13 May 2026

Turkse Tortel (Streptopelia decaocto) met afwijkend oog en snavel

Turkse Tortel ( Streptopelia decaocto ) afwijkende snavelvorm,
normaal linker oog. (13 mei 2026) ©Gert Korthof

  

misvormd rechter oog en de
bovensnavel groeit over de ondersnavel heen.

 

de nekveren lijken ook niet normaal

Het beestje kon nog zaadjes oppikken van de grond ondanks de misvormde snavel. Er komen dagelijks Turkse Tortels op het vogelvoer af, en die zien er allemaal normaal uit, maar deze afwijkende vogel had ik nog niet eerder gezien. Hij/zij was redelijk actief, maar had moeite met zaadjes oppikken. Hij kon normaal vliegen. De volgende dag zag ik hem weer.

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6 comments:

  1. Interesting book The Brain, In Theory by Romain Brette, Princeton Univ. Press (2026).
    Reviewed in Nature:
    "In The Brain, In Theory, neuroscientist Romain Brette deconstructs the predominant model of the brain, which treats the organ like a computer. He concedes that engineering metaphors can be useful but argues that they are often vague, incoherent and misleading — failing to capture animal cognition, for example. The reason is simple: real brains are not engineered. Brette aims to breathe life back into brain science by focusing the study of the nervous system on biology. The task is daunting, but Brette’s take-down of the field’s dominant theoretical frameworks is systematic."

    Brains are not computers!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dear Dr Korthof

    "Brains are not computers"

    I think that anyone who is somewhat up to date—that is to say, has read and understood a few older books—already knew this: see f.e. Gödel’s 1st and 2nd Theorem vs. Hilbert’s program.

    It is high time, by now, to consider the consequences of this for the dominant machine metaphor—not just that of brains, but in biology and evolution at large.

    You might be interested in Michael Levin and Richard Watson, "Machines all the way up and cognition all the way down" https://doi.org/10.1016/j.semcdb.2026.103668

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you Dr, Anonymous, for the nice publication:
    Machines all the way up and cognition all the way down: Updating the machine metaphor in biology.
    quote:
    "the genome provides crucial information for the control of growth and form, we are still not able to predict anatomical structure, physiological function, or behavior from genomic data". !!!

    "While we are very good at manipulating the hardware of life (genome editing, pathway rewiring, protein engineering, etc.), we are still very far away from the needed control of large-scale form and function."
    nice! and very true!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Dear Dr Korthof,

    what about this quote:

    " We think the cognitive competencies of living systems are
    not a rare (sic) in the tree of life, nor a late arrival in the evolutionary story, but a *defining feature of life from the outset and ubiquitous throughout the biosphere*. ....

    sounds very much like "cognition all the way down and all the way up".
    Biology, evolution theory and all, just cognitive science then?

    ReplyDelete
  5. It depends on how you define 'cognition', 'cognitive'...

    ReplyDelete
  6. Dear Dr Korthof

    Levin and Watson themselves already provide "a fairly conventional definition" (note 1, p 2).

    Cognition is a system that stores experience (memory), adapts behavior (learning), solves problems in new circumstances (problem solving), and can adjust setpoints (redefining goals).

    Planaria and cellular collectives are prime examples. And, not to forget, - kind of Levin’s hobbyhorse- : bio-electrical networks that form/store non-genetic memory layers.

    In doing so, not coincidentally, they come quite close to Darwin's words: " *Any* variation which is *not inherited* is *unimportant* for us." Emphasis mine

    ReplyDelete

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