Animal perception of magic

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Researchers study the reactions of animals observing humans performing

evolutionary psychologists aim to gain insights into the evolution of perception and attention
by comparing responses of different species, including humans.

Background

neuromagic or magicology for the study of magic.[4][5] Other scientists are critical of the new field, saying it is not worthy to stand as a field of its own.[3] Scientists aim to get insight into how the human mind operates.[6]

Some animal species are capable of

corvids pretend to store food in various places, trying obscure the cache's true location from observers. This suggests that at least some species are susceptible to magic.[8][9]

Overview

In an article in

experimental design.[10] Their central research questions are: can a magic trick that deceives humans fool animals as well? If so, how? [8] Various practical challenges exist to answer these questions. Attention control is a key component of many magic tricks and getting the animal to pay attention to a human can be difficult and might limit the range of species and magic tricks that can be used in studies. A further challenge is how to assess if the magic trick worked or not.[8] In the absence of verbalisations researchers have to look for behavioural responses indicating whether the animal has been tricked or not. In humans, successful magic tricks elicit an emotional response of surprise. Researchers assume that a relatively long time of looking at an object or situation is an indication of the animal being surprised by what happened.[11]

Known cognitive skills, such as the ability to grasp object permanence, that is, the ability to represent objects in the mind's eye when the object is out of sight, can inspire the researchers which tricks to perform on which species. Animals that cache their food seem suitable subjects for tricks exploiting blind spots in object permanence.[8]

By studying nonhuman animals' perception of magic, we can gain insights into the evolution of the cognitive skills magicians exploit.[6]

Results

Jays

Schnell et al. found evidence in a 2021 study that jays are sensitive to magic. They used the cups and balls routine to trick the birds.[12] In a second study they performed three magic tricks, palming, the French drop, and fast pass, on six jays. The birds were not deceived by the palming and French drop tricks, but were deceived by the fast pass. The first two techniques depend on human hand movements setting expectations for an object moving from one place to another. These hand movements did not trick the jays. But fast hand movements did mislead them.[13]

References

  1. ^ Grassi & Bartels 2021, p. 1.
  2. ^ Garcia-Pelegrin et al. 2024, p. 271.
  3. ^ a b Lamont, Henderson & Smith 2010.
  4. ^ Macknik, Martinez-Conde & Blakeslee 2011, p. 2.
  5. ^ Winner 2008.
  6. ^ a b Garcia-Pelegrin et al. 2024, p. 270.
  7. ^ Whiten & Byrne 1988, p. ??.
  8. ^ a b c d Garcia-Pelegrin et al. 2020, p. 1425.
  9. ^ Garcia-Pelegrin, Elias (2 June 2021). "We performed magic tricks on birds to see how they perceive the world". the Conversation. Retrieved 22 November 2021.
  10. ^ Garcia-Pelegrin et al. 2020, p. 1426.
  11. ^ Garcia-Pelegrin et al. 2020, p. 1424.
  12. ^ Schnell et al. 2021.
  13. ^ Garcia-Pelegrin et al. 2021.

Sources

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