Crows Could Be the Smartest Animal Other Than Primates (bbc.com) 130
In a piece for the BBC, Chris Baraniuk writes about how the intelligence of New Caledonian crows may be far more advanced than we ever thought possible. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report: Intelligence is rooted in the brain. Clever primates -- including humans -- have a particular structure in their brains called the neocortex. It is thought that this helps to make advanced cognition possible. Corvids, notably, do not have this structure. [New Caledonian crows belong to the corvid family of birds -- as do jackdaws, rooks, jays, magpies and ravens.] They have instead evolved densely packed clusters of neurons that afford them similar mental prowess. The specific kind of brain they have doesn't really matter -- corvids and primates share some of the same basic capabilities in terms of problem-solving and plasticity, or being able to adapt and change in the face of new information and experiences. This is an example of convergent evolution, where completely different evolutionary histories have led to the same feature or behavior. It's easy for humans to see why the things corvids can do are useful. From identifying people who have previously posed a threat to them or others in their group to using gestures for communication -- we too rely on abilities like these.
[Christian Rutz at the University of St Andrews] is unequivocal. Some birds, like the New Caledonian crows he studies -- can do remarkable things. In a paper published earlier this year, he and his co-authors described how New Caledonians seek out a specific type of plant stem from which to make their hooked tools. Experiments showed that crows found the stems they desired even when they had been disguised with leaves from a different plant species. This suggested that the birds were selecting a kind of material for their tools that they knew was just right for the job. You wouldn't use a spanner to hammer in a nail, would you? Ranking the intelligence of animals seems an increasingly pointless exercise when one considers the really important thing: how well that animal is adapted to its niche. In the wild, New Caledonians use their tools to scoop insects out of holes, for example in tree trunks. Footage of this behavior has been caught on camera.
You might think that some animals are smarter than others -- with humans at the top of the proverbial tree. Certainly, humans do rely excessively on intelligence to get by. But that doesn't mean we're the best at every mental task. Chimps, notes Dakota McCoy at Harvard University, have been shown to possess better short-term memories than humans. This might help them to memorize where food is located in the forest canopy, for example. Ranking the intelligence of animals seems an increasingly pointless exercise when one considers the really important thing: how well that animal is adapted to its niche. Intelligence is, first and foremost, a means towards specialization. "New Caledonian crows, like us and other clever animals, have moods and memories. Strategies and expectations. They seem remarkably able to engage with complexity," writes Baraniuk in closing. "Evolution made this possible. But cognition, like life itself, serves more than just a need. Animal intelligence allows all sorts of fascinating phenomena to arise. [...] Nature provided the notes, but animal brains make the music. The mind, as they say, is the only limit."
[Christian Rutz at the University of St Andrews] is unequivocal. Some birds, like the New Caledonian crows he studies -- can do remarkable things. In a paper published earlier this year, he and his co-authors described how New Caledonians seek out a specific type of plant stem from which to make their hooked tools. Experiments showed that crows found the stems they desired even when they had been disguised with leaves from a different plant species. This suggested that the birds were selecting a kind of material for their tools that they knew was just right for the job. You wouldn't use a spanner to hammer in a nail, would you? Ranking the intelligence of animals seems an increasingly pointless exercise when one considers the really important thing: how well that animal is adapted to its niche. In the wild, New Caledonians use their tools to scoop insects out of holes, for example in tree trunks. Footage of this behavior has been caught on camera.
You might think that some animals are smarter than others -- with humans at the top of the proverbial tree. Certainly, humans do rely excessively on intelligence to get by. But that doesn't mean we're the best at every mental task. Chimps, notes Dakota McCoy at Harvard University, have been shown to possess better short-term memories than humans. This might help them to memorize where food is located in the forest canopy, for example. Ranking the intelligence of animals seems an increasingly pointless exercise when one considers the really important thing: how well that animal is adapted to its niche. Intelligence is, first and foremost, a means towards specialization. "New Caledonian crows, like us and other clever animals, have moods and memories. Strategies and expectations. They seem remarkably able to engage with complexity," writes Baraniuk in closing. "Evolution made this possible. But cognition, like life itself, serves more than just a need. Animal intelligence allows all sorts of fascinating phenomena to arise. [...] Nature provided the notes, but animal brains make the music. The mind, as they say, is the only limit."
