our experiences. For the beetle, it's reality is that it's mating with another beetle. For us, our reality is that the beetle is mating with a beer bottle. We can't experience a more objective reality, we just know that we have perceptual shortcuts the same way those beetles do. So Hoffman is asking, "what's our beer bottle?" It's presumptive that we even have one but definitely fun to think about

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u/CMDR_ACE209 3d ago

It's presumptive that we even have one but definitely fun to think about

It's not presumptive at all. There are many "beer botttles" known in our perception. Look up optical illusions for example. One of my favorites is that our color perception works different when we think something is in a shadow.

And our understanding of this is not limited to optical perception. Look up biases for example when you want to learn more about our knowledge how our cognitive processes can go wrong.

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u/Radiskull97 2d ago

I meant more like an existential-threat that we are unable to perceive due to our shortcuts. Optical illusions aren't that. You could definitely make a case of climate change being our bottle as our minds are not wired to fully comprehend a threat like that. However, Hoffman is presumptive until he makes the case for a premise

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u/ydkjordan 2d ago

Aw shit. The beer bottle is reddit. But the fact that I learned this here will certainly ensure I continue to mate with reddit indefinitely.

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u/Ake-TL 2d ago

Don’t think your last point holds up, modern science doesn’t hinge on our sense and purely empirical methodology, we can model and theorise stuff we can’t really perceive and use predicted indirect effects for proofs

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u/Deriniel 8h ago

As an example, there is a theory (probably not very scientific) that we live our life from birth to death,all in the same exact moment. The passing of time is just or brain organizing our information at some point.
I feel that while a fascinating theory,it's very unlikely, but even than that would be on example of our "beer bottle"

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u/Argylius 2d ago

I find this so fascinating

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u/usrdef 3d ago

Here's the actual video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZANHO2o0RA

Caution: Bug on bottle sex.

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u/UnRespawnsive 3d ago

Fantastic

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u/LuisWaz 2d ago

They noticed it had (as they wrote later) its "genitalia everted — attempting to insert the aedeagus,". Now that’s a fancy way of saying it!

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u/Little_Head6683 2d ago

I found my spirit animal

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u/PrinceWalence 15h ago

It's what happens when... all kinds of animals, wired to respond to certain cues in nature, bump instead into human inventions and get confused.

I love the way this is worded