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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

#321

Post by magicalhippo »

sensanaty wrote: post #318
axaxs wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you haven't watched it already, you should check out 'Dancing With The Birds' on Netflix. Maybe I'm biased being a huge bird lover, but man that movie left me in awe. This scene in particular... https://youtu.be/Eg0iSIHIK34

On a slight tangent, but is it just me or is this video weirdly HD for 1080p on Youtube? It's incredibly crisp

Many compress quite a lot before uploading. For gaming for example, I noticed significant improvement if I uploaded the 100Mbps raw data from Shadowplay compared to say a 25Mbps intermediate version.

I also think the depth of field is helping a lot. By blurring out the background the bits can be spent encoding the details of the plumage.

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

#322

Post by qq12as »

I do not understand why this is about consciousness. My take of this study is that they establish that there are two type of neurons: (i) those recording whether there is a signal ("neurons signalling stimulus intensity" (ii) those recording how to react on the signal based on a rule ("representing the crows' percept").

This is cool, but what does this to have to do with consciousness? They mention that they're not sure either about "phenomenal consciousness" and "access consciousness", but I wish they elaborated further on this.

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

#323

Post by r721 »

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 was a news story about dolphins bringing gifts as well: https://7news.com.au/news/wildlife/dolphins-bring-gifts-from...

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

#324

Post by yellowapple »

hexbinencoded wrote: post #237
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…

Yep. You can make friends with crows, and they will remember you for a very long time. If you get shiny things, then you're the crow's meow. Bones maybe just "meh." https://youtu.be/dg3ApNJct6Q https://youtu.be/0fiAoqwsc9g https://youtu.be/HWXe7Js6GnI https://youtu.be/VOmRNeYZVfE Furthermore, crows can be sneaky. A murder of them hanging out behind my mechanic's goaded the dork of the group into stealing a bag sunflo…

Not only will those crows remember you, but so will other crows that have never seen you before. There's growing evidence that crows are capable of social learning, teaching things to other crows in the murder (including subsequent generations).

I strongly suspect that one of these days we're going to discover that crows and their relatives are not only capable of using language, but already are speaking languages that we just haven't deciphered yet.

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

#325

Post by yellowapple »

hutzlibu wrote: post #311
zw123456 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So am I am the god then ? hahaha Well, from a "devout" atheist, you tickled my funny bone :)

Ah, I am not so sure, crows consider humans gods. They kind of lack respect for that ..

I mean, it ain't like we humans are known for being consistently reverent toward our own gods, either.

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

#326

Post by derbOac »

qq12as wrote: post #322

I do not understand why this is about consciousness. My take of this study is that they establish that there are two type of neurons: (i) those recording whether there is a signal ("neurons signalling stimulus intensity" (ii) those recording how to react on the signal based on a rule ("representing the crows' percept"). This is cool, but what does this to have to do with consciousness? They mention that they're not s…

I don't think it does unfortunately. It's an interesting study but this article — either through the original research or its coverage — is distorting appropriate interpretation. It's common of a lot of neuroscience research. The task, too, taps an ability/process that's thought to be key to intelligence, but isn't that distinctive, and is found in a lot of animals. Again, interesting study, crows are smart, but not exactly what it's being billed as, like you say.

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

#327

Post by yellowapple »

patcon wrote: post #215
sharkweek wrote: post #26

My crow story, which I think I've mentioned on here before. We have young children, and thus the back of our car is always a little disgusting with things like goldfish crackers littered all over the floor and in-between the cracks of their car seats. We got in the habit of throwing the crumbs out onto the driveway when we got home. It didn't take long for us to notice anytime we pulled in, the crows would be lined u…

Neat! I wonder if a biologist might describe this type of behaviour (attacking perceived threats to the creature that produces your renewable food source) as primitive agriculture. Maybe the crows were just tending to your children like livestock? ;) People talk about ants practicing agriculture, but sounds like maybe these crows are making a foray into it as well :)

That actually does make me wonder if crows could be trained to engage in conventional forms of agriculture. Can they learn to plant a seed and wait for it to grow into a source of many seeds? Are they capable of thinking ahead on those sorts of timescales?

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

#328

Post by EvanAnderson »

crehn wrote: post #251
EvanAnderson wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an American crow at a local wildlife rescue that will periodically say "American crow." I feel fortunate that I got to make a recording of it.

So you're just going to mention the recording without sharing it?

Heh heh... Was going to bed. Now that I've had some time to dig it out, here it is:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/109wzdIsVW7hZwX1-8M3IioUMr49...

That's one of the American crows at Brukner Nature Center, Troy, OH US in 2019.

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

#329

Post by SonOfLilit »

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…

If plants were highly generally intelligent (as I suspect corvids are) and if I were able to convince them that they would get a prize they highly desire if they solve a difficult Sokoban level with controls they can use (which has been done many times with corvids) then I would definitely expect them to solve the level given a few decades or centuries, yes.

(I personally don't believe plants to possess general intelligence, but I would be delighted to discover I'm wrong)

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

#330

Post by b0rsuk »

hexbinencoded wrote: post #237
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…

Yep. You can make friends with crows, and they will remember you for a very long time. If you get shiny things, then you're the crow's meow. Bones maybe just "meh." https://youtu.be/dg3ApNJct6Q https://youtu.be/0fiAoqwsc9g https://youtu.be/HWXe7Js6GnI https://youtu.be/VOmRNeYZVfE Furthermore, crows can be sneaky. A murder of them hanging out behind my mechanic's goaded the dork of the group into stealing a bag sunflo…

Jays (another corvid) are fast, sneaky, and mostly silent until they screech. The funny part is they're great at mimicking sounds. Here's a jay mimicking a cat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=YFdO_5DgK7M

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