People who say you can't measure intelligence (Score:2, Insightful)
We know what intelligence is. It is the ability to understand something new and apply that knowledge. Creating a test for intelligence is often hard especially a test for animals lacking hands and even harder the ability to store things (dolphins and whales) but then that is a test of the intelligence of the tester.
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We know what intelligence is.
But do we exactly? I'll say yes when we can make a true AI. You don't need to totally understand something in science to be able to use it and measure it though.
Newton never knew what gravity really was, but came up with a very good model than could predict what it did, and could measure it well.
We think of intelligence as a single linear measure, because psychologists found that many different intelligence tests were highly correlated. It is repeatable and has great predictive power. Like Newtonian phy
Re:People who say you can't measure intelligence (Score:5, Insightful)
We know what intelligence is.
But do we exactly?
I'd say we know what it looks like more than what it is.
Re: People who say you can't measure intelligence (Score:2)
Uhhmm, we still don't know what gravity is, we know it manifests in mass occupying spacetime, but ask any physicist what causes gravity and blank look will say it all. He'll, we really are just startin to understand magnetism, and we have known about that even longer.
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He'll, we really are just startin to understand magnetism, and we have known about that even longer.
No, the "why" of both gravity and magnetism were explained a hundred years ago by relativity. Both are illusions in a sense, and disappear when you use relativity instead of classical mechanics. Just as centripetal force does not exist in an inertial reference frame.
We know what they are as much as we know anything. (until you get down to the quantum scale)
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Actually, relativity does not explain anything here. It is just a more accurate model, i.e. it is a better description. An explanation is something different.
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We know what intelligence is.
But do we exactly? I'll say yes when we can make a true AI. You don't need to totally understand something in science to be able to use it and measure it though.
Newton never knew what gravity really was, but came up with a very good model than could predict what it did, and could measure it well.
We do not know what gravity is any more than Newton. We can just describe its effects better and we have a pretty strong hint that the model we currently use is wrong (no quantum-gravity), although gravity may be the part that is correct. More likely though the whole thing is missing some critical yet-to-be discovered component.
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Intelligence is also getting humans to board and feed you, take out your dooty, provide entertainment, heating the winter, cooling in the summer, all for sporting a furry coat, whiskers, and the ability to hide when not wanting to be bothered. Humans should be so intelligent.
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I'm not sure all humans would qualify as intelligent by that definition.
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We know what intelligence is.
Nope.
It is the ability to understand something new and apply that knowledge.
That is both a crass oversimplification and far to fuzzy a definition to be useful. It is pretty much all we have, though.
Definitions are flexible (Score:2)
Ranking the intelligence of animals seems an increasingly pointless exercise when one considers the really important thing: how well that animal is adapted to its niche. Intelligence is, first and foremost, a means towards specialization.
If you redefine the word "intelligence" correctly, then a stone is the most intelligent animal. It keeps away tigers. You might need to redefine "animal" too for that one.
Re:Definitions are flexible (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. Intelligence is NOT, first and foremost, a means towards specialization. It is a means towards GENERALIZATION. Because humans are intelligent we can live in both the Congo Rainforest and the Arctic icepack. Intelligence allows so to be generalists.
A beaver is perfectly adapted to its niche. They build sophisticated dams. They are specialists. But when scientists hand raised beaver kits, with no contact with other beavers, and then put them in a suitable stream, the beavers successfully built a dam on the very first try. It wasn't intelligence at all. Just pure instinct.
Re:Definitions are flexible (Score:4, Interesting)
I was going to make the same point. Perhaps it should be stated slightly differently: general intelligence is the ability to specialize depending on the problem being solved. Living in a rainforest and on an icepack both require very specialized skills. No human is born knowing how to do either, but nearly ever human could learn. Instinct, on the other hand, is the ability to apply an innate skill to a problem.
All of these are forms of intelligence. It's a spectrum, not a single point.
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So humans specialize in generalizing.
For those who missed it ... (Score:2)
Re:For those who missed it ... (Score:5, Funny)
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Then I propose defining intelligence by the size of the niche to which that species can adapt.
I for one welcome our new ant overlords.
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I for one welcome our new ant overlords.
Desert ants can't survive in a forest. Ants adapted to a rainforest canopy can't survive on the forest floor.
There are 12,000 species of ants. None of them has a particularly large niche.
