Crows have been shown to understand the concept of zero • Hacker News Board

Re: Crows have been shown to understand the concept of zero

#161

Post by MichaelZuo » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 8:27 PM UTC

caddemon wrote: post #138

MichaelZuo wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fMRI uses the highest powered MRI machines with perhaps slightly higher quality and calibration right? Has there been any improvement in the baseline quality once you exclude the dubious groups?

TBH I'm not sure exactly what the hardware entails, I just work on the same floor as a couple labs that use the fMRI facilities so I know how much people stress over booking time on the machines. They somewhat recently added a new one that has stronger magnets but the older ones are still frequently booked solid too. From a neuroscience perspective I do think the good fMRI labs have improved their analyses over time.…

Thanks that’s really interesting stuff. Since machine availability is a big pain point it would be interesting if anyone’s run the numbers on when it becomes worth it to organize a few groups to buy a machine. A solely research dedicated one.

Re: Crows have been shown to understand the concept of zero

#162

Post by IntrepidWorm » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 10:27 PM UTC

wraptile wrote: post #144

IntrepidWorm wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely it implies an ability to count incrementally, which is all OP was implying? The dog does not have to abstract the concept of '3' to be able to count- it's still very interesting.

> Surely it implies an ability to count incrementally Not necessarily. It could be just ability observe scale not individual numbers. i.e. 3 bags look big enough amount of bags for a walk not that there are 3 bags. Would the dog not come when 4 bags are taken? What if 2 bigger bags are taken? It's kinda hard to deduce anything from this anecdote other than the dog seems to understand a pattern.

Perhaps I was reading too far into OP's anecdote then, but it seemed there was a delay between bag pulls, and that only after the third bag the dog responded. I also was under the impression that this was occuring out of direct line of sight (as the dog was coming down the stairs following the third bag) and so suggested the dog was interpreting the pulls incrementally rather than picking up on the handful of three bags through direct observation.

Re: Crows have been shown to understand the concept of zero

#163

Post by krylon » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 7:02 PM UTC

Gravey wrote: post #39

krylon wrote: post #20

The more I learn about animal intelligence, the more I suspect we grossly underestimate it. I recently saw a video of a seagull that entered a grocery store through the automatic door, picked up a (non-transparent) bag of potato chips (or something similar), walked out again, opened the bag and ate the chips. Think about it for a moment, the bird has to understand (to a degree) how an automatic door works, and that t…

I once watched several seagulls peck at a closed clamshell container containing pizza crusts for over half an hour. Clearly there is an upper bound to their intelligence.

I once spent ten minutes frantically looking for my wristwatch. It was very stressful, because I had to go to school, and I did not have much time left to catch the bus. So after a while (like I said, about ten minutes), I looked at my wristwatch to see how much time I had left. It took another 30 seconds for me to realize that I had been wearing my wristwatch the whole time.

Being smart does not save you (and not me, either!) from being dumb. And there have been times in my life when I was able to substitute inventiveness with stubbornness.

So there are upper bounds to everyone's intelligence, human or animal[0], genius or idiot. Given the variety we can observe in our fellow humans, I think it's fair to assume birds have their "village idiots", too.

[0] Except for barnacles, of course, but they are very discreet about it.

Re: Crows have been shown to understand the concept of zero

#164

Post by krylon » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 11:51 PM UTC

ducktective wrote: post #22

krylon wrote: post #20

The more I learn about animal intelligence, the more I suspect we grossly underestimate it. I recently saw a video of a seagull that entered a grocery store through the automatic door, picked up a (non-transparent) bag of potato chips (or something similar), walked out again, opened the bag and ate the chips. Think about it for a moment, the bird has to understand (to a degree) how an automatic door works, and that t…

I think this is parent's seagull: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMMVKymf9yA There is another one fancying cold sandwiches: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZZ822Za-nE

That's the one, yes! Amazing, aren't they? Walking around nonchalantly, like they own the place. ;-?

Re: Crows have been shown to understand the concept of zero

#165

Post by krylon » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 11:57 PM UTC

open-source-ux wrote: post #53

krylon wrote: post #20

The more I learn about animal intelligence, the more I suspect we grossly underestimate it. I recently saw a video of a seagull that entered a grocery store through the automatic door, picked up a (non-transparent) bag of potato chips (or something similar), walked out again, opened the bag and ate the chips. Think about it for a moment, the bird has to understand (to a degree) how an automatic door works, and that t…

" The more I learn about animal intelligence, the more I suspect we grossly underestimate it. " An example of something that might surprise many people: animals can use medicine. Here is a fascinating podcast that discuss the subject with researchers and experts. Podcast description: > Listener Andrew Chen got in touch to ask whether animals use any kind of medicine themselves. After all, our own drugs largely come f…

Blue Planet II depicts a group of Dolphins visiting a certain kind of coral that emits a substance that allegedly helps them fight off parasites.

Earlier BBC documentaries show animals (birds and fish) seek the "service" of certain types of fish to clean them from parasites.

So the idea of animals using medicine is kind of presenting itself. It's not totally in your face, but it's no more out there than prehistoric humans discovering the medicinal properties of certain plants.