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Crows are even smarter than we thought

nautil.us

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Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought

#181

Post by card_zero »

literalAardvark wrote: post #175
omnee wrote: post #167

We have come a long way from Descartes argument that animals are no more than automata. Which supported our unabashed exploitation of countless species. It is now abundantly clear that animals have their own phenomenological experience of the world, and their intelligence is part of a continuum, shaped mostly to survive in their niches. And some species demonstrate a higher level of general intelligence - something i…

As far as I can tell, current theories are that animals are also somewhat conscious and intelligent, but that we're all, including humans, automata, with zero or near zero free will.

I don't even know what that means or why it worries people, I think it's a big red herring. (And near-zero is a confusing concept.) We're machines that make choices, spontaneously and deterministically (which is not a contradiction). People fretting about free will are getting caught in some kind of category error that confuses the physics of time with being controlled by an invisible tyrant.

Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought

#182

Post by theginger »

m463 wrote: post #93
tux1968 wrote: post #27

Have posted this before, but it really left an impression about crows, and the bond between their mates: Years ago I was putting out the garbage in the back alley behind our building where I lived on the 8th floor. A crow attacked me out of the blue. Distracted by the attack, the back door slammed shut behind me. Since my key was only good for the front door, I had to walk around the building. That damn crow followed…

But did you get crow credit for the save??

I wonder if the crow thought it had bullied you into releasing the crow you had captured or convinced you to rescue one that had trapped itself.

Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought

#183

Post by oniony »

mbs159 wrote: post #160
kibae wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pigeons were used in WW1 and WW2 for communication. Paddy the pigeon [0] flew 230 miles across the English channel to relay the success of the D-Day invasion. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paddy_(pigeon)

I find it fascinating how scientists still haven't definitively figured out how magnetoreception in birds works. Humans have utilized homing pigeons for thousands of years [1], but it is still a mystery as to how it works. To quote a paper from 2019 [2]: > Yet in spite of considerable progress in recent years, many details are still unclear, among them details of the radical pair processes and their transformation in…

I thought I read that they had detected something in the birds' eyes.

Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought

#184

Post by card_zero »

nradov wrote: post #28
nkrisc wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is at least a bit surprising. There is clearly something different between humans and all other animals.

That seems true, and yet when we try to pin down specific differences there always seem to be exceptions. Like chimpanzees making stone tools. There's a spectrum of intelligence, not a binary difference between humans and everything else. https://www.livescience.com/which-animals-use-stone-tools

So, it seems true and seems not true. I agree, that's how it seems.

Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought

#185

Post by bejd »

imoverclocked wrote: post #172
evanmoran wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the sentiment, but human children who are 2 completely dominate all known animal intelligence. They can speak in sentences and use tools in complex ways. There may be studies that show a raven might use a stick to help it find food. Well, a two year old will carry a stool halfway across the house to reach the scissors that will open a bag of veggie straws :) At 3 they can recognize letters _easily_ and start l…

I've interacted with 6 month old puppies that can outsmart a 2-3 year old human baby. Fawns/calves/... can walk almost as soon as they are born. It takes humans far longer to learn that. If you put a 2-year old human child with every single possible benefit on its own into the wild, its chances of survival are pretty slim. Some creatures never see their parents and thrive. IMHO, humans are special to other humans bec…

>Fawns/calves/... can walk almost as soon as they are born. It takes humans far longer to learn that.

Humans are helpless at birth because we have big brains and walk upright. Which means narrower hips which means we need to be born before the brain is fully developed.

Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought

#186

Post by jakeogh »

KineticLensman wrote: post #178
WalterBright wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About 6 eagles live nearby. I often see them circling overhead hunting wabbits. (Occasionally they'll bag a small aircraft.) One day, I was out for a walk and one of them was gliding at eye level and passed me. I could have touched its wingtip it was so close. My gawd, what a magnificent bird. I then understood why combat pilots would paint them on the sides of their fighters. It was much bigger than I realized, and…

Raptor talons are really serious weapons - they are the killing mechanism, not the beak. In larger birds comparable to a Rottweiler’s jaw in power. They also have a ratchet-like behaviour, so the bird has to actually want to let you go once you have been grabbed, and struggling usually only makes the bird grip harder

Oh yea, their claws are wild. I got to experience the Tucson Desert Museum demo[0] (it's still going, but this was 16+ years ago)... it's amazing. The falconer had a leather covered arm even though the bird is a close friend.

