NYT Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/science/kea-beak-tools.html
Archive Link: https://archive.is/rwG10
Many animals are known to use tools, but a bird named Bruce may be one of the most ingenious nonhuman tool inventors of all: He is a disabled parrot who has designed and uses his own prosthetic beak
Bruce is a kea, a species of parrot found only in New Zealand. He is about 9 years old, and when wildlife researchers found him as a baby, he was missing his upper beak, probably because it had been caught in a trap made for rats and other invasive mammals the country was trying to eliminate. This is a severe disability, as kea use their dramatically long and curved upper beaks for preening their feathers to get rid of parasites and to remove dirt and grime.
But Bruce found a solution: He has taught himself to pick up pebbles of just the right size, hold them between his tongue and his lower beak, and comb through his plumage with the tip of the stone. Other animals use tools, but Bruce's invention of his own prosthetic is unique.
Researchers published their findings Friday in the journal Scientific Reports. Studies of animal behavior are tricky — the researchers have to make careful, objective observations and always be wary of bias caused by anthropomorphizing, or erroneously attributing human characteristics to animals.
(Score: 2, Informative) by HammeredGlass on Wednesday September 15 2021, @03:03PM (8 children)
If for no other reason than they decide to stick this article behind a paywall later today.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @03:19PM (7 children)
When an unpaywalled article becomes paywalled without warning the soylentnews post should add a line at the bottom that said that this article later became paywalled.
It's a bait and switch, they bait everyone into linking to what they believe will be a free article and then they switch. It's deceptive and reflects poorly on the character of the NY times. This should be pointed out in every instance that it happens on every website that links to the article.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Opportunist on Wednesday September 15 2021, @07:24PM
This is why I refuse to use links to NYT and similar shady publications.
If everyone did it, the lack of linking, and thus traffic, would sooner or later force them to drop that nefarious practice.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @07:27PM (4 children)
The question is how do you pay journalists to write articles like this? We all bitch and whine about "no journalism today" but then we don't want to support the people that would write these stories.
No one wants to see ads. And no one wants to hear political clap traps masquerading as "news networks" either. So how do you pay journalists? Magic is not an answer here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @07:36PM (1 child)
Whatever business model the NYT chooses to use they should be honest upfront. Dishonesty is not how journalists should be paid.
Also, when you say 'we all' you don't speak for 'we all'. You speak about what you complain about. On the other hand what I complain about are corporate written copy'right' laws that were written by Disney that last way too long and what I complain about is public domain theft.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @08:22PM
(I also complain about extremely over reaching copy protection laws in general but that's another whole topic.
The point is that I want to consume content under my terms. I shouldn't have to subsidize the content you want to consume by complying to your terms. You can fund the type of content that you want to consume yourself. Special interests and IP extremists should not use the law to undemocratically force blogs and search engines to comply with their terms).
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @07:48PM
Also, to be clear, let's keep on topic (since your rant basically changes the subject). The topic here is the bait and switch, not the existence of the paywall. No one is saying there shouldn't be a paywall here. What we're complaining about is the dishonest bait and switching.
If they mentioned ahead of time that this article will later be paywalled that's one thing. The fact that they tricked people into thinking it's free and later paywalled it once it got linked to is dishonest and reflects poorly on their character.
Of course the end result is that it should harm them. People should get smart and stop linking to them altogether since now they have a reputation of dishonesty. Hopefully Soylentnews and other sources learn their lesson and finds other sources and articles to link to instead. We should boycott dishonest publications.
(Score: 1, Troll) by HammeredGlass on Wednesday September 15 2021, @11:20PM
They're getting paid plenty by their puppetmasters.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday September 18 2021, @09:24PM
I've found that with most of these articles that show a bit of text then block you from reading the rest without signing up and/or paying for it, you can simply "select all" (under Edit on Firefox), then copy and paste as unformatted text into a blank text document. You can then read the full article, of course without any of the graphics. You also should avoid allowing any scripts on the page to run if you can help it.
(Score: 2) by legont on Thursday September 16 2021, @02:19AM
What would be cool if he could do with his tools something regular birds can't with their undamaged beaks. Turn a disadvantage into an advantage.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.