I’m often amazed at how much the wild things remember. But maybe I shouldn’t be. Also, it might expose a human bias in my thinking … the amazement, that is.

In any case, the sea gulls have figured out that I put food on our driveway every morning. The squirrels know to look in a certain spot in a tree in our backyard for peanuts. And the sparrows and finches check the feeder for seeds regularly.

The gull depicted in full is the one that waits … or is it? Yes, probably. Actually, it’s quite hard to tell one from the other. Oh well.

To me, this means that not only do they remember, they associate past experience with future experience. They anticipate. And yes, that’s an assumption on my part and possibly I am anthropomorphizing.

That’s always been a bit of a bone of contention for me. I think that striving to understand an animal from the animal’s standpoint is inherently impossible. So applying to animals the tools we have for understanding human behavior is really all we have. And yes, I have digressed.

There is one sea gull in particular that arrives quite early and sits and waits for me to put out the food. It’s very patient. Sometimes sitting out there for at least 15 minutes before I get to it.

Despite my amazement (or maybe because of it) I got to thinking. A good memory and ability to associate past experience with future expectation is a valuable survival tool.

If the gulls had to search a large area every day to find food, that would require a higher expenditure of calories. By remembering where food can consistently be found, they use less energy in procuring that food.

Remembering details and making associations could be seen as necessary for a greater chance of surviving to produce offspring … which many people agree is the main thrust of biological systems.

So, in a way, intelligence (of one kind or another) is inevitable in animal systems. What plants might know, I have no idea.

I guess, even though it seems reasonable that all sorts of intelligence is bound to develop, I’m still amazed by it all.

The interwoven intricacy of it all is still a source of wonder and delight.

First and last mages courtesy of Happy Birdwatcher and QuoteFancy respectively