• dmegatool@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    I laughed. Good one.

    Fucking stupid beaver :

    When the sound of running water was played for them through a loudspeaker on concrete, the beavers still built their dam over the dry floor. Even when presented with a clear pipe that showed water (silently) escaping through their dam and a speaker that played them the sound of running water, they chose to build over the speaker and ignore the clearly visible leak.

    • interolivary@beehaw.orgOP
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      1 year ago

      Instincts are so weird. And it’s not just animals that do stupid shit based on instinct, or rather it’s not just non-human animals; humans have tons of occasionally counterproductive instincts / cognitive biases too.

      Edit: found this delightfully 90’s-looking page on the subject of human instincts

      • Human instincts evolved long ago when we lived off the land as hunter-gatherers and took refuge in simple shelters like caves

        Makes it sound like we stopped evolving at some point. I could be convinced 😅