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Not Smarter Than Octopi (Score:2)
Crows are indeed noted for their bird-brain intelligence. But I think that the octopus is probably way smarter, possibly even as intelligent as a dolphin. Part of that may be that the octopus has an ability that crows and dolphins lack; the ability to manipulate their environment.
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As much as I loved Jerry Lettvin's beliefs that octupuses intelligence is actual sapience, they just don't have the neural tissue.
That's like saying bats can't fly because they don't have feathers.
Intelligence is defined by behavior, not mechanism.
Re:Not Smarter Than Octopi (Score:4, Interesting)
It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing. The mechanism gives rise to -- or at the very least is a requirement of -- the behavior, I think.
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Since we have absolutely no clue about the mechanisms behind intelligence at this time (no, "neural tissue" does not cover it), it is the other way round: Intelligent is what behaves intelligently.
Incidentally, it will stay that way. Should we some day be able to explain what causes intelligent behavior, we will be able to predict whether something will behave intelligently. But even then that will only be a shortcut to not have to do that behavioral observation.
Spaner as a Hammer? (Score:2)
What is wrong with hammering nails with a spanner? Provided that is a shifting/adjustable spanner. And hammers will remove a nut if used hard enough.
Re: Spaner as a Hammer? (Score:5, Funny)
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Better yet, use the hammer to pound the spanner to loosen the nut. My shop teacher complimented me on that technique, saying my brain was as smart as a bird's.
I welcome our new crow overlords! (Score:2)
Crow's tiny brain (Score:5, Insightful)
What is surprising is the tiny size of a bird's brain, given its intelligence. A bird's brain obviously has to be small for it to fly, but the intelligence is still there.
A whale has a huge brain but is probably no more intelligent than a crow. The whale has a huge brain because it can, so a larger brain is advantageous even if it only produces a minimal increase in intelligence.
Software is much the same. When memory was tight, powerful systems could be implemented in a few megabytes. But today, gigabytes of bloat upon layer and layers of abstractions, hacks, patches and work arrounds is fine. Because memory is cheap.
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What is surprising is the tiny size of a bird's brain, given its intelligence.
The brain size limits the kind of intelligence. For example a huge amount of the human brain is devoted to spatial intelligence - converting the signals from our retina into a 3D model of the space around us. Cetaceans may use their large brains to do similar with sonar. Crows small brains do not allow this - their vision is very limited in comparison.
Re:Crow's tiny brain (Score:5, Funny)
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Mod parent up. Now that's funny.
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The brain size limits the kind of intelligence.
It's not the size, it's the complexity, and the organization. Einstein had a smaller brain than I do, but he was certainly more intelligent.
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Spatial perception is not actually intelligence. What you do with your spatial perception may be.
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A whale has a huge brain but is probably no more intelligent than a crow.
Whale brains are larger than humans, but they have fewer neurons.
Re:Crow's tiny brain (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Crow's tiny brain (Score:5, Interesting)
What is surprising is the tiny size of a bird's brain, given its intelligence.
I was reading about jumping spiders the other day. They're completely awesome.
They've been observed spotting prey in a different bush to the one they're sat in, before climbing all the way down their bush, walking across the ground to the other bush, then climbing all the way up the other bush to ambush the prey, all while staying hidden from the prey's view.
Consider the visual acuity, spatial awareness, memory, and planning skills required to do that, and then realise that the jumping spider's entire body is only a few millimetres long. Its brain is absolutely minuscule. Right now we have no way of explaining how this is possible. I love things like that.
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The thing about whales (from what I've heard) is that they kind of have a 2nd visual system with high-precision echolocation that they have to interpret. Birds have sensitivity to magnetism, but that seems kind of baked into their visual system.
Corvids are clever, but African Grey Parrots... (Score:5, Interesting)
Corvids (crows and closely related birds) are a long-time favorite of experimenters in term of animal intelligence. They certainly are quite clever, according to test after test.
And I wouldn't count my anecdote as worth anything compared to a larger body of research.
But in terms of dynamic intelligence, the domestic African Grey Parrots I've encountered have had the same level of puzzle solving, plus constantly life-long acquired language skills, and cooperation skills like I wouldn't expect.
The parrots we have will imitate phone conversations between eachother, will offer dogs treats (or tell them to be quiet if they're being noisy), then throw them the treat in exchange for tricks, and will constantly solve puzzles to both trick us and get access to resources.
