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What would be even more amazing to me is finding cognitive things that other animals do that humans can’t. Of course, many humans can’t do mental math so … maybe the quest is ill defined?
I don’t know why these things are surprising. To me, the assumption that animals can’t do things we later discovered they could do is the surprising thing. Such arrogance we humans have.
In this case, crows are doing something that is interesting but doesn't appear to be spontaneous tool-making but rather a form of mimicry that may have hard-wired instinctive basis. Is it human-like learning? Is it "smart" the way a human is smart? Doesn't look like it.
I don’t know why these things are surprising. To me, the assumption that animals can’t do things we later discovered they could do is the surprising thing. Such arrogance we humans have.
Because they have such little brains. When I look at a crow, I think - not much room for brains in there.
I don’t know why these things are surprising. To me, the assumption that animals can’t do things we later discovered they could do is the surprising thing. Such arrogance we humans have.
This is just as interesting as any other article on finding that X can do Y where X isn’t human and Y is a behavior that humans value. What would be even more amazing to me is finding cognitive things that other animals do that humans can’t. Of course, many humans can’t do mental math so … maybe the quest is ill defined?
Apparently you can scare a few of them like crazy from your land and they will tell their bros to stay away.
"you know that dude that lives by the water? protect him he feeds us."
"you know the big guy that walks his dog and barks at us? we found out where he lives."
I've seen crows execute their own (seriously). They would crowd and walk him over the edge and when he fell they would just attack him.
I've seen crows leave gifts behind for feeding them regularly.
I've seen crows protect our property from raccoons and squirrels.
I've seen crows remember people and harass them (even when they moved to another city!)
I don’t know why these things are surprising. To me, the assumption that animals can’t do things we later discovered they could do is the surprising thing. Such arrogance we humans have.
Because they have such little brains. When I look at a crow, I think - not much room for brains in there.
Sometimes I wonder whether we're being watched by a super intelligent species beyond our current detection that occasionally places objects in certain configurations in front of the smarter of our species throughout history, and writes articles based on their observations titled things like, "homo sapiens smarter than previously known: demonstrates understanding of unified theory of electromagnetic waves through RF s…
You should turn it into a short movie using AI. I have thought something similar but more along the lines that in the universe above us, we are 3 days into a science experiment and either a) they don't know we exist or b) the look in with their microscope and see patterns for cities or c) they have a statistical measure of how many have developed ecosystems and set off a nuclear weapon. But on the scales they are viewing, the known universe might fit into a 50cm sphere (their dimensions).