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Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

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Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#111

Post by codezero »

SonOfLilit wrote: post #92
sosuke wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you've come up with a cool personal project.

I'd like to build it. But having an animal intelligence researcher consulting would be very helpful...

If you look up the researchers working on the stuff you think you might be able to help with - just email them. They may even have some budget to help you out. I've found most scientists to be super open to talking w/ interested parties, and often willing to let you help for free :)

Some are busy divas, or busy in general, or also teaching and busy, so it doesn't always work, but there are a lot of folks out there doing research, so just keep shooting!

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#112

Post by ta1234567890 »

cassalian wrote: post #7

> crows know what they know and can ponder the content of their own minds, a manifestation of higher intelligence and analytical thought long believed the sole province of humans and a few other higher mammals. I've always found the common thought that only humans and a select few of other animals are the only ones that posses higher intelligence to be incredibly arrogant of our species. Why wouldn't they have higher…

Because then it's easier to justify enslaving or killing them. Mostly we just don't even want to know.

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#113

Post by codezero »

NDizzle wrote: post #3

I’ve always thought this was confirmed with the video of one snowboarding down a roof. https://youtu.be/1WupH8oyrAo

This is fantastic and reminds me of when I learned that crows look like this in eastern europe and other places, not all black like in the US :)

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#114

Post by NobodyNada »

outworlder wrote: post #108
liability wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides lacking thumbs, dolphins would also have a pretty hard time harnessing fire as a tool. This probably truncates their tech tree severely.

> Besides lacking thumbs, dolphins would also have a pretty hard time harnessing fire as a tool. I keep reading about this, and I don't see it as a major problem. Sure, it might take a while for them to even grasp the concept of fire. Much like it took us a while to grasp relativity. However, once they know it to be possible, it's an engineering problem. They can build their forges above water. Holding breath to oper…

> Holding breath to operate them (until they can do it remotely) is inconvenient but they are pretty good at it.

Nitpick: Dolphins breathe air.

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#115

Post by AnimalMuppet »

outworlder wrote: post #108
liability wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides lacking thumbs, dolphins would also have a pretty hard time harnessing fire as a tool. This probably truncates their tech tree severely.

> Besides lacking thumbs, dolphins would also have a pretty hard time harnessing fire as a tool. I keep reading about this, and I don't see it as a major problem. Sure, it might take a while for them to even grasp the concept of fire. Much like it took us a while to grasp relativity. However, once they know it to be possible, it's an engineering problem. They can build their forges above water. Holding breath to oper…

Humans can weld underwater - with equipment that they built on dry land, using materials that they created on dry land. Could they have created the materials underwater? It would have been hard, even knowing how.

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#116

Post by codezero »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #103
nicoburns wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a sensible caution, but we should also be careful not to do the opposite and assume an animal is incapable of sophisticated motives and intelligent planning.

But if we take time to consider that animals may posses intelligence and rich inner lives, then we may also have to consider that our treatment of them is monsterous. Can't have that.

We can make up for it by uplifting their species with our technology.

I sincerely believe we should be doing this - it's a core premise of one of my favorite novels: Sundiver: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundiver

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#117

Post by bdamm »

liability wrote: post #72
spideymans wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would our physical abilities not play a role in our ability to "rule" the world? We're relatively large animals, blessed with arms, finger, thumbs and a remarkable degree of physical dexterity. These physical abilities collectively enable us to physically manipulate the world. Or in other words, if dolphins had arms and thumbs (or generally any physical attributes that allows them to manipulate their environment as h…

Besides lacking thumbs, dolphins would also have a pretty hard time harnessing fire as a tool. This probably truncates their tech tree severely.

True, but perhaps they could harness technology we never thought of as valuable. Perhaps they could build structures around sea vents, or use sticks and weeds to build pens in which to farm fish. Many possibilities exist. They could even be doing agriculture right now and we wouldn't even know it.

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#118

Post by pdonis »

fao_ wrote: post #110
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this type of reasoning went out the window, as soon as humans started killing dolphins in large numbers (see tuna nets), and the dolphins had no way to defend themselves or otherwise dissuade humans from doing that. This is one of the big lessons in history. The civilizations that use their intelligence to make tools and weapons end up screwing civilizations that "muck about, having a good time".

Aha, so when an interstellar empire comes around and fucks up our planet -- if not outright just sending an asteroid our way, it's justified because we are of a lower technological level? The humans and proto-humans of the past weren't 'stupid'. And even if they were comparatively, 'stupidity' isn't a justification for committing harmful actions, degrading, or otherwise treating the recipient as lesser. This sounds l…

> even if they were comparatively, 'stupidity' isn't a justification for committing harmful actions, degrading, or otherwise treating the recipient as lesser

I don't think the GP was saying it is. I think he was trying to look at it from the dolphins' point of view: he was proposing that the fact that they didn't use any of their intelligence (assuming they have it) to construct ways to defend themselves from other intelligent species, like humans, was a mistake on their part.

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#119

Post by aeternum »

nicoburns wrote: post #50
missedthecue wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So crows could build a jumbo jet, they're just lazy? It's pretty obvious that animals lack any type of intelligence even close to human ability. It's not even in the same ballpark.

I think the point is that we assume that because other animals don't have this kind of engineering ability, we assume that they don't have capabilities like self-awareness or higher-level thought. But we can't see into their minds, so we don't actually have direct evidence of that. What we do see in more intelligent animals such as orcas, orang-utans, elephants, parrots, crows, octopuses, even cats and dogs, etc is s…

Language seems incredibly important, it may actually be the basis for our ability to build abstract concepts, not to mention share knowledge.
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