They also do a lot of tool use and clever object manipulation - but I can see that as a bit less dynamic than corvids in some cases - though most of that is socially learned rather than truly dynamic in some cases for Corvids. I haven't seen our African Greys use tools to reach things so often.
They don't just learn words, but also context, application, and variance, both in tone and in words that can go into a phrase. Not perfectly of course - but in a very bird-like way, just enough to manipulate others into getting something done for them.
Again though - that's my bias, but I think if African Grey Parrots were more available for research, you'd see a lot more results highlighting those results.
Ryan Fenton
Re: Corvids are clever, but African Grey Parrots.. (Score:2)
These same researchers also studied Kea (New Zealand mountain parrots) along with the New Caledonian crow. Both birds save the same puzzles but in slightly different ways. The Kea, which is a larger bird with a very strong beak, is more likely to use brute force first, resorting to tools only when that doesn't work. There are also videos of them learning to use humans as tools, putting nuts next to a person and tugging on their boot followed by gently tapping the nut with their beak, when they are perfectly
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Cool - like a convergent evolution version of the birds dropping nuts for cars to smash.
Ryan Fenton
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just enough to manipulate others into getting something done for them.
So they're like winged cats then?
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Kind of. Ours actually do meow when they want to be cute. And bark - actually, they really like to do that pre-howl whine to get the dogs howling too. They're kind of trilingual, plus all the bird noises they hear from the nearby forest.
They're not as focused on pushing stuff off tables, but they'll do that too. Plus they do like a good head scratch. So sure - winged cats that talk and stuff.
Ryan Fenton
...if they only applied themselves. (Score:2)
n/t
Primates aren't smart (Score:2)
Am in UK.
Re: Primates aren't smart (Score:2)
Re: Primates aren't smart (Score:2)
You wouldn't use a spanner to hammer in a nail.. (Score:2)
You wouldn't use a spanner to hammer in a nail, would you?
Actually, if the spanner is big enough...
Not so much (Score:2)
They still canâ(TM)t learn to fly underwater.
Watching crows play confirms this. (Score:5, Interesting)
Watching YouTube videos of crows playing confirms this IMHO. One particular video shows a crow repeatedly riding sleigh with a can-lid on a snowy rooftop. The bird grabs the lid with it's beak, walks up the roof, puts down the lid, hops on top and starts slinging down the roof, spreading it's wings for balance. Once at the bottom the crows repeats all that, two or three times. It's absolutely amazing to watch a creature other than a human or homilis mammal to be engaged in complex play like that. You see the birds limitations due to its limbs but the intent is totally obvious.
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See any of crows mourning their dead? They do! Most, if not all, of the Corvids do.
So what? I've seen a squirrel looking frantic at another dead squirrel.
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I was out bird hunting long ago, and heard a shot from one of my companions. He had (for reasons still unknown) shot a crow, and it landed on my side of a canal that was too deep and wide to ford. Being the only person on that side, and seeing the wounded bird (he had been hit in the wing), I had to go finish it off so it wouldn't suffer unduly. This bird saw me coming, and immediately left the grassy area, ducking into a copse of small trees. He couldn't fly, but could still move on the ground fairly w
The actual video. (Score:3)
Crow riding sleigh. [youtube.com] .. Ok, it flies up. Didn't recall that correctly.
Or (Score:2)
Experiments showed that crows found the stems they desired even when they had been disguised with leaves from a different plant species. This suggested that the birds were selecting a kind of material for their tools that they knew was just right for the job.
Or they have much better noses and those stems smell like a beacon in the night.
Our pathetic noses make us live in a visual world. We laugh at a dog or cat that stares at a wall or door from an inch away, but they're sitting there like Supergirl hearing and sniffing with X-ray ears and noses looking right through it.
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Most birds have a quite poor sense of smell. There are exceptions to this. Kiwi, vultures, some seabirds. But as a general rule, bird sense of smell is present but much less developed than you'd find in a typical mammal. They do generally have excellent color vision though - almost all mammal species have little ability to distinguish colors, with primates being a very notable exception.
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Our sense of smell is actually pretty good. Humans are better than dogs at detecting some odorants, particular plant-based ones, which makes sense given our respective heritages. We just tend to pay much less attention to our sense of smell than sight and we have much less rich language to describe smells than sights or sounds. Also, since we started walking upright, our noses are way up in the air away from a lot of the interesting smells, so they get utilized less than they would if we spent all our ti
Does this explain... (Score:2)
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Well, yeah (Score:2)
Ranking the intelligence of animals seems an increasingly pointless exercise when one considers the really important thing: how well that animal is adapted to its niche. Intelligence is, first and foremost, a means towards specialization.
