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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

#191

Post by jaxx75 »

zw123456 wrote: post #175

I have a personal experience story regarding crows. This is completely anecdotal of course but, to me, compelling. I live on an island near Seattle, very quiet and rural. We have a lot of wild life. One morning I was woke by persistent crowing by... well crows. Black Crows (not the band). Having been awoke from wonderful REM sleep I was understandably annoyed. So I went out to the street in front of my house and grab…

Black Crows, REM, Kooks... I really kept reading this assuming it was a troll post, but still entertained by the anecdote!

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

#192

Post by bamurphymac1 »

After moving to Portland I've become enamored with our local corvids. Lots of Crows, Scrub Jays, Steller Jays. I toss them peanuts and they peek in the window looking for me.

Its fun to compare how cautious and skittish a murder of crows is compared to a mating pair of Scrub Jays. The little blue birds will swoop right in, feed a foot away from me, out of my hand, occasionally they've even hopped in the front door.

Meanwhile the crows will miss out on lots of tasty peanuts just watching the smaller birds show off their bravery and acrobatics.

That said: there are a lot more crows than scrub jays. The caution pays off.

They're fascinating to watch, the signs of intelligence are so clear, but at the same time they feel alien. They are very much not like us.

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

#193

Post by zw123456 »

sunnyP wrote: post #183
zw123456 wrote: post #175

I have a personal experience story regarding crows. This is completely anecdotal of course but, to me, compelling. I live on an island near Seattle, very quiet and rural. We have a lot of wild life. One morning I was woke by persistent crowing by... well crows. Black Crows (not the band). Having been awoke from wonderful REM sleep I was understandably annoyed. So I went out to the street in front of my house and grab…

It happens quite often around me too. They like to heckle a fox. Crows are the neighborhood predator alarm.

https://www.bing.com/search?q=black+crowes+lyrics&qs=SS&pq=b...

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

#194

Post by jancsika »

SonOfLilit wrote: post #18

Hopefully someone in the field will read this and be able to answer my question: I've spent a lot of time googling research about animal intelligence, and I now know a bunch of things intelligent animals can do, but I have no idea where their limits are, what they can't do. Everything published uses such... nonflexible tasks. If we're trying to measure general intelligence, why isn't anybody trying to teach corvids,…

> I know at least octopi can use computer screens, and I know they enjoy hard puzzles that reward them with food, so it should be easy to teach them some computer puzzle game?

I'm not sure it's that easy.

For example, suppose a race of hyperintelligent octopuses beam down and decide to study your intelligence. They notice in one test that if you begin scrambling eggs for breakfast and they cut off both your arms at the shoulder, your arms aren't able to finish scrambling the eggs.

"My, the intelligence in this species isn't very well-distributed," they and their tentacles agree.

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

#195

Post by zw123456 »

jaxx75 wrote: post #191
zw123456 wrote: post #175

I have a personal experience story regarding crows. This is completely anecdotal of course but, to me, compelling. I live on an island near Seattle, very quiet and rural. We have a lot of wild life. One morning I was woke by persistent crowing by... well crows. Black Crows (not the band). Having been awoke from wonderful REM sleep I was understandably annoyed. So I went out to the street in front of my house and grab…

Black Crows, REM, Kooks... I really kept reading this assuming it was a troll post, but still entertained by the anecdote!

I always love when reality and music collide in strange ways. It always drives my thinking into directions I don't expect.

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

#196

Post by zw123456 »

liveoneggs wrote: post #190
zw123456 wrote: post #175

I have a personal experience story regarding crows. This is completely anecdotal of course but, to me, compelling. I live on an island near Seattle, very quiet and rural. We have a lot of wild life. One morning I was woke by persistent crowing by... well crows. Black Crows (not the band). Having been awoke from wonderful REM sleep I was understandably annoyed. So I went out to the street in front of my house and grab…

crows and other birds are very good at recognizing faces so they absolutely know it's you

I do feel like they are my little buddies now. When ever I seem them I make a crowing sound. I think maybe they think I am a crazy bird. They are probably right. But, I weirdly feel like they are my friends. Hahaha.

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

#197

Post by pdonis »

sedatk wrote: post #185
pdonis wrote: post #126

The headline of the article, as is often the case, overstates what the actual research shows. Here is the actual claim made in the abstract of the paper: "We show that single-neuron responses in the pallial endbrain of crows performing a visual detection task correlate with the birds’ perception about stimulus presence or absence and argue that this is an empirical marker of avian consciousness." In other words: when…

The significance of the study is explained here: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6511/1567 As I understand, this study proves that birds have something equivalent of a cerebral cortex which has been considered exclusive to mammals. Cerebral cortex is critical for awareness, consciousness, thought, memory, and language. I don't know what's that got to do with "higher intelligence" though.

> this study proves that birds have something equivalent of a cerebral cortex

It shows that they have a brain area that is in the same general location, anatomically and developmentally speaking, and that that brain area shows neuron activity that correlates with behavior cues that they see an object they have been trained to look for.

> Cerebral cortex is critical for awareness, consciousness, thought, memory, and language.

It is in humans. But humans provide a huge amount of behavioral evidence for these capacities, far beyond that brain area showing neuron activity when we give a signal we were trained by conditioning to give when we see something we were trained by conditioning to look for.

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

#198

Post by jMyles »

jychang wrote: post #137
notahacker wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nets aren't a plot to subjugate the dolphins though; for the most part humans would rather not have dolphin bycatch. They're just something that dolphins haven't collectively figured out how to avoid.

That’s like saying humans aren’t intelligent because they can’t avoid car accidents in the rain. Even if you were super intelligent, i bet you’d get fucked up in a net if you had low visibility in the water, you were traveling at high speed, and you didn’t have opposable thumbs to untangle yourself.

> humans aren’t intelligent because they can’t avoid car accidents in the rain

A reasonable exhibit one for the presently observable limits on (at least collective) human intelligence.

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

#199

Post by asdasfasdfasdf »

rewq4321 wrote: post #10
NDizzle wrote: post #3

I’ve always thought this was confirmed with the video of one snowboarding down a roof. https://youtu.be/1WupH8oyrAo

Amazing. It carries its "sled" back up to the top, stands on it, and pecks it get it started. Whenever I see stuff like this, I can only think about this[0] (normal operation in US and AU at least), and how absurd it is that we treat animals like this, knowing how intelligent they are. [0] https://i.imgur.com/ucJNZoX.png

Imagine if these were dogs in the photo. People would lose their minds.

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

#200

Post by selectodude »

tomc1985 wrote: post #178
lehi wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dragonflies execute predictive flight patterns to catch prey mid-flight with 95% accuracy, so that ability alone may not be a good proxy for intelligence: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26684-dragonflies-ant...

Dogs can catch all kinds of things mid-air. Mine has started doing so with rocks (sigh)...

Dogs are pretty smart though. My one dog is very smart and can easily nab things out of the air. My less intelligent dog can't tell his ass from his elbow and things hit him in the face all the time.
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