Goose appears to ask cops for help with offspring tangled in string

May 12, 2016 • 2:15 pm

I got this video from several readers, and then found it on YouTube to show all of you. The story is almost unbelievable, and the video doesn’t show the striking part. But it’s still nice.

The bizarre part, as recounted by WKRC in Cinncinnati, is that a mother goose apparently pecked at the door of a cop car to get help for a gosling entangled in string:

CINCINNATI (WKRC) – It’s not a sight Sergeant James Givens is used to seeing, a goose pecking at his cruiser door, but that’s what happened Monday, May 9, and initially the veteran Cincinnati officer thought the goose was simply hungry.

“It kept pecking and pecking and normally they don’t come near us. Then it walked away and then it stopped and looked back so I followed it and it led me right over to the baby that was tangled up in all that string,” Givens said.

The string was tied to a Mother’s Day balloon among some of the litter near Mill Creek. Givens shot video on his cellphone. He and Specialist Cecilia Charron called the SPCA, but no one was immediately available to come out. So Charron took matters into her own hands.

“Well she has a couple of kids of her own and I guess that motherly instinct must’ve kicked in because it was like they communicated. The mother goose didn’t bother her,” Given said. “So Specialist Charron came and untangled it. It took her awhile because it was all wrapped up.”

“I always thought that they were afraid of people and people say they will attack you if you get close to their young’uns and I was just surprised.”

It certainly isn’t the toughest part of the job, but these officers couldn’t turn their backs on a mother and child reunion.

Givens said he recorded it because it’s something you don’t see every day.

The video shows Officer Charron disentangling the gosling. At the end it leaps free and runs to join its mother and siblings. Notice the communication between chick and mother: they are making noises at each other:

One of the readers, Barry, who sent me the link, had this to say:

I’m forever amazed by these types of interactions. In this case, it’s one thing for a goose to squawk or even poke a human in the leg, but to go up to a car? And peck on the window? And then it walks away and looks back, as if to say, “See? Look! Over here: I do have a problem.” So how does a goose “know” that a human might help? How does a goose engage in conceptual thinking, to “know” that a person is in the car? Does the goose have “knowledge” of some kind, knowing that those tall, bipedal creatures get into these moving objects with four wheels? Amazing.

Okay, do you think the mother was actually trying to get help from humans by pecking on a car?

80 thoughts on “Goose appears to ask cops for help with offspring tangled in string”

  1. It’s hard to explain it any other way. Animals are continually being shown to be smarter than we think.

    1. Ethologist Frans de Waal just published a book on that very subject. I haven’t read it yet, but plan to do so soon. I think we underestimate that cognitive abilities of birds in particular.

      2. Yes, I’ve heard of the book, I have to look it up.

        It’s unfortunately a bit depressing to realize that animals have intelligence, when you think of the hard and cruel lives they often endure. The question is how much self-awareness do they have?

      3. I just heard Frans de Waal interviewed about his book and he was asked about why we’ve been slow to recognize the intelligence of other animals, and he attributed it largely to the resistance to anthropomorphize animals.

        I’ve never understood this resistance when it seems to be the best place to start. Humans are physically so like other animals, why should our minds be so different? Play is play, anger is anger, excitement is excitement… Our minds evolved from “animal” minds just as our bodies did.

        To warn against such easy interpretations seems to be the result of a religious perspective – us and them (the animals). Maybe that was understandable 150 years ago but why still now?

        “I think that dog is using its teeth to chew its food.”
        “Careful now. We can’t assume that.”

        1. I agree and have often argued this point, that going by what we know about biology that it is reasonable to think that other animals experience mental states very similar to humans under the same conditions. Even that it is actually unreasonable to assume otherwise.

          But, I do think that many people still make the mistake of anthropomorphizing too much. It is not uncommon for people to convince themselves that they know just what is going through another animal’s mind and that they can predict the animal’s behavior with confidence. And not just the crazy dog lady down the street. There is the researcher who thought he knew bears so well that he decided to live with them, only to be eaten by them. Heck, humans have a hard enough time predicting other humans’ behavior, especially when they are from different cultures.

          1. The people who anthropomorphize too much are not animal behaviorists, though. (They’re cat owners.)

          3. I asked my cat and she told me to ignore this conversation, unless food is introduced. In that case she might reconsider.

          4. Dog owners tooI’m a cat owner and I never anthropomorphize animals. I hate it when people put hats, sunglasses, wigs, tutus, etc., on their cats or dogs, and who dye their dogs’ coats in colours. I find it profoundly insulting to the cats and dogs.

      4. de Waal’s book is well-worth reading. I have just finished it, together with Sean B. Carroll’s ‘The Serengeti Rules’, which is also excellent. I have a tale about an alley cat that is similar to the above, but am in a rush so will write about it later.

