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Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

bbc.com

61–70 of 443 posts

Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

#61
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe many creatures feel relatable emotions, because of its value to survival.

Yes that is true. But birds feel less than cats and dogs. They have less neurons. This is a stupid article but god knows people on this site love to read articles and then parrot them as fact immediately after

Would you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebaity comments to HN? You've done it repeatedly and we ban accounts that do this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

#63

This article focuses mostly on problem solving, planning, and tool use as the primary hallmarks of intelligence. But what problem does writing a poem solve? Do you have to be intelligent to write a great poem? What about the intelligence need to compose a great whale song[1]? Or paint a great painting? These are things not measured on intelligence tests and that don't fit well in to scientific experiments because the…

I think larger the population, larger the hyperconnection less interesting/impactful is individual intelligence and creativity. What will overshadow individuals is what the group intelligence/creativity produces.

There are no Van Gogh's anymore just Pixar.

Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

#65
post #53

I was recently reading the Wikipedia page about comparative neuron counts in the brains of various animals. The most notable observation to me at the time was that ravens have a similar neuron count that of to pigs and dogs--far more than cats, for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_n...

It seems neuron counts matter, but at the same time they don't have a big effect?

Elephants are intelligent but not that much per the number of cells. Raccons are probably more intelligent than cats and have more neurons, ok. And why are Capybaras surprisingly high on the list?

Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

#67
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Early humans didn't have poetry. Were they not intelligent?

>Early humans didn't have poetry. [Citation Needed]

OK so speech has begun 100,000 years ago (perhaps earlier). My point stands: Would humans without poetry not be considered intelligent? Hardly.

Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

#68
I am wondering where sulphur-crested cockatoo are on the scale. Before seeing some in freedom up close in Australia, I never realized they actually could grab objects with their claws like they are hands and put them in their mouth.

They seemed very smart to me. I wonder if they lose to crow only because they are less prevalent around most labs in the world...

Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

#69
post #25

Previously I heard about crows in Japan leaving nuts on the way of the cars to crash them when traffic lights are red and collecting them the next cycle. This summer I witnessed the exact same thing when I was driving through a particularly jammy traffic light here in Europe. Are these crows inventing the method over and over again independently, like scientists finding the same thing at the same time in different pa…

I read an article about crows in Australia killing a very poisonous frog. They are able to teach each other was the conclusion of that article. I don't have time atm to find the article.

It’s mentioned in this article: http://theconversation.com/eat-your-heart-out-native-water-r...

Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

#70
I know someone who works at one of the London airports and is responsible for keeping the runway operational. One of the jobs is keeping the birds well clear, and if necessary, sadly, may resort to shooting.

The crows know the score though. This acquiantance says the crows know to disappear if they see the bird clearers. What's "clever" is that they only take flight if it's one of the shooters. They recognise the veichle(s) despite them being all the same fleet. So if someone else is driving round to check something else, the birds completely ignore. If it's the "bird guy" then off they go with little encouragement.

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