Monthly Archives: June 2021

Analysis: researchers use magic tricks to investigate non-human animal spirit

By Elias Garcia-Pelegrin, Cambridge University

Magic tricks can teach us how the brain works. Magic capitalizes on very specific blind spots in people’s attention and perception the techniques used by magicians to deceive the public are therefore particularly interesting for psychologists like me.

Bad leadership, for example, relies on controlling the audience’s attention to deceive them. A magician will distract the audience from the things that show how the trick is done, to the effect they want them to see. This and other magical techniques can reveal important characteristics of how do our minds work.

But magic tricks could also be a good tool for investigating the non-human animal spirit. Studying how animals perceive the magical effects that deceive and surprise humans can help us understand how their minds perceive the world around them, and whether such experiences are sort of like ours.

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From Morning Ireland from RTÉ Radio 1, Niall Hatch from Birdwatch Ireland to the sound of the cuckoo

This is why, in a recent study, my colleagues and I tried to do magic tricks on the birds. We tested sleight of hand on Eurasian jays and found that they were fooled by some tricks and not others.

Poor orientation is not entirely new to some birds. Corvids – large-brained birds in the raven family, including jays, crows, and magpies – hide food they can retrieve later, a behavior known as caching. But if another corvid is watching they hide the food, they run the risk of their cache being stolen.

To get around this problem, this intelligent family of birds employs complex and very elaborate protective tactics that are comparable to the misdirection used by magicians. For example, corvids can hide food discreetly in one place while pretending to hide it in many other places, making it difficult for the observer to locate the real cache.

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From RTÉ Radio 1’s Mooney Goes Wild, How To Create An Oasis Of Biodiversity In Your Garden With Renowned Bird Expert Jim Wilson

Three tips for birds

In our study, we performed three different sleight-of-hand tricks on six Eurasian jays and 80 human participants. Known as palming, French drop, and fast pass, they are all used in magical routines to make items appear and disappear.

Palming involves hiding an object in your palm while pretending the hand is empty. French gout – shown in the gif below – consists of pretending to pass something from one palm to the other, without actually moving the object. Finally, the fast pass involves moving an object between your hands so quickly that it is not seen by the audience. They all involve deceiving the observer into believing that an object has or has not been transferred from one hand to the other.

For the first two of these tricks – palming and French drop – to be successful in fooling the average viewer, the viewer needs some inherent understanding of what a typical transfer of objects entails. It is this knowledge that certain movements usually produce particular results that leads a viewer to assume that there has been no foul play.

Little is known about corvids’ preconceptions about human hand movements or whether they have similar expectations to us when observing hand transfers of objects. Birds don’t have hands, so we wanted to know if they understood what hand movements should mean.

The third trick effect we used is not based on such expectations. The fast pass is based on the magician’s ability to perform very fast movements, which are usually not perceived by the observer.

The birds have different visual perception than people, with a much larger field of view. If our jays fell in love with sleight of hand techniques similar to those used by magicians to deceive humans, it could mean they had similar blind spots.

Intelligent jays

Unlike our human sample, which was significantly fooled by the three magical effects we performed, the Eurasian jays didn’t seem to be fooled by the first two turns. This could be because jays lack the expectations regarding the mechanics of the hand that make us humans susceptible to these deceitful techniques.

But our sample of jays was significantly fooled by the third technique – as shown in the gif below – suggesting that their visual system can be exploited with methodologies similar to those used in humans.

It is possible that the effect exploits blind spots of attention and perception that are different from those of people. Further research should be done to fully investigate blind spots, and whether these are similar to our perceptual failures or explained by something else.

Elias Garcia-Pelegrin is a researcher in comparative cognition and evolutionary psychology at the Cambridge University. This article was originally published by The conversation.

The opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ

Magic tricks, from the knack to mentalism, have fascinated humans for centuries. Researchers are also interested in magic tricks, not as a form of entertainment, but rather because they allow us to zoom into the limits of our perception. It turns out that humans are relatively easy to fool with such tricks. Eurasian jays, on the other hand, are much more lively.

French gout – not just for humans

The French drop (or “Le Tourniquet) is one of the simplest tricks you can do. It is essentially a sleight of hand used to make a small object disappear, most often a coin or a coin. It works like this: you hold the object between your thumb and your first two fingers. You show it to viewers, then seem to use your other hand to carry it away – but you don’t. The object is webbed. in your first hand.

Although this has been done for a very long time, it remains remarkably effective. I just explained how it works, you need to know what to expect, and yet when you see it in action it still works:

But jays are better than humans at not being fooled.

