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Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

bbc.com

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Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

#371

Post by cwkoss »

pisky wrote: post #104
orthoxerox wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if they know how to use ATMs

Here in Australia most people now buy food and drink by tapping their bank cards on a reader. Can't be long now until a particularly smart crow sees this at a beach side shop, and steals a card to copy this. Is a shopkeeper obligated to serve other species? I for one will welcome our new flying thief overlords.

Joshua Klein built a crow vending machine with some success (using coins). Tap to pay could be quite a bit more profitable, though I assume you'd have a pretty high chargeback rate.

http://www.josh.is/crow-machine/

Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

#372

Post by comboy »

mettamage wrote: post #54
arketyp wrote: post #10

Birds' intelligence is especially interesting because the ontogeny differs from that of primates and other mammals like the dolphins. Maybe it can help triangulate our views about intelligence and give parallax insight into what general intelligence is and what to expect of AI without resorting to anthropocentric Turing test arguments only.

cephlapods, primates, crows. I wonder if someone studied all three.

wonder no more https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%2Bc...

Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

#373

Post by WalterBright »

derefr wrote: post #286
dta3456 wrote: post #139

When I was a child, I'd spend a lot of time at my grandfathers farm, and one summer he took in an injured crow that hurt its wing. For some strange reason, he named all of his animals Jack, cats, dogs and now crows. So we'd go out in the morning and my grandfather would call out "Jack" and the Dog would come running down the yard, and then next thing you'd see the crow hopping down the yard after the dog. It would ar…

> So we'd go out in the morning and my grandfather would call out "Jack" and the Dog would come running down the yard, and then next thing you'd see the crow hopping down the yard after the dog. Tangent: this is a handy effect, if you could get it to work, but it’s a bit surprising if it did work: animals have different audible frequency ranges, and, obviously, they’ll only respond to a name they can hear. Dogs and c…

> such that a name like “jack” wouldn’t even register to them

My experience disagrees. I often have a back and forth "conversation" with my cat, and she clearly responds to my voice, which is not high pitched.

Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

#374

Post by CPLX »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #340
CPLX wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any other form of learning?

humans are able to take concepts and and predict with 100% accuracy what will happen next without trial and error. We also have arithmetic which also is not trial and error.

> We also have arithmetic which also is not trial and error.

How did you learn arithmetic?

Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

#375

Post by puranjay »

sb057 wrote: post #267
orthoxerox wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if they know how to use ATMs

If this video is to be believed, they understand the concept of using a card at an ATM, but can't quite grasp exactly what to do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWfVIjSdxTk

To be fair, when ATMs were first introduced here, most people struggled to use them too

Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

#376

Post by markdown »

bdamm wrote: post #334
klenwell wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a wonderful story. My only New Year's resolution this year was to befriend a crow. So far, no progress. Maybe next year.

You'd probably need to start with a lone crow. As a group they can be quite nefarious and clever about it. I once slowed down a group of crows from killing and eating an injured bird; once they boldly got past my interference, they formed a sub-group and that sub-group followed me all the way home (1/2 mile) hopping from tree to tree, cawing the whole way.

> they formed a sub-group and that sub-group followed me all the way home

A subgroup of crows is called a manslaughter

Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

#378

Post by thatguy0900 »

perl4ever wrote: post #369
zozbot234 wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the thing. You said a "jackdaw is a kind of crow." Is it in the same family? Yes. No one's arguing that. Ask someone who is a scientist who studies crows, and he'll tell you, specifically, in science, no one calls jackdaws crows. If you want to be specific, then you shouldn't either. They're not the same thing. If you're saying "crow family" you're referring to the taxonomic grouping of Corvidae, which include…

I'm sorry, are you having an argument with someone about jackdaws in a parallel universe? If you want to have one with me, you've got to...ease into it.

It's a famous reddit copypasta

Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

#379

Post by Terr_ »

DagAgren wrote: post #175
classified wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you forgetting the birds of prey?

Where I live, an island right by the mainland, birds of prey are not allowed. If one shows up, the crows will all take to the air, maybe fifty to a hundred of them, and will yell and chase the bird of prey until it leaves the island. Once it is over water, they will give a few last screams and turn around and go back to their business. I've seen a bird of prey try to dive and swoop low over the land to evade them. Th…

Keyword: Mobbing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobbing_(animal_behavior)#In_b...

Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

#380

Post by inkstain »

dbingham wrote: post #279
dta3456 wrote: post #139

When I was a child, I'd spend a lot of time at my grandfathers farm, and one summer he took in an injured crow that hurt its wing. For some strange reason, he named all of his animals Jack, cats, dogs and now crows. So we'd go out in the morning and my grandfather would call out "Jack" and the Dog would come running down the yard, and then next thing you'd see the crow hopping down the yard after the dog. It would ar…

Crows also have vocal chords capable of producing human language, and - similar to parrots - they can learn human phrases in the right conditions. My partner used to volunteer at the local Wildcare and they had an injured crow resident that they couldn't release named Da Vinci. Da Vinci would always greet visitors with "Hello! How are you? How are you?"

My wife and I used to return to the same place in the woods and would try to attract and feed crows. Once we were packed up and preparing to leave with crows watching us as my wife distributed more peanuts while she was trying to caw like them but I then found that the crows were changing some of their caws seemingly to mimic my wife's imitation and then purely by accident I coughed and a nearby crow clearly mimicked my cough!

I love crows, they have lots of character if you take time to observe them.

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