        1. I have bit of time at last, so will tell my story. We no longer have cats but for many years did have some (my wife loves them). Perhaps because of their presence, a female noraneko, as feral cats are called in Japan, the most beautiful ‘mike-neko’ (tortoiseshell or calico cat) I have ever seen, used to come to our garden and we started feeding her. She would not allow us anywhere near her, and would hiss with bared teeth and hair on end if we came too close. She became pregnant, and eventually had kittens – though the place where she had them was some way away, somewhere at the bottom of the quite steep hill we are on, it seemed. One day, when my wife was out, she came to the garden and seemed to be in some distress. I noticed that her breasts were swollen and very hard (I spent five years farming in my mis-spent youth, and so notice such things), and thought that her kittens must have died or been killed. I went out to her, and for the first time she allowed me to come near her – naturally, I approached her as gently as possible. She allowed me to touch her breasts, and then to milk her to relieve the pressure that was so clearly bothering her (I had milked by hand cows and sheep in Wales). When she seemed more comfortable, I left her, and she proceeded to sleep for the whole afternoon in our garden – she was obviously exhausted.

          I had assumed that her kittens must be dead, but after a week or so she brought her three kittens and moved in under the verandah of the house next door where nobody was living, and we would feed them. I still don’t know why she got into the state she did. She would still not allow us to come near her, but the kittens, though pretty wild, would come into the house and through their example she over a great many months became accustomed to us. Two of the kittens, I am afraid, we spirited away and released in some farmland near us, since farmers like having cats about for obvious reasons, but one, a male, was left, and he became very tame, and gradually Mimi, as we named her after the Mimi in Puccini’s ‘La Boheme’, became tame, too, though to the end of her life she disliked being kissed. She lived with us for a number of years until she died of cancer of the mouth. She is still the most beautiful domestic cat I have ever come across.

          1. Philosophers seldom seem to get a good mention here, but I should add, in connexion with de Waal, that Martha Nussbaum, who, like Jerry, teaches at Chicago University, has written illuminatingly on the knowledge imparted by literature – in particular she has written well on Greek Tragedy & Henry James – and in ‘Upheavals of Thought: the intelligence of the emotions’, she devotes many pages to discussing emotions in animals and their similarities and dissimilarities to those of human beings. She is well worth reading.

      5. A lot of birds are highly intelligent, it seems, but they are also often very much unlike us – which is not surprising given when our last common ancestor lived. If we want to know what it might be like to encounter an extraterrestrial, watching corvids (for example) might be way to get a clue as to the difficulties …

        1. A friend of mine who works on the evolution of neural circuitry says that the mammalian brain is built on an olfactory “chip,” whereas the avian brain is built on a visual one. I don’t pretend to understand the complexities (not my area of neuroscience expertise), but it’s an interesting idea.

          1. Yes, that is very interesting. Worth stewing over a bit. It makes sense, considering birds fly and must see/recognize at a distance, but chemical recognition, which developed into smell (and taste) would have started at the unicellular level. Very interesting, indeed.

    2. 20 February y1955, “Ya’ sure that d*g understood, Son ?”
      — asked of Jeff (only … I thought the Collie’s kiddo’s name was Timmy but O well —) re Ms Lassie when nefarious Mr Hazlitt fell down Gramps Miller’s well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gnxRPhEDY8 , 17:22. Yet ‘nother stringy – / rope – involving rescue.

      Why not, then, Ms Mother Goose & her brain … … with ~understanding as well as that of that d*g’s brain ?

      ” … … pusillanimous polecats !”
      Blue

  3. Was the goose “seeking assistance”? That’s a pretty complex question, and we’re lacking a lot of background (is this open country, a central park? how long had the gosling been in distress?). TBH, we’re not going to get good answers from this sort of anecdote.
    Domesticated animals (which might include these geese) do have a lot of reports of imitative behaviour involving humans. But how much of that is “monkey see, monkey do” is a good question.
    But … but … isn’t W-KRP the Cincinnati radio station? (That should get someE head-scratching.)

  4. I think it’s possible the goose was asking for help, especially if it’s been previously domesticated.

    We had a labrador who came and got us one day – he made us follow him with some urgency up to one of the bedrooms. There we found our kitten slowly being strangled by a blind cord he’d got himself tangled in while playing with it. Kitteh lived to tell tale, though it didn’t stop him playing with blind cords.

    Then there’s the story from last year of a dolphin that swam up to some people in a boat, pretty obviously to get their help in getting untangled from some plastic. Or was it fishing line? Either way, amazing video.

    1. The Canada goose is semi-domesticated. Many, if not most, no longer fly south for the winter. Why fly all that distance if you can have a fine life on a golf course or near a retention or detention pond. They have learned they have nothing to fear from humans thanks to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Doubt they know the law – just the environment it has created.
      https://www.fws.gov/birds/policies-and-regulations/laws-legislations/migratory-bird-treaty-act.php

      They observe humans doing complex things. So it might not be a stretch to think the mother would reach out for help.

