41–50 of 140 posts
There's an old 4Chan thread where a user starts 'World War Crow' by favoring a certain group of crows over another. Allegedly, after some time, the two groups of crows have an all out battle over which group gets french fries. http://usvsth3m.com/post/69700674556/has-an-anonymous-4chan-...
On one of David Attenborough's recent shows, he said that crows can store up 30,000 pieces of food in various locations in the ground. They not only know where each piece of food is, but they know which ones are perishable and to get the food before it spoils. Pretty remarkable if you ask me.
More here: http://www.pbs.org/lifeofbirds/brain/ The particular bird matching that number, Clark's Nutcracker, looks well studied. This paper discusses them caching 30,000 seeds, but not in 30,000 separate locations, it concludes that they locate at least 1,000 locations by memory: http://www.auburn.edu/academic/classes/biol/7560/folkerts/hu... (that author seems to have done much field work studying the bird) Anothe…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I blame this on the "DreamWorks Effect", animators have done such a good job giving animals human traits and emotions that millinials+ really can't help but be animists.
Conversely, I think Christians (for one) do not like the idea of animals having "human traits", because it goes against their core mythology, which says that God created man in His image. If animals also started showing human traits, then Man isn't so special anymore, is he? Edited: I'm being downvoted, but this was the exact reasoning given to me by a rather devout Christian; and it seemed to make sense. I'm agnosti…
The ancient dharmic traditions (Hindu thought) always said being alive means having a soul. Advanced features such as intelligence are just part of the advanced body, not a litmus test of a soul's presence. The only litmus test is the symptoms of life.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Crow flies with thing in its beak. Sees food, drops thing, grabs food. Comes back later, sees more food! Assumes food came from dropping thing (See "Superstition in the pigeon" [0]). Meme spreads among the crows. No ethics or deep reasoning required. Random rewards lead to irrational behavior. [0] http://psychclassics.asu.edu/Skinner/Pigeon/
The final example though, where a Crow returns the camera-lens cap to the family requires some pretty advanced thinking. We know that Crows recognize human faces and expressions, and communicate these facts amongst each other. Crows / Ravens are the only creature aside from Humans who perform meta-tool use. They can use tools to grab tools to accomplish a goal. In many ways, they're smarter than (non-human) primates,…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I blame this on the "DreamWorks Effect", animators have done such a good job giving animals human traits and emotions that millinials+ really can't help but be animists.
Conversely, I think Christians (for one) do not like the idea of animals having "human traits", because it goes against their core mythology, which says that God created man in His image. If animals also started showing human traits, then Man isn't so special anymore, is he? Edited: I'm being downvoted, but this was the exact reasoning given to me by a rather devout Christian; and it seemed to make sense. I'm agnosti…
I had a pet crow when I was about 6 years old - he was a fledgeling who'd left his nest on the hottest day of the year and was dehydrated. My brother and I were squirting eachother with water and he cawed at us until we squirted him. He decided this was the best thing ever, and basically adopted us from then onwards. He was the terror of the local cats and dogs, but left our two siamese alone because he knew they wer…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it is very surprising even given findings about corvid intelligence. I know of studies showing crows can count, but that kind of intelligence does not at all imply that a creature will spontaneously give gifts in exchange for food. This requires either some kind of ethics including reciprocity, or it requires that the crows reason that giving gifts will make someone more likely to give more food. The latter r…
Crow flies with thing in its beak. Sees food, drops thing, grabs food. Comes back later, sees more food! Assumes food came from dropping thing (See "Superstition in the pigeon" [0]). Meme spreads among the crows. No ethics or deep reasoning required. Random rewards lead to irrational behavior. [0] http://psychclassics.asu.edu/Skinner/Pigeon/
Addendum: Other man says this is random. Sun believer says don't insult my problem solver. Other man persists. Sun believer kills him.
I was disappointed that this article didn't include a definite scientific opinion on whether the crows saw this as an exchange for food, or if for some reason they bring objects to a feeding area.