Well, yeah.
People like to argue about, say, how they think cats are dumb. I always rely "well, they are very smart at being cats."
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My cat is quite skilled in getting us to solve her problems.
I've used a wrench (spanner) to bang in nails... (Score:2)
Then teach them to read.... (Score:2)
Definition of (Score:2)
Then maybe what we should be looking at instead is, how broad is that niche? For humans, that "niche" appears to pretty much the entire landmass of the planet...
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Then maybe what we should be looking at instead is, how broad is that niche? For humans, that "niche" appears to pretty much the entire landmass of the planet...
Not just the landmass. [conradmaldives.com] Actual photograph, not a rendering.
Known for years (Score:2)
See https://www.amazon.com/Those-C... [amazon.com], based on the author's observations.
Crows (Score:2)
How do you tell the difference between ravens and crows?
The long straight tail feathers on these birds are called pinions. Crows are known to have 7 pinions, while ravens have 8.
So the difference between a raven and a crow is a matter of a pinion.
Also, did you know when you see a murder of crows, nobody dies?
That's because a group of crows is called a murder.
Well, technically it's only a murder if there's probable caws.
It matters (Score:2)
"[Crows] have instead evolved densely packed clusters of neurons that afford them similar mental prowess. The specific kind of brain they have doesn't really matter"
It does matter. The crow/bird model of brain may in many respects be a better choice to model AI after than the human brain because it is far more dense and efficient.
IOW, crows are the aliens we've been looking for (Score:2)
A whole parallel world of cognition that interacts with ours. Ordinary and spooky simultaneously.
My observation of the intelligence of a blue jay (Score:2)
Right tool for the job (Score:2)
You wouldn't use a spanner to hammer in a nail, would you?
I would (and have done) if no hammer is available.
Mayte? (Score:2)
Re: Mayte? (Score:2)
That would certainly explain their aggressive behaviors and constantly getting into fights with other birds ;-)
Re: Humans aren't as clever either (Score:5, Insightful)
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Children in a group would be a different thing, be he's right about a child who grows up alone without social or intellectual stimulation:
He is comparing them to crows. Crows don't grow up alone without social structure.
Crows are smart and have been observed solving novel problems in ways that any rational observer would consider intelligent.
But they have only simple communication. They can't pass on knowledge through communication instead of demonstration. They can't communicate about events that are separated in time and place from here-and-now.
Re: Humans aren't as clever either (Score:4, Interesting)
That seems to fit - it's just turned summer here, and a mating pair of magpies who infrequently hit me up for food have just introduced their juvenile to me, presumably to teach it something along the lines of "when food gets scarce, try this place, flap your wings and make 'feed me' noises, this creature with the horn-rim glasses will give you some meat scraps"
OTOH, how did they communicate "come with us?" I live about kilometre away from their usual haunt.
They seem to know me - I can walk under their nesting tree and not get "swooped". Don't under-estimate breeding magpies - they will draw blood if they think you're a threat.
Re: Humans aren't as clever either (Score:4, Informative)
Picture that territorial magpie behavior. Now picture it coming from a much larger seabird with a razor-sharp bill that attacks a whole flock at a time, with the shrill cry of a harpie, while pooping on you. And now you have the arctic tern. ;)
Terns suck. At least fulmars, while they'll projectile vomit a sticky acrid mess on you if you come too close, actually wait for you to get close to their nest. They're justified. Terns? Meh. "This huge plot of land is ours. Bugger off or die!"
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Picture that territorial magpie behavior. Now picture it coming from a much larger seabird with a razor-sharp bill that attacks a whole flock at a time, with the shrill cry of a harpie, while pooping on you. And now you have the arctic tern. ;)
Got kicked out of class one day, when they tried to give me one of the buggers.
Claimed that I wouldn't take my tern.