      1. Thanks for that info – I suspected there was probably a reason this goose has learned not to fear humans. In a way, she’s using a tool in her environment (us), which other birds have demonstrated the ability to do.

      2. Does the Migratory Bird Treaty Act protect birds who refuse to migrate?

        😉

        cr

        1. Sure does. Canada geese have become pests. Their crap is all over – including in front of a middle school near me.

    5. Same thing happened to my wife’s previous cat (and she was alerted by another cat).

      And one of my cats alerted me to the fact that her companion had slipped outside on a cold wet night.

      Anyone who has ever been enslaved by a pet knows they have some level of consciousness working. Not like ours necessarily; but the lights are on.

      1. Yeah, definitely. We’re so busy marvelling at how smart we are, we often fail to notice the cognitive abilities of other creatures.

  5. If it had been a crow it would probably be much less of a question whether the mother had actively intended to seek help.

    As a result of this, someone’s probably already designing experiments for geese along the lines of some of the crow experiments.

      1. That’s the wrong one and I didn’t mean to embed, sorry, but you get the idea.

  6. I think the mama goose was seeking help. And I wish humans would learn to turn their phones horizontal when making videos.

    1. Agreed, on both. Although Mom may have wanted the officer to warn the baby of the dangers of playing with something just found on the ground. Clearly,he didn’t listen to her…

    2. Will the posture sensor make it so that it plays with up in the right direction during playback (I have no idea)?

    2. I don’t think people who live in apartments or small house lots realize just how much litter from the sky in the form of balloons comes down. At my previous house we had more than thirty acres of land and I could find deflated balloons on the ground or caught in trees several times per week.

      1. I find the balloons rather frequently in seemingly remote woods, on the shore, and on islands, here in Maine. To paraphrase Barry Commoner, “There is no away to which balloons can be released.” (There is no away to which things can be thrown.) The balloons come down somewhere, and are a hazard to wildlife.

  8. All I see from the video is the goose standing by while the officer untangles the gosling. I’m not sure I can believe that anything else happened.

    1. Even the fact that the goose is non-aggressively standing by, while a rather large primate handles her baby, is really remarkable.

      1. I agree.

        However, I kept thinking those are two unprepared officers! No Swiss Army knife, no scissors on hand? It’s a great idea to keep scissors in one’s car, in case one’s seatbelt gets stuck, or if one has to cut loose a goose.

          1. You are right. I had watched this video on mute and later did hear the other officer something like, “Do you need a knife?” I’d have gone out to get the poor gosling, fully armed if possible.

        2. I carry my Swiss Army knife everywhere, and find a use for it nearly every day (I’m counting the toothpick as “use”). I really hate airports, as I have to remember to pack the knife in my hold baggage, and then feel lost without it until I can unpack it.

  9. Astonishing behaviour.

    I headed off and wanted to look up what the experts say on the family indicatoridae, or honeyguides, that famously lead humans to bee hives and also patiently wait until the humans are done with the complex task. They are of course very different birds, but I was wondering if there was a “cultural” component to it.

    But this is not the case, it is evolved behaviour, because honeybirds have no role in parenting for they are brood parasites — lay eggs into other bird’s nest — like the cuckoo. And of course, it’s yet another matter to lead a scary dry-nose monkey to a bee hive and have it obliterate an stingy obstacle, or have the monkey grab your offspring with its claw-like appendages.

  10. I’ve owned a few geese and I think that it is definitely possible. Especially how the mother just sat there chattering when the policewoman was untying the gosling. If I even walked between our geese and their goslings I would get attacked

  11. Yep. I was thinking about animal intelligence the other night, and it occurred to me that in terms of brain structure what really separates humans from the other animals is an enlarged forebrain. Which may give us a very unique perspective and sentience and a bunch of other mental capabilities that other animals don’t have, but think through the implications about that for the other parts of the brain: the fact that the rest is not too different means that anything we do with our non-forebrain brain, some or many animals can probably do too. Do other areas activate when you do math? Then we should expect some animals can do math. Comprehend speech? Put logical two and two together? Unless it relies heavily on our unique forebrain, its probably not a mental action unique to us.

    1. That’s bloomin’ incredible. I think those swans must have been, at least semi-tame, to approach a man like that, and then to allow themselves to be handled like that. They also may have been exhausted, which would help to calm them.

      Extraordinary video. And to be honest, if I’d just heard that as a story, I would have assumed some exaggeration in the telling.

      cr

      1. Having grown up in an area with a lot of swans, they can certainly become used to people – but can also be extremely aggressive especially when young are around. A woman in the next town over takes in rescue birds, and those ones for sure have no fear of humans (less so the other way round as they are pretty large animals and can be a little intimidating if they decide to go through your bag looking for noms!).

