is this a straight-up advantage, or is the trade-off lower connectivity?
Bird brains (2023)
61–70 of 230 posts
Re: Bird brains (2023)
#62Adding to this a chart of neuron count [1] [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_n...
Interesting... I would have thought Octopi have more total neurons than dogs, given their problem-solving capabilities. Now I wonder if the decentralized organization / hub and spoke model octopi alone exhibit offers some advantage when it comes to problem-solving
Yeah their nerve cells are much larger. The axons of a giant squid are up to a millimeter in width.
Re: Bird brains (2023)
#63“More neurons = intelligence” always felt like an oversimplification. If that were true, we wouldn’t be surprised by birds or octopuses anymore.
It's not a 1:1 relationship but they are related.
Re: Bird brains (2023)
#64Makes sense, given that to birds, optimizing for weight is everything. But seeing that the ridiculously smart border collies have a comparatively low density of neurons, clearly there’s more to intelligence than that.
Re: Bird brains (2023)
#65> Calling someone a "bird brain" is honestly more of a compliment. Well no. Some birds are flat-out dumb. Chickens for example.
One fact that I find very curious is that I see all sorts of animals killed on the road, but never chickens. And I see plenty of them by the road. Maybe they never try to cross roads?
or perhaps it's an artefact of them having a higher contrast against the asphalt and being somewhat fat and puffy compared to most roadkill animals
Re: Bird brains (2023)
#66If you haven't seen Apollo on YT, crazy What is it made out of? meTUL Want a pistach
He's so charming:
Re: Bird brains (2023)
#67Re: Bird brains (2023)
#68[deleted]
Re: Bird brains (2023)
#69If you're in tune with animals and spend time around a parrot, it's obvious there is a lot going on in their minds. They have incredible memories and their own understanding of their world. It looks simple to us but they are not simple creatures. That being said, I don't know how a bird lover can keep a bird in a cage.
Re: Bird brains (2023)
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting... I would have thought Octopi have more total neurons than dogs, given their problem-solving capabilities. Now I wonder if the decentralized organization / hub and spoke model octopi alone exhibit offers some advantage when it comes to problem-solving
Neurons are used for more tasks than just problem-solving. Dogs have a good smell, so a big part of their brain is probably used for just this. They seem to be also much more acrobatic and reacting faster in general than an Octopus, so theses are probably also areas where additional neurons are used. Dogs have also a high social intelligence, not sure how Octopi are in that regard. And are Octopi really better at pro…
> reacting faster in general than an Octopus
It may be due to myelin[1], or rather lack of it. Neurons pass signals along axons as a wave of an action potential[2]. It is a process involving moving ions through the cell membrane to change local deviations of electrical charge and it goes like a wave. The wave is pretty slow. It can be sped up by making axons thicker, and IIRC octopuses has some wildly thick axons you can see without a microscope.
Vertebrates learned how to create an myelin isolation on axons with small gaps, so ion exchanges happen only at these gaps, and between them there is other mechanism to transfer charges, I think it is just "normal" electric current in electrolyte. It is much faster. I'd bet that the slowness of octopuses is not due to neuron count, but due to outmoded axons.