Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute • Hacker News Board

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

#271

Post by filoeleven » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 5:45 AM UTC

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,…

Definitely a neat idea! Your local cooperative extension service should be able to get you in touch with an animal behavior expert, since they are often affiliated with colleges.

Thinking about the project with corvids in mind, I’d suggest two nuances to your protocol.

1. Stick with plain mazes that have no crates in order to train the association with the onscreen character. Basically just spending more time with navigating mazes of increasing complexity before introducing crates at all. Then if they succeed with those, scale the maze complexity back down and add the crate mechanic.

2. Make use of audio. Birds have great eyes, but their natural interaction will be with their beaks, and I’m not sure how easy it is for them to track the onscreen motion while pecking. Using sound to signify “move to empty space” vs “tried to move into a wall” vs “pushed a crate” vs “got snack” could tighten the feedback loop for them and let you see them planning ahead: “I see I have to go ‘up, up, right‘ to get the snack, so I’ll press those buttons without checking the screen each time to confirm.” Might even be good for “move to empty space” to have a unique sound for each direction.

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

#272

Post by filoeleven » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 5:55 AM UTC

grawprog wrote: post #250

SonOfLilit wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"General Intelligence" is a well defined term and there's a lot of literature on why it makes sense. There are many human cognitive skills that seem to be very helpful for some specific tasks (e.g. noticing that someone is watching you, identifying the pitch of a strummed guitar string) but are not very useful in general, but others (e.g. analogous thinking) that we found to be relevant to a vast range of cognitive t…

That was kind of my point, all of that is through a human centric point of view. What if higher intelligence is something else? Look at say plants, they've been shown to be intelligent in various ways. https://academic.oup.com/aob/article/92/1/1/177536 Now, when you take an ecosystem like a forest, something interesting happens. The plants begin to communicate with eachother using electrical signals passed along the…

Those seem like great reasons to focus our efforts on things that are very close to us in their mode of being first, and expand from there as we learn more examples. Plants and fungi being broadly sessile means that their cognition, if they have it, will be expressed in radically different ways from ours. Whereas birds or dolphins are a lot like us: brains and bodies.

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

#273

Post by m463 » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 6:01 AM UTC

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,…

a vending machine for crows:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PXjhMzvv4M

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

#274

Post by inglor_cz » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 6:06 AM UTC

UI_at_80x24 wrote: post #209

liveoneggs wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What makes Corvids truly fascinating, is that their offspring will be taught to recognize them too.

Isn't it fascinating that even a different species must have some expression for "stay away from that Karen"?

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

#275

Post by m463 » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 6:07 AM UTC

sedatk wrote: post #186

neckardt wrote: post #78

Researchers Find Crows Smart Enough Not To Let On How Smart They Really Are: https://www.theonion.com/researchers-find-crows-smart-enough...

"Man has always assumed that he is more intelligent than dolphins because he has achieved so much--the wheel, New York, wars and so on -- while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But, conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons." --Douglas Adams

Ha, loosely related but not the same subject...

It reminds me of when David Brin was trying to say Dolphins might not be that smart.

https://davidbrin.com/nonfiction/dogmaofotherness.html

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

#276

Post by isolli » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 6:31 AM UTC

One thing that is remarkable about crows is that they are most likely more intelligent than primates, despite having a much smaller brain. It looks like they evolved high intelligence separately, using different brain circuitry from ours.

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

#277

Post by liability » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 6:33 AM UTC

hnick wrote: post #227

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…

Magpies (unrelated to European magpies) are similar in Australia. There are stories of multi-generational respect (that is, the parents teach the next generation not to swoop and annoy the nice human). Wikipedia says they can remember up to 100 people. Here are a few nice stories: https://theconversation.com/magpies-can-form-friendships-wit...

> Wikipedia says they can remember up to 100 people.

Damn, that might be more than I can.

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

#278

Post by puranjay » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 6:35 AM UTC

renjimen wrote: post #265

puranjay wrote: post #261

We keep discovering that more and more animals are far more intelligent than we thought. It makes me question the very idea of eating meat.

Douglas Hofstadter writes about intelligence being the reason behind his (almost) vegetarianism. If I recall correctly, he doesn't have any qualms about swatting a mosquito because on the sliding scale of intelligence they're somewhere near the bottom, being about as sophisticated as some software he could write himself. He doesn't think twice about deleting software, so why hold reservations about killing an insect?…

To take your point further, I wonder as we move closer and closer to artificial general intelligence, would deleting software or even a piece of code be truly 'ethical'? You are destroying intelligence, after all. I have zero doubt that we will have AI that's at least as smart as a dog within our lifetimes, if not true AGI

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

#279

Post by jacobush » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 6:38 AM UTC

lemmonii wrote: post #238

monkeybutton wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment reminded me of another article about crows. It sounds like gifting is a known phenomenon but isn't that well established or researched. https://www.audubon.org/news/did-crows-actually-make-these-g...

Is there a possibility of human-crow co-evolution? I really can't think of any other reason the crow would give gifts.

There is an idea about Crow-Wolf co-evolution. Humans could take the Wolf place quite easily IMHO.

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

#280

Post by sriku » Fri, Sep 25, 2020, 6:40 AM UTC

The intelligence of crows takes part in many folk tales in India. Even the venerable kids mag "Tinkle" picked up on this in the "Kalia the crow" series.

Crows are also fed by staunch Hindus in the belief that they represent the souls of their ancestors. The crows catch on this behaviour and pretty soon start asking for food at the right place and at the right time to the right person.