        But to actually see these ones, assuming they’re wild but familiar with people, come for assistance is pretty incredible. Good work by the Russian chap too.

        1. Aggressiveness would not necessarily lead to avoidance of humans. Some animal that considers itself a badass may not get as fearful or anxious at the thought of getting close to a potential predator as, say, an animal whose fight or flight instinct always tells it to flee.

  13. Some one needs to write a ticket to this gentleman for the vertical video footage.

  14. Besides teaching us something about their intelligence, it should be a lesson in not littering with all the human “crap”. It can kill animals and does so, all the time.

    1. Yea but dogs (and cockatiels, as below) are domesticated. They have come to expect their human to do stuff for them.

      Not so wild animals like geese.

      cr

      1. You’re right, but then it is not absolutely impossible that animals can see us as resourceful and worth to give a try. Maybe this particular goose has had much contact with humans? I dunno.

      2. I swear that hangry wild birds tap on my dining room window (the one that overlooks the backyard) when the feeders are empty. The squirrels are also suspect, for scratching and pulling on the window screen.

  16. This story is not at all hard to believe. I have a cockatiel, and once forgot to fill his water dish. He repeatedly perched on top of his cage, screamed, flew into the bathroom over the sink, flew back to his cage, and repeated the behavior until I finally figured out what was wrong. He had never been in the bathroom before but had observed me as I went in to fill his dish.

    At another time I brought home a bag of corn chips, which he loved. He would fly to my shoulder, nip me on the neck, fly over the bag of chips on the kitchen table, and repeated this behavior until I figured out what he wanted and opened the bag for him.

    These and many other experiences have made me a firm believer that my cockatiel perform fairly complex behaviors to prompt me to do something for him.

  17. Like other commenters, I am reminded of the experiments conducted with wolves and dogs by scientists at Eotvos University in Budapest:

    http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/thoughtful-animal/dogs-but-not-wolves-use-humans-as-tools/

    Dogs and Wolves were raised from by birth by human handlers and given the same constant attention and training. Both wolves and dogs were intelligent and adept at learning tasks. But when presented with impossible tasks (food that could be seen but not accessed), dogs consistently make eye contact with their human trainers to prompt the human to solve the problem for them. The wolves failed to do this. Dogs were somehow genetically prone to see humans as tools or problem solvers. Wolves did not view humans in this way.

    Perhaps this is one form of what we call domestication. Regarding humans as tools/providers.

    1. Some call wolves “semi-domesticated” because like rats and corvids they live in sort of a symbiosis with humans. There’s a suggestion that is what initiated the dog domestication.

      The odd thing is that aren’t dogs and wolves part of a ring species or close to?

      1. There is regular confusion about this but it appears that dogs are now considered a domesticated subspecies of wolves – wolves are Canis lupus and dogs are Canis lupus familiaris.

        Dogs and wolves can interbred, and the study I mentioned shows that wolves are just as intelligent and trainable as dogs; but the “instinct” that dogs have to look to humans to get what they want, seemed to be a true genetic trait difference between the undomesticated species and the domesticated subspecies.

  18. “Well she has a couple of kids of her own and I guess that motherly instinct must’ve kicked in because it was like they communicated. The mother goose didn’t bother her,”

    And the media wonder why the public disbelieve what they write?

  19. I am sure the goose knew what she was doing. It is possible that in her past, she was either helped by humans, possibly policemen, or had observed humans, possibly policemen, help other geese or mother ducks with ducklings. Geese are intelligent birds.

  20. I don’t think it’s impossible. When my family lived in Fort Monroe, VA, a family of ducks would come up to our front door almost every day and knock to be fed. My mom would set down a bowl of water for the ducklings to play in and would feed the family, and the mother duck would let my mom pick up the ducklings and play with them. The ducks were treated very well on base, so presumably had been conditioned to be far more comfortable around humans than they might otherwise be.

    1. ‘….had been conditioned’ – as a matter of interest, why did you not write ‘had learned’ – is that not ‘scientific’ enough, perhaps? I recommend a reading of de Waal (or Karl Popper on Pavlov’s experiments with dogs)!

  21. Music soothes the savage beast: A small gaggle approached me at an animal rescue, once. An employee backed off, warning that they would attack. I stood still, though, and began singing to them something soothing like a lullaby. Next thing you know, they stopped talking (threatening?) and stared at me. Then, as I walked to my car to leave, they followed me, still quiet, almost as though they were entranced entranced. Needless to say, the rescue’s employee was surprised.

  22. Awwww, a cop doing something any decent person would do…what a wonderful, wonderful cop!!!!

    Now if we can just get them to stop killing people.

    1. Easy: Send out more balloons to deflate and tie up more goslings and maybe some puppies and kittens, so cops spend all their time untying and making videos instead of killing people.

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