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Who's the smartest corvid?

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Re: Who's the smartest corvid?

#41

Post by observationist »

JohnMakin wrote: post #3

One of the craziest behaviors I have seen was from a murder of American crows in a big city area sidewalk I walk down frequently - occasionally, I have observed homeless and vagrants throwing stuff at them, because sometimes they sleep under the powerlines where the crows like to perch and I think the crows defecate on them or something. It's well known they can carry grudges, but one day, as I was walking down the s…

They plan pretty deeply - if you think about things like plastic lid snowboarding, or cup sorting games (fit the smaller cups inside the larger) and those types of puzzles, there's usually an abstract reward, whether it's fun, play, revenge, or some future food or whatnot. They tease other animals, will play fetch, demonstrate a rich emotional inner life, and all of those things can be motivations for their complex plans. Throw in familial loyalty, social dynamics, interactions with humans, and it's a recipe for glorious chaos. There's a lot more going on that doesn't cleanly map to most people's conception of birds.

Ravens are wonderful creatures.

Re: Who's the smartest corvid?

#42

Post by wavemode »

tejohnso wrote: post #6

Chasing a bird of lesser intelligence so that it slams into an office building window seems especially cruel.

A lot of crow hunting stories feel cruel to read about, though I wonder why that is.

There is something about intelligence that seems to carry a degree of... moral responsibility, somehow? Though in reality it's just an animal eating another animal, as ever.

Re: Who's the smartest corvid?

#44

Post by billiam »

JohnMakin wrote: post #3

One of the craziest behaviors I have seen was from a murder of American crows in a big city area sidewalk I walk down frequently - occasionally, I have observed homeless and vagrants throwing stuff at them, because sometimes they sleep under the powerlines where the crows like to perch and I think the crows defecate on them or something. It's well known they can carry grudges, but one day, as I was walking down the s…

Maybe you should be asking yourself what you did to piss of this corvid? They have been shown to recognize faces.

Re: Who's the smartest corvid?

#45

Post by agumonkey »

helterskelter wrote: post #17
JohnMakin wrote: post #3

One of the craziest behaviors I have seen was from a murder of American crows in a big city area sidewalk I walk down frequently - occasionally, I have observed homeless and vagrants throwing stuff at them, because sometimes they sleep under the powerlines where the crows like to perch and I think the crows defecate on them or something. It's well known they can carry grudges, but one day, as I was walking down the s…

Crows in country will wait for a newborn deer to be left alone in a field by their mothers shortly after birth to peck the baby's eyes out so it dies and the crow can eat it later. My neighbor had told me about this happening, and maybe a month later I saw a fawn with its eyes pecked out shortly after it had died. The doe just sat at the edge of the field by it all night. So sad, but really smart of the crows. Crows…

second degree planning involving third party means very high social modeling, fascinating

Re: Who's the smartest corvid?

#46

Post by SauntSolaire »

noelwelsh wrote: post #13

Equipping cats and dogs with talking buttons (see, for example, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBh-BXgsO9IjhN-thTLvm... or https://www.youtube.com/@floundercat ) has shown me there is a lot more going in their little heads than I suspected. There are examples of cats describing their dreams, or worrying about what will happen in the future, or theorizing about the nature of the world (in a very naive way). Bi…

I would be wary of extrapolating too much from the talking buttons. Review the clever hans effect and (the critiques of) Koko the gorilla for examples of people misattributing classical conditioning for intentionality.

The fact is that humans are exceedingly quick to find patterns in random data (e.g. horescopes, any form of divination), and that tendency gets amplified when the opportunity to anthropomorphize a cute animal is presented.

Re: Who's the smartest corvid?

#47

Post by pflanze »

cubefox wrote: post #21

Here is one playing ball: https://youtube.com/watch?v=QqLU-o7N7Kw This one is feeding a dog: https://youtube.com/watch?v=q7Z0yZhyz0s Teasing an owl: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y0i9tjnW7r0

> Teasing an owl: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y0i9tjnW7r0

There was a video on youtube about a crow coming to a human and making that sound, also in winter with snow; commenters agreed that it was probably thirsty and was imitating running water that way to get the human to give it water. The human in the video didn't get that. But here in the end we can see the crow eating snow, which may confirm that it is really a way for crows tell when they are thirsty? Not sure what that has to do with the owl--"teasing" might be just testing the owl's capabilities for checking whether killing the owl to drink its blood would be an option? (I guess melting snow for water is increasing the risk for the crow to be cold & run out of energy.)

Re: Who's the smartest corvid?

#48

Post by avadodin »

wavemode wrote: post #42
tejohnso wrote: post #6

Chasing a bird of lesser intelligence so that it slams into an office building window seems especially cruel.

A lot of crow hunting stories feel cruel to read about, though I wonder why that is. There is something about intelligence that seems to carry a degree of... moral responsibility, somehow? Though in reality it's just an animal eating another animal, as ever.

Humans used to hunt animals by chasing them into pits and then punching holes into them with sticks until they bled out not to mention the many kinds of horrible traps for smaller prey animals.

Humane hunting is mostly something that only a rich old guy with his night vision goggles and sniper rifle can afford.

Even for farm animals, many cultures perform their sacrifice in ghastly ways.

Re: Who's the smartest corvid?

#49

Post by davidee »

We have a rather large number of Blue Jays that frequent our backyard.

The smartest among them can weigh opportunity costs or count, or both.

Most of the jays will take two peanuts in the shell, go crack the shell open (sounds like they're cracking eggs in the trees, hilarious), cache the nuts (technically the seeds of the legume but anyway nuts from herein for brevity) and then take another unshelled one and fly away. Sometimes they crack open multiple shells and cache as many as they can before the final unshelled one.

The oldest of the jays, who is no longer alive, would regularly show up with so many cached nuts they could not take an unshelled nut. The cached nuts would get in the way.

They would occasionally drop a single peanut from their cache, because it meant they would be able to pick up an unshelled pair; that is they understood on some level the choice involved giving up some food because even more was contained in the shell.

Fascinating.

They, and one of their offspring who is still around, were the only jays that would do it. Though it's unclear if that's because they were "smarter" or simply because they trust us enough to take their time, whereas the other jays seem to act like they're stealing the nuts that belong to the two walking meat bags that live in the box and seem to leave their peanuts lying around.

Re: Who's the smartest corvid?

#50

Post by markdown »

fritzo wrote: post #4
JohnMakin wrote: post #3

One of the craziest behaviors I have seen was from a murder of American crows in a big city area sidewalk I walk down frequently - occasionally, I have observed homeless and vagrants throwing stuff at them, because sometimes they sleep under the powerlines where the crows like to perch and I think the crows defecate on them or something. It's well known they can carry grudges, but one day, as I was walking down the s…

By "sizable rock" do you mean large pebble or small boulder?

Where I am from, a rock is by definition huge. It sounds like the bird dropped a stone.
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