Re: Humans aren't as clever either (Score:4, Interesting)
We have some regular visitors in the form of blue tits (we also get some coal, crested, and greater) that seems to be a family group that returns to the same bushes every year to have their chicks and who will come and rap on the kitchen window when the feeders need filling up. As a species, they're a natural on feeders and are usually the first to figure out the new ones, but have also seemingly got the entire process sussed which puts them ahead of most of the others; they not only know where the food is ultimately coming from, but also how to ensure it keeps coming, and are remarkably quick in teaching the trick to their fledglings. They'll also quite happily sit on the branch while I'm topping up the feeder it's supporting, so I'm obviously in the "not a threat" category like you are with the magpies. Crows (we mostly have hooded) are usually slightly ahead of the ravens and magpies; although not by much, and will figure out how they can extract food sooner or later, including by taking turns to grasp the top of the feeder and shake it so seeds nuts fall out to those waiting below. I've also seen crows poking the holes with sticks to dislodge whatever is within, but not seen any similar tool usage from the magpies or ravens yet.
Down at the bottom end of the scale are the ground foragers like sparrows and robins, both taking much longer to work out a solution for new feeders and seemingly unable to figure out how to perch on a suitable twig or integrated perch and access the contents of the feeders, they mostly resort to flapping furiously to try and hover and grab a few bits and pieces on the wing, or to wait until the larger birds are feeding to grab anything that falls to the ground. The wood pidgeons, doves, jays, and some fowl simply do not have a clue on accessing the feeders and just scratch around below, although in some of those cases it may well not be so much they can't figure it out as being physically incapable of performing the necessary in-flight/perching actions.
Other than gulls and terns which probably couldn't access the feeders anyway and don't seem interested in foraging for any scraps from them, the other species we get regularly are not really in large enough numbers to really establish if there is a pattern of behaviour or not; the various finches all seem to be on a par with the tits, and the blackbirds, starlings, and thrushes don't seem interested in the feeders at all although they will forage below, so maybe they just can't manage to perch in a suitable manner to access them, can't hover with enough accuracy either, and so don't bother.
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That seems to fit - it's just turned summer here, and a mating pair of magpies who infrequently hit me up for food have just introduced their juvenile to me, presumably to teach it something along the lines of "when food gets scarce, try this place, flap your wings and make 'feed me' noises, this creature with the horn-rim glasses will give you some meat scraps"
We should make it clear that you're talking about Australian magpies which are unrelated to the northern Corvid variety. However Aussie magpies also have a good supply of brains.
Re: Humans aren't as clever either (Score:2)
Crows are very social. They can even learn to mimic human speech like parrots do. I would not discount the ability to verbalize knowledge to pass it on to generations. We might not actually understand what we are observing.
If you think crows are impressive, their bigger counterpart, ravens, are amazing, albeit narcissistic.
Re: Humans aren't as clever either (Score:4, Interesting)
Crows are very social. They can even learn to mimic human speech like parrots do. I would not discount the ability to verbalize knowledge to pass it on to generations. We might not actually understand what we are observing.
If you think crows are impressive, their bigger counterpart, ravens, are amazing, albeit narcissistic.
Ravens are indeed fascinating birds. I've had a few interactions with both crows and ravens that have left me in no doubt of their intelligence.
The strangest interaction that shows some thought was once I rescued a fledgeling Blue Jay from my backyard pond. Poor critter was cold and tired, so I set a hair drier a couple feet from him to dry and warm him. after 15 minutes or so, he started showing interest again, another 15 minutes and he flew off.
That wasn't the surprising part. The next time I went outside a little later, an adult Blue Jay landed on the patio table inches from my face, and made some strange clacking sounds and bill motions that I have never heard coming out of a Blue Jay. Then it flew off.
What did that mean? I'm not going to say I know for sure, but a wild animal made an effort to do something out of character after I did something that benefited what might have been it's offspring. But it was interesting, I'll say that much.
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"But they have only simple communication. They can't pass on knowledge through communication instead of demonstration. They can't communicate about events that are separated in time and place from here-and-now."
You are wrong on both counts. Read up on the crows/mask experiment. Another generation, never part of the original, reacted *appropriately* to masks they had never seen. Most likely explanation is that they received descriptions from the prior generation.
And crows are one of only four animals that
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Why exactly do you think they'd be stupid?
He's probably a parent.
Re: Humans aren't as clever either (Score:4, Informative)
I have studied children, and their development, for various reasons. They don't develop well without other people ro provide a society, to provide structure for them. And no, they do not "learn a new language from scratch". They learn it from their parents, their caregivers, and their peers. They also lean _everything_ about their culture and their roles in it. Without learning language, stories, mores, and even learning deceit and truth-telling, their intelligence is profoundly hampered. There are cases of children growing up in extreme deprivation or poverty or even "raised by wolves" who are poofoundly hindered by the lack of social education.
