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Who's the smartest corvid?

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Re: Who's the smartest corvid?

#131

Post by Animats »

srean wrote: post #110
Animats wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The brains of corvids are not closely related to mammalian brains. All the mammals have roughly the same brain, but corvids have a different architecture.[1] Intelligence seems to have evolved three times on this planet - mammals, corvids, and octopuses. Octopuses have a distributed system rather than one central brain. They all have neurons, but the higher level architecture differs drastically. Knowing that several…

Octopuses are probably more alien than others.

My point here is that if intelligence developed more than once, it didn't come from some one-time random event or divine intervention. It looks like once there are connected neurons, it evolves via continuous improvement.

In some environments, that evolution hits limits. Flying birds are limited in brain mass or they can't get airborne. Which may be why corvids don't rule the world.

Re: Who's the smartest corvid?

#133

Post by nativeit »

e40 wrote: post #85
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…

I was talking with a neighbor once, and we had just started feeding the local crows. We were standing there for about 39 minutes, the I heard something metallic hit the sidewalk. I looked about 4 ft away, directly under the power lines, at a bottle cap. I hadn’t seen one of those in decades. Clearly it had been dropped by the crow perched up there. Then, once we noticed a weird nut near the bowl of peanuts. Not sure…

I’ve nothing empirical to back this up, but it’s my understanding that shiny objects like bottle caps are prized toys, and the sort of thing one might be gifted by corvids who have taken a liking to you. I have heard plenty of anecdotal evidence that crows will exchange gifts with one another, and with humans, to develop and nurture positive relationships.

Someone pondered a correlation between intelligence and some notion of “evil”. I personally believe empathy and altruism are highly connected to intelligence, and the act of giving a gift to another is suggestive of both attributes.

There are also examples of altruism in other species not frequently considered intelligent. Vampire bats will regurgitate food to share with others, even if they are not tied by familial bonds and even if there’s no other tangential benefit to the individual giving up its own nutrition. We have also recently observed female tigers caring for and protecting another female’s cubs while she feeds, which is novel behavior to observe in typically solitary tigers.

Re: Who's the smartest corvid?

#134

Post by trick-or-treat »

vintermann wrote: post #116
trick-or-treat wrote: post #100

In my part of the world there's a cuckoo that pulls a heist on crows where the male makes annoying noises and the crows chase him off while the female cuckoo invades the nest and leaves an egg. When the egg hatches the bird inside looks nothing like a crow but the crow mama never catches on and pays child support until it's grown. That cuckoo gets my vote for cleverest.

What part of the world is that? I don't think European cuckoos target birds as large as crows, or even magpies.

SE Asia

Re: Who's the smartest corvid?

#135

Post by emmelaich »

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…

I thought what was a myth. My wife is terrified of crows, always thinking they're abut to peck her eyes out.

Re: Who's the smartest corvid?

#136

Post by trick-or-treat »

tialaramex wrote: post #92
fortran77 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Birds chase coyotes so they slam into the sides of cliff walls, sometimes even painting a fake tunnel to fool the coyote.

I believe that canonically the tunnel painting is made by the coyote, the problem is that because it's a cartoon the bird can run into the non-existent tunnel anyway and the coyote cannot because that's funnier. It is interesting that e.g. "Coyote time" was copied into platform games but in real life if you're not stood on solid ground you fall immediately 'cos Mother Nature doesn't give a shit what's more fun.

Mother Nature isn't in charge of gravity. That's Papa Physics' job.

Re: Who's the smartest corvid?

#137

Post by srean »

Animats wrote: post #131
srean wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Octopuses are probably more alien than others.

My point here is that if intelligence developed more than once, it didn't come from some one-time random event or divine intervention. It looks like once there are connected neurons, it evolves via continuous improvement. In some environments, that evolution hits limits. Flying birds are limited in brain mass or they can't get airborne. Which may be why corvids don't rule the world.

Oh yes absolutely. Intelligence certainly developed more than once. Bird brain is no slur.

Before your comment I would have said it emerged twice, but then I had not considered octopuses, they are wicked smart and so unlike other intelligent animals we know.

Re: Who's the smartest corvid?

#138

Post by markdown »

doodlebugging wrote: post #60
markdown wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If the stone the crow dropped weighed a stone, that's a big fuckin' rock where I come from.

Not to mention a big fuckin' bird.

Re: Who's the smartest corvid?

#139

Post by a96 »

Well, TIL that I have previously learned c corone and c cornix backwards. Possibly because I associated the hood with corona somehow. Though that all comes from a time they were all just called corvus corone cornix here.
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