Live data from Hacker News

Crows are capable of recursion, scientists claim

scientificamerican.com

41–50 of 99 posts

Re: Crows are capable of recursion, scientists claim

#41
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elephants can rip up trees at a pretty impressive scale.

Environmental “engineering” by ancestors of elephants is a possible factor that contributed to the environmental change that likely lead to the extinction of Gigantopithicus, the enormous, ancient ape.

So they warred on our cousins! Thus, we shall place them in caged enivros, to be starred at by our young, pointed at, fed token treats, their humiliation complete.

Re: Crows are capable of recursion, scientists claim

#43
> To address this limitation, Liao and her colleagues extended the sequences from two pairs to three pairs—such as { [ ( ) ] }

Three pairs of brackets still seems like setting the bar very low... But even if they got great results with 10 pairs of brackets, wouldn't that be more easily explained by "understanding symmetry" rather than "understanding recursion"?

Re: Crows are capable of recursion, scientists claim

#44
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you manage to get started? The crows close to me are so skittish that if I try to throw a peanut at them they just fly off and never come back. I've only managed to not have that happen once.

Hmm, if you’re literally throwing it at them, yeah, they don’t like that. You just kinda have to throw it where they can see it, then walk away, and they’ll come running over to scoop them up. Do that for a week or two and they’ll start looking for you. Also, cashews are their favorite (based on watching them pick the cashews out of trail mix and then come back for the other stuff later). They don’t let me get close…

Crows really like Cheetos.

Re: Crows are capable of recursion, scientists claim

#46
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crows are companions-to-hunters (wolves and humans mostly.) They interpret your behavior through that "lens". If you set out food and then watch them that means (in crow) that you are a hunter, and a lousy one, and you're trying to hunt them . Toss out some food and "forget" it and they'll think you're such a successful hunter that you don't even need to every scrap. Someone worth knowing. In the old days, crows woul…

I love this. Can you earn their trust, as in, become pals with them? Or is this more of a human desire. It's probably mostly food based priorities to them.

I had a pair of crows that I was somewhat close to. I could get within a couple feet of them, before they would back away.

It definitely seemed food based. But, observing how they interact with their (lifelong?) companion, I don’t think I’m able to perceive crow emotions.

Re: Crows are capable of recursion, scientists claim

#49

One more threat to javascript developers trying to make it in today's economy.

This actually proves that crows are smarter than JavaScript developers

Reminds me of the "game journalist vs. pigeon" video:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vfIn9OqhZWo

Re: Crows are capable of recursion, scientists claim

#50
post #6

So, crows, cetaceans, octopuses, and elephants… let’s just be thankful that all of the other smart animals can’t manipulate their environments at scale.

"Smart" is a... Bad category. It's just a big breeding ground for reification.

We do have a term for animals that do manipulate the environment: ecosystem engineering. Which includes a variety of species, including trees. Which to that extent, it's our scale of engineering that pales in comparison.

I mean, cyanobacteria is implicated in an extinction event, and the initiation of the great oxygenation event, and the rise of complicated metabolic systems using oxygen as the terminal electron acceptor. Very cleverly (intelligently, smartly?) they evolved [by chance,] a metabolic niche that was totally vacant which coincidentally could also positively amplify for some extraordinarily long period.

Post reply on HN