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Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

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Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#71

Post by hinkley »

saagarjha wrote: post #12
cassalian wrote: post #7

> crows know what they know and can ponder the content of their own minds, a manifestation of higher intelligence and analytical thought long believed the sole province of humans and a few other higher mammals. I've always found the common thought that only humans and a select few of other animals are the only ones that posses higher intelligence to be incredibly arrogant of our species. Why wouldn't they have higher…

Perhaps it’s humans that lack the higher intelligence that would allow them to understand that other species may also be intelligent.

I don't think it's intelligence, but humility.

We are (hopefully) transitioning through an era where being a conqueror is less successful than collaboration. But there are way too many of us who are less than seven generations separated from conquerors. Conquerors bank on exclusiveness, not inclusiveness.

We're still trying to convince each other that all the humans deserve to be in the Humanity Club. If we can't hack that, then who is going to want to talk about cetaceans and chimpanzees and corvids?

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#72

Post by liability »

spideymans wrote: post #65
novok wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans were effective in their intelligence and rule the world with it, no other animal has shown anything approaching something like that. You judge them by their results.

Would our physical abilities not play a role in our ability to "rule" the world? We're relatively large animals, blessed with arms, finger, thumbs and a remarkable degree of physical dexterity. These physical abilities collectively enable us to physically manipulate the world. Or in other words, if dolphins had arms and thumbs (or generally any physical attributes that allows them to manipulate their environment as h…

Besides lacking thumbs, dolphins would also have a pretty hard time harnessing fire as a tool. This probably truncates their tech tree severely.

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#73

Post by nicoburns »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #43
nicoburns wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell that to Orcas. They rule the seas.

Used to. Then humans invented boats and spears.

They largely still do. The Oceans are huge, both in terms of surface area and then in terms of depth.

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#74

Post by bryan0 »

I highly recommend this PBS special largely dealing with the intelligence of crows: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/a-murder-of-crows-introducti...

They might have had some other specials too, but in one they show them completing complicated multi-step challenges using tools to get food.

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#75

Post by p1necone »

spideymans wrote: post #65
novok wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans were effective in their intelligence and rule the world with it, no other animal has shown anything approaching something like that. You judge them by their results.

Would our physical abilities not play a role in our ability to "rule" the world? We're relatively large animals, blessed with arms, finger, thumbs and a remarkable degree of physical dexterity. These physical abilities collectively enable us to physically manipulate the world. Or in other words, if dolphins had arms and thumbs (or generally any physical attributes that allows them to manipulate their environment as h…

I'm endlessly grateful that Raccoons aren't more intelligent.

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#76

Post by jbotz »

novok wrote: post #20
cassalian wrote: post #7

> crows know what they know and can ponder the content of their own minds, a manifestation of higher intelligence and analytical thought long believed the sole province of humans and a few other higher mammals. I've always found the common thought that only humans and a select few of other animals are the only ones that posses higher intelligence to be incredibly arrogant of our species. Why wouldn't they have higher…

Humans were effective in their intelligence and rule the world with it, no other animal has shown anything approaching something like that. You judge them by their results.

We didn't come to rule the world with our intelligence... we came to rule it with fire.

Fire, control over it and the ability to make it, is the one thing humans have that no other animal has. We may (or not) be more intelligent, have a more complex capacity for language, etc., but those are differences of degree. Only fire is truly a difference of kind. We are the animal that makes fire.

Fire is literally what made us what we are... it is probable that increased availability of food calories from cooking was what allowed us to grow our big and calorically expensive brains. So fire comes before our vaunted intelligence. And then fire made us the most powerful creatures on earth, and enabled what we call civilization and technology and progress, each new stage in our development enabled by ever greater dissipation of energy gradients... mostly through fire. Although we did also harness other energy sources throughout history, such as wind and running water, and lately, nuclear fission, always fire was primary, the real driver of our dominion over the planet, even today.

And as it looks, fire will be our end as well, as we use it to release the fossil energy nature stored up over millions of years in mere decades and turn our lovely earth into an inferno.

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#77

Post by danjac »

novok wrote: post #20
cassalian wrote: post #7

> crows know what they know and can ponder the content of their own minds, a manifestation of higher intelligence and analytical thought long believed the sole province of humans and a few other higher mammals. I've always found the common thought that only humans and a select few of other animals are the only ones that posses higher intelligence to be incredibly arrogant of our species. Why wouldn't they have higher…

Humans were effective in their intelligence and rule the world with it, no other animal has shown anything approaching something like that. You judge them by their results.

Maybe the longer term results are different. If the Fermi Paradox is a thing, perhaps our brand of intelligence - the combination of brains and dexterity and environment that let us quickly advance from sophisticated tool building to a global industrial economy - is an evolutionary dead end and species that have gone down this path destroy their ecosystem and themselves along with it inside a few thousand years.

Whereas other intelligent species that lack the environment or manual dexterity to even light a fire will keep on going long after we're extinct.

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#79

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

derg wrote: post #45
novok wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans were effective in their intelligence and rule the world with it, no other animal has shown anything approaching something like that. You judge them by their results.

I don't necessarily completely disagree here, but I'm always thinking of the Douglas Adams quote in Hitchhiker's Guide on this: "For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had alw…

But this type of reasoning went out the window, as soon as humans started killing dolphins in large numbers (see tuna nets), and the dolphins had no way to defend themselves or otherwise dissuade humans from doing that.

This is one of the big lessons in history. The civilizations that use their intelligence to make tools and weapons end up screwing civilizations that "muck about, having a good time".

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#80

Post by liability »

snazz wrote: post #49
missedthecue wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The specifics of jumbo jet manufacture really has nothing to do with my point. The point of my comment is that there is a very evident and very clear discrepancy between human intelligence and animal intelligence. It's always fun to watch a clever squirrel find its way into a bird feeder, a cunning fox outsmart a rabbit, or a curious monkey recognize himself in the mirror. These are signs of sentience, sure, but all…

Building anything significant requires a relatively high level of dexterity, does it not? Even if crows could figure out how to build and operate tools that would allow them to build significant physical structures and objects, their bodies are not well-suited to doing so.

They can build nests. Nest building seems to often get overlooked in discussions about tool use, perhaps because shelter isn't traditionally considered a sort of tool? But it seems tool-like to me. Maybe nest building doesn't impress us because bugs do it too?
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