Irritated by the amount of coverage given to a bit of research into anaemia back in the 1960s, research which involved feeding very mildly radioactive chapatis to Punjabi women in Coventry. About the equivalent of a chest X-ray. OK, so the consent standards of the time were not what they are now, but what useful purpose is served by stirring it all up now? Other than ambulance chasing lawyers stirring up the possibility of fat fees?
It is also the case that, in those days, vulnerable groups were all too often used as subjects in medical research, both here and elsewhere. We should know what was done in the name of science and have a care that it does not happen again. But I remain irritated.
The Guardian perhaps makes a better point when it draws our attention to a very popular film on Netflix effectively advertising a miracle cure for muscular dystrophy, or at least a miracle mitigation. It seems that the film is careless with the truth and that the expensive piece of equipment involved is as yet unproven. It might well be good drama, but is it responsible drama?
Bing did not seem to know anything about the book on which was the film was based, but Google turned up the snap above, supplying reference 1, which Amazon can do on Kindle for £6.99 or in print for £11.96. Maybe the book has not made it to the English speaking world, Netflix notwithstanding. Maybe the Guardian is over-egging things a bit.
And we had the best part of a page given to whether or not to have surtitles for the lyrics of musicals, a lot of which, it seems, are hard to hear, and the people that write them are not best pleased. To be fair, well over half the piece was picture. But it did include the intriguing claim that 80% of television viewers in the 18-24 age bracket commonly have the subtitle switched on. Intriguing, because I much prefer television subtitles to be off, unless there is some good reason for them being on, like the drama concerned being in foreign. Or in one of the Celtic languages, arguably not foreign, although it seems unlikely that they sprang up spontaneously in the British Isles. They were immigrants from somewhere, that is to say foreign, at some point. See reference 2.
It is also the case that I am rather ambivalent about surtitles for art song. Sometimes I feel I am missing out by not having a clue what the words are, sometimes not. And depending on exactly how it is done, it can be distracting.
Then next to the surtitles we had the latest episode in the long running saga of the half a billion pounds worth of bit-coins lost in the council tip. My answer would be for the chap who says he lost them to raise the money from speculators with which to buy the tip off the council. I am sure they could come to a deal on this basis - a win-win situation if the bit-coins then turned up. But perhaps he can't find any speculators with faith.
A bit further on, half of another page is given to parrots with preferences about their food, parrots prepared to go to the lengths of dunking some foods in sauce before taking them down. Preferences which are suggestive of parrot consciousness, without being conclusive.
There are lots of animals out there with food preferences, but I imagine anything like this dunking is much more unusual, this tampering with the food before consumption. And while I had thought some monkeys go in for washing food in the river, this piece alleges just one recorded observation of same.
And one can see that such food preferences might easily get detached from food utility: a chimpanzee with a sweet tooth, for example, would probably go for saccharine - and it would take its genes a long time to register that the stuff did not actually work, did not provide calories.
And then there are are also lots of animals which I believe to possess rudimentary consciousness. Certainly most farm animals and pets.
The paper concerned, reference 3, is open access and short so there may be further report in due course.
In due course: summary of the experiments
18 birds, trained laboratory birds, able to respond to simple signals. Might live up to thirty years in a laboratory. Three separate experiments: dunking behaviour, food choice and colour choice.
Experiment 1. Trials with noodles, then trials with potatoes. Dunking noodles was more popular than dunking potatoes. The birds could dunk in water (not chosen), neutral yoghurt or blueberry yoghurt. Half of them dunked, with most of those preferring blueberry dunking to neutral dunking. But just two of the nine dunking birds accounted for most of the dunking. And with just one of those two showing a clear preference for dunking noodles rather than potatoes.
Experiment 2. Dunking birds. Trials with noodles, then trials with potatoes. Choice of neat solid food, neat blueberry yoghurt or mixed - that is to say the solid food item dipped in yoghurt. Three birds went for the dipped noodles. But, in the potato trials, there was a stronger preference for neat potato.
Experiment 3. Dunking birds. All bar one of these birds showed a modest preference for the blueberry colour.
I have not attempted the statistics.
So modest experiments, but at least one of the eighteen birds appeared to like dunking noodles in blueberry yoghurt. This may have been to do with sugar, although the position of these birds as regards sugar receptors is uncertain. Some birds having preferences for taste and texture may be a more economical explanation. No need for those preferences to be conscious, for the expression of those preferences to be conscious. Or, for that matter, to be adaptive.
References
Reference 1: Los Dos Hemisferios de Lucca - Barbara Anderson - 2019.
Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts.
Reference 3: Innovative flavoring behavior in Goffin’s cockatoos - Jeroen Stephan Zewald, Alice Marie Isabel Auersperg - 2025.
Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanimbar_corella. The source of the snap above. Goffin's Cockatoo.
Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow-crested_cockatoo. The more flashy parrot of the big snap in the piece in the Guardian. Hmmm.
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