Lots off things are plausible, but with a lot of humans and a lot of scientists among us, no real evidence for this has been found. However, it is fun to believe such things, like big foot:)
No one said anything about bigfoot. Those that were observing the behaviors were doing just what scientists do. They were taking observations from experience. Who are you, scientist or not, to question the observations, particularly Donos? I will provide an example of terrible mistakes that "scientists" make.
FOR DECADES scientists presumed that exposure to peanuts in early childhood was the primary cause of peanut allergy. They "advised" parents to not expose children less that 2 years of age to peanuts. Then after a terrible increase in childhood allergies to peanuts people began studying peanuts allergies in other countries. One country where peanut allergies were abnormally low is Israel where infants are fed a peanut snack as soon as they are able to handle solid foods. Heard any apologies for just being "not even right"?
Science is full of pseudo-science and one of the worst things anyone can do is give a scientist the benefit of the doubt. Lots and lots poor inferences are made by them. Good scientists consider evidence which doesn't support their hypotheses.
With respect to the behaviors of the other species, whether they are "instinctual" or "intellectual" is not a scientific question if "instinctual". It relies wholly on the acceptance of the premise because it cannot be subjected to an experiment which would determine that _no intelligence_ was employed. It was the complexity of the Kingfisher's behaviors that gave rise to my inference that it is plausible that the Kingfisher may have enough intelligence to consider an easy introduction of fishing to its young. I've employed science and I think they did as well.