“The results of the French palming and fall experiments suggest that Eurasian jays have different expectations than humans when they observe some of these effects. Specifically, Eurasian jays were not fooled by the effects that caused them to expect an object to move between the hands when they observe human hand manipulations, ”the researchers write.

To test birds’ blind spots, a team of researchers at the University of Cambridge taught six Eurasian jays to peck a human fist to receive a treat in the hand. If the bird picked the right hand, it received a treat. If they missed, they got nothing. They tested the birds with three magic tricks: the French drop described above, the palm transfer (which works by hiding an object in the palm), and the fast pass (which works by passing the object so fast between them. hands that the observer loses track of it).

Jays were chosen because, alongside several species of corvids, they appear to be one of the most intelligent bird species and they also use trickery to prevent other animals from stealing their food supplies.

The researchers tested the magic tricks on the birds several times, keeping track of their success rate. They then performed the same test with human volunteers online. Much like humans, jays have been misled by magical effects using rapid movements. However, the birds were significantly better at keeping track of the treat during kicking and French fall tricks.

“We demonstrate that, like humans, Eurasian jays are sensitive to magical effects that use rapid movements. However, unlike humans, Eurasian jays do not appear to be misled by magical effects that rely on the intrinsic expectations of the observer in the manipulation of human objects, ”write the researchers led by Elias Garcia-Pelegrin in the ‘study.

It is not clear how to interpret this finding in evolutionary terms. However, it appears that magic tricks may indeed provide an insightful methodology for investigating the shortcomings of perception and attention in human and non-human animals. It seems that jays have different expectations than humans, as well as different perception abilities.

The researchers’ end goal is to develop bespoke magic tricks that can help us better understand how we and other animals view the world. It is an avenue that was recommended by Garcia-Pelegrin since last year, when he published an article noting that magic tricks can “prompt the comparison of behavioral responses between various species, in which magical effects could exploit similar blind spots and cognitive barriers.” “

Journal reference: exploring the perceptual disabilities of Eurasian jays (Garrulus glandarius) using magical effects, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2021). www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2026106118

It seems that some birds are smarter in magic than humans. At least that is the case with a species of corvid known as the Eurasian jay.

Researchers in a small study published Monday reported on Eurasian jays, whose intelligence has long been the subject of psychological studies. The reports came as part of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Doctoral student Elias Garcia-Pelegrin seems to have followed up on this report.

In April of this year, videos were uploaded to YouTube showing Elias performing a series of exotic bird magic tricks.

Elias, professional magician and cognitive science researcher, performed three tricks in particular: a palm transfer, a French drop and a quick pass.

These were tested on 6 Eurasian jays, testing their ability to determine in which hand Elias was hiding a worm. If this were correct, the jays would be rewarded with this worm. It sounds like training a dog to us! Except dogs don’t eat worms.

In the aforementioned report, Elias writes that “tThese magical effects were specifically chosen because they use different cues and expectations that mislead the viewer into believing that an object has or has not been transferred from one hand to the other.“.

Intriguing! Magic tricks work by playing on our expectations. Here, the tricks that work with humans won’t work with birds.

But it’s not that our more “evolved” minds are playing tricks on us. Birds can also be tricked, but only if you play on * their * expectations. https://t.co/U87W5cpOHi

– Greg Priest (@greg_m_priest) June 1, 2021

And the results?

Well the jays were usually right. They certainly beat Elias for the first two rounds, correctly choosing 70% of the time for the palm transfer, followed by a 60% success rate for the French drop.

However, the quick pass seems to have baffled them, with a disappointing 26% accuracy.

But don’t let that discourage you! Or rather them. The video was shown to 80 humans, whose success rates ranged from a very low 13 to just under 27% for all 3 rounds.

So where does this weird bird talent come from?

there’s man a bird he always falls for magic tricks https://t.co/q96XopvYqW

– (@ jawnes12) June 1, 2021

Scientists have identified similarities between the way jays hide their food and the way magicians trick audiences through their art.

Jays have been known to cleverly hide their fall nuts from family members by pretending to store them in one place while secretly hiding them in another. In particular, they conceal objects in their throat pockets, similar to the use by magicians of fake pockets. Additionally, jays have been recorded handling food in their beaks, mirroring the classic sleight of hand.

Academy researchers are now looking to develop specially designed magic tricks to assess how birds see the world.

In the meantime, watch Elias perform these smart tricks below.