[1119] in Humor
FWD>HUMOR-beer & geese
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Katy Oldham)
Wed Oct 4 07:27:49 1995
Date: 4 Oct 1995 04:25:14 -0700
From: "Katy Oldham" <Katy_Oldham@mesaqm.sps.mot.com>
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Mail*Link( SMTP FWD>HUMOR:beer & geese
Forwarded-by: mweaver@heartland.bradley.edu (Monica Weaver)
In a previous article, wwilson@heartland.bradley.edu (William Wilson) says:
One of my psych profs over here was telling our Learning & Conditioning
class an interesting story a while ago which I thought might strike a
few people over here in a reinforcing manner:
There's this bird named the gray-legged goose which has a tendency to build
its nest on top of a little hill it makes for itself. Since it can't always
be on top of the nest, it has a few instincts to help it protect its
unhatched eggs. The first of these is known as the egg-retrieval instinct.
Essentially, the theory is this: If an egg rolls out, the goose will see it.
Upon seeing this egg, it will get up off its nest, straddle the egg, try to
knock it back up the hill with its beak, and sit back down. Of course, this
isn't an easy task and more often than not, the goose loses the egg after a
few taps. But, trapped in its fixed action pattern, the bird will continue
with the knocking motions all the way up the hill, never even noticing that
it's lost the egg. Until, that is, it sees it again from the top of the
nest.
All fine and dandy. Except for one problem... Other things than eggs
trigger this egg-retrieval instinct. Foremost among these is a beer can.
Apparently, beer cans and eggs are very similar in the goose's mind, so it
will waddle down its hill, tap the beer can up into its nest, and sit back
down.
Ordinarily, this wouldn't cause a problem. Unfortunately, the goose has
another instinct known as the "egg-rejection" instinct. The rejection
instinct works like this: if the goose is sitting on something which
doesn't
feel like an egg, it will kick it out of the nest. And beer cans, though
they might look like eggs to the gray-legged goose, definitely do not *feel*
like eggs. So, soon after the goose sits upon its new beer can, it will
toss
it out of the nest.
Here's where the problem comes in. The goose, after kicking the can out of
its nest will eventually notice the beer can again (Oh! An egg!) and will
waddle out towards it, tap it up the hill, and sit down upon it a second
time, whereupon it will throw the can out again.
And, yes, this process proceeds indefinitely. Just goes to show you that
nature never intended beer to come in cans.
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From: "Andrew A. Bennett" <abennett@MIT.EDU>
Subject: HUMOR (long): Misc good stuff
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