How a hawk learned to use traffic signals to hunt more successfully

Article / Presentation Issues

• Several commenters notice a typo in the university’s name and question the lack of basic proofreading or grammar-checking.
• One person notes this is a spelling, not grammar, issue, but it still undermines perceived polish.
• Others link to a more detailed popular write-up and to the original ethology paper for readers who want depth beyond the news release.

Bird Intelligence and Pattern Learning

• Many anecdotes support the idea that birds can learn complex human-made patterns:
  • Crows in Japan timing nut drops to traffic lights or pedestrian signals.
  • Birds on airfields apparently inferring taxi paths from repeated aircraft movements.
  • Raccoons manipulating doorknobs and similar “sylvan bandit” behavior.
• Some speculate whether birds could sense radio-frequency EM fields; replies argue that “detecting a field” vs “extracting useful symbolic information” are very different and likely beyond their capabilities at VHF aviation frequencies.

Interpretation of the Hawk’s Behavior

• A key skeptical thread: the hawk may not “understand” traffic signals, but simply exploit predictable patterns—cars as moving blinds that periodically obscure prey.
• Supporters point to observations that the hawk repositions specifically when hearing the pedestrian signal, suggesting it anticipates a longer line of cars in the near future, implying abstraction and temporal planning.

Urban Raptors and Other Species

• Commenters list many raptors that have adapted well to cities: Cooper’s hawks, peregrine falcons, kestrels, buzzards, red kites, and others in various cities worldwide.
• Multiple live-streamed urban falcon nests are referenced as examples of raptors thriving among skyscrapers.
• Discussion of pigeons counters the “dumb and slow” stereotype: they’re described as agile, fast, capable of vertical takeoff and evasive maneuvers, with racing and homing behavior cited as evidence of sophistication.

Risk, Evolution, and Human–Animal Relations

• Debate over why birds (and geese in particular) “cut it close” around humans and vehicles: possibilities include energetic optimization, social competition for food, miscalibrated confidence, and simple individual variation rather than strict survival optimization.
• Several comments argue humans systematically underestimate non-human cognition, despite evolutionary reasons to expect widespread, diverse forms of intelligence.