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I have studied children, and their development, ... And no, they do not "learn a new language from scratch". They learn it from their parents, their caregivers, and their peers.
Your studies have inexplicable gaps. The ability of children to invent language is well documented. e.g.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/0... [nytimes.com]
Re: Humans aren't as clever either (Score:5, Interesting)
I came across a fascinating case study (that I can't find now) where a small group of deaf immigrants that had never been given any form of language was found living together. They would share "stories" by acting them out for each other, but a wide array of concepts were unavailable to them because, apparently, language is necessary for the brain to be able to process them. Memories weren't encoded the same way either.
When one was taught language, it was like he became a new person. His pre-linguistic life was very difficult for him to remember or discuss. He was uncomfortable around his old roommates and couldn't communicate with them anymore. He could form and use ideas they simply couldn't.
Turns out, the use of language to represent complex ideas with a simple representative tag makes a lot of things possible that wouldn't otherwise be.
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The deaf children growing up without language because their families lack the knowledge to help them expose the problem even more profoundly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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> I would expect children raised in isolation who you somehow managed to still feed during their pre-walking instant years would develop their own group language and social structure.
Keep bringing completely unverifiable hypotheses.
Re: Humans aren't as clever either (Score:5, Informative)
I would expect children raised in isolation who you somehow managed to still feed during their pre-walking instant years would develop their own group language and social structure.
We have some evidence of what actually happens from children in orphanages who've been severely neglected, e.g. in Ceauescu's Romania. They suffer from a debilitating lack of socialisation & consequent language disorders. Children need adult caregivers to impart language to them.
Children are linguistic geniuses. They learn a new language from scratch in a few short years only through osmosis without another base language for comparative learning.
No, children aren't linguistic geniuses, they're just open minded. Young children actually pick the language(s) in their environment very slowly because they are limited by what they can already understand. The more they know, the faster they can learn, so language acquisition starts slowly & accelerates up until their late teens or early twenties. This is the highest, most efficient point of language acquisition. After that, there's a slow, gradual decline. This means that adults are better at learning languages than children. The only advantage that children seem to have over adults is their ability to pick up native-like accents.
With language comes communication, organization, shared learning/teaching, and so on.
Again, no. It's the other way around. Both phylogenetically (i.e. in evolution) & ontogenetically (i.e. individuals' development/growing up) non-verbal communication, cooperation, & share frames of attention, emerge before language. It's actually impossible to learn language without these pre-requisites in place, e.g. People with autism spectrum disorders have problems with learning language because they are less sensitive to/aware of the social cues that bring about & support meaning making in non-verbal communication, cooperation, & share frames of attention.
Why exactly do you think they'd be stupid?
In humans, evolution has been superseded by culture. In order to be successful, we have to learn all the most useful stuff that our ancestors have come up with so far, AKA knowledge. Without our social support systems, we wouldn't be able to learn anywhere near as much stuff as we do from cultural socialisation & education.
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Adults are indeed better in learning languages.
But adults (aka schools) are incredible stupid in teaching them.
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This means that adults are better at learning languages than children.
What no they are not.
Children learn to speak as natives. Adults generally do not. Ever. And I'm not talking about just accents.
You can dump a child into a foreign language environment with no teaching, no materials, nothing and they will become a native speaker. Adults simply cannot do that.
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It was (allegedly) tried. In short: the children died.
The following is from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
An experiment allegedly carried out by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the 13th century saw young infants raised without human interaction in an attempt to determine if there was a natural language that they might demonstrate once their voices matured. It is claimed he was seeking to discover what language would have been imparted into Adam and Eve by God.
The experiments were recorded by the monk
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Your theoretical 'uneducated child' would have to be deaf, blind, and have no sense of touch, completely isolated.
There's a case study on this - turns out the child sure played a mean pinball.
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No they wouldn't. (Score:2)
they wouldn't look as stupid as a crow, not even how to speak.
if some of them survived enough to be old, it would be fairly easy to distinguish that they have capabilities to understand things in more abstract terms than you could display with crows. more importantly you could teach them things easier.
humans aren't alone in that regard either that they need parental care to survive childhood too. usually humans are clever enough to understand that and don't just leave babies in the forest expecting them to