Let's talk darwinism 101. All that crap you just articulated has nothing to do with basic evolution of the species. Do you even have a degree?
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In addition to instinct, they have constant experience with the effects of gravity; they learn that stuff falls unless something holds it up, and they learn that stuff above them that starts looking bigger very fast is going to hurt them if they don't move over.
Isn't it amazing how children avoid getting squished before they learn that F = mg ? I myself survived approximately 11 years without this vital piece of information (although I was unfortunately unable to avoid falling bird shit on several occasions).
On another note, I have yet to see a bird dodge a falling object. Objects don't fall from the sky very often.
I have a safe, and a nice tall roof over at work.
Come on over and PROVE its impossible to us.
even a fly realises that ¨big thing speeding at me¨ is danger.
Because the one that doesn't doesn't live long enough to breed: my cat just ate it. And that's natural selection at work.
How do you go on breathing without knowledge of--lungs--gases--aw, scratch that, how do you keep breathing at all, Fuckwit?!
Simple:
We see something falling, making a sinister whistling sound as it does so, and think "Shit, gotta move!" [/sarcasm]
Though a bird may lack the self and world awareness necessary to consciously comprehend gravity and infer future events based on it, its evolved instinctive responses actually do count as "knowledge" of such things, as instinct is essentially information representing the world and how to respond to it, encoded in the genetics of the bird.
Individual birds do not have knowledge of gravity, in the normal, human sense of the word "knowledge" (your example about humans is patently false; humans can easily be taught basic gravitational equations and learn to make future predictions based on them, and most with access to schooling of sufficient quality do so before reaching adulthood); the entire population of birds (in fact, every evolved, living thing), however, when considered as a single entity, could well be said to possess such knowledge.
"Let's talk darwinism 101. All that crap you just articulated has nothing to do with basic evolution of the species. Do you even have a degree?"
Let's talk Creationism 101. All that crap you claim in Genesis has nothing to do with basic reality. Do you even have an education? Can you even prove the existence of your 'God', without recourse to the Bible?
Is this meant to advocate creation? Because I see nothing to ponder here except what point WJ was trying to articulate.
I would agree with another poster though; humans (and many living things, including most mammals) are not instinctively driven to look upwards when checking the safety of their environment. Rodents tend to (they're looking out for flying predators), but as apes have no airborne predators it's simply not important and there are plenty of other instincts vital to our survival. This is why we are taught in various ways to look up to check for safety. I was taught the importance of this as a lifeguard; police, firefighters, paramedics and others are also taught to do this.
So I would say birds, living in a more fundamentally 3-dimensional environment, are instinctively predisposed to awareness of what is above and know to avoid collisions as all things do; however, humans normally learn this during adolescence. Unless the object is big enough to cause audible air displacement or cast a visible shadow, a fellow human points it out, or you are hypervigilant and look upwards with unusual regularity, a falling object (not a very common hazard) is quite likely to hit a human standing in its path.
I almost caught an unexpected football in the face the other day. I'm not so much up on math, so my first reaction, naturally, was to reach for my calculator. Not enough time for that; I next thought what's the square root of the hhypotenuse here?
Then I thought about the birds, yelled "Donald!" - and ducked.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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