They are smart AF, but watch out for the beak too if it's injured/scared. A vet told me, if you handle a raptor, protect your hands, they can take a chunk.

Same goes for long billed birds[1].

[0] https://www.desertmuseum.org/visit/rff_index.php

[1] https://youtu.be/MstjYUmdCwo?t=430

Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought

#187

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #177
nirav72 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m surprised no one has attempted to train crows for use in asymmetrical warfare. At least before the advent of cheap drones.

They'd still be better than cheap drones at remote pick-pocketing - if you could train them to spot and snatch coins and bills. I was wondering about the opposite too. Could you train a crow to watch you throw a marker, say a pebble of specific color, and then fly to the location it landed to perform specific action? Say, if we go for personal mischief instead of warfare: - red marker = find whatever interesting obje…

I suspect they would be difficult to train, because of their attitude. We see this with many wild animals. Dogs train easily, but coyotes and wolves, who are even smarter, are much more difficult to train.

One of my favorite nature vignettes, is a part of Planet Earth, by the BBC, about Cape Hunting Dogs[0]. It looks like a military assault. They are really clever, and work well, as a team.

But if you could train crows, they would probably be marvelous.

[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MRS4XrKRFMA

Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought

#188

Post by ycombinete »

jiggawatts wrote: post #45
tux1968 wrote: post #27

Have posted this before, but it really left an impression about crows, and the bond between their mates: Years ago I was putting out the garbage in the back alley behind our building where I lived on the 8th floor. A crow attacked me out of the blue. Distracted by the attack, the back door slammed shut behind me. Since my key was only good for the front door, I had to walk around the building. That damn crow followed…

Corvids can recognise faces and they are territorial and know the humans in their territory.

During Covid crows started harassing a lot of people in our area while walking around.

I realised it was because they didn’t like someone who wore a blue mask.

If I took my mast off or wore a different style of mask they’d leave me alone, and bother other people who looked similar to me with a blue mask on.

Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought

#189

Post by beejiu »

kibae wrote: post #108
nirav72 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m surprised no one has attempted to train crows for use in asymmetrical warfare. At least before the advent of cheap drones.

Pigeons were used in WW1 and WW2 for communication. Paddy the pigeon [0] flew 230 miles across the English channel to relay the success of the D-Day invasion. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paddy_(pigeon)

Hilariously, during WW2 there was also a research project to build guided missiles using pigeons in the nose cone. "The nose cone of the missile would be split into three compartments, with a lens projecting an image of the intended target onto a screen at the front. A pigeon in each compartment, trained by operant conditioning to recognise the target, would peck at it continually."

https://www.military-history.org/feature/pigeon-guided-missi...

Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought

#190

Post by TeMPOraL »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #187
TeMPOraL wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'd still be better than cheap drones at remote pick-pocketing - if you could train them to spot and snatch coins and bills. I was wondering about the opposite too. Could you train a crow to watch you throw a marker, say a pebble of specific color, and then fly to the location it landed to perform specific action? Say, if we go for personal mischief instead of warfare: - red marker = find whatever interesting obje…

I suspect they would be difficult to train, because of their attitude. We see this with many wild animals. Dogs train easily, but coyotes and wolves, who are even smarter, are much more difficult to train. One of my favorite nature vignettes, is a part of Planet Earth , by the BBC, about Cape Hunting Dogs[0]. It looks like a military assault. They are really clever, and work well, as a team. But if you could train cr…

Train is a bit of a shorthand here, though. Basic operant conditioning probably won't cut it. But the idea itself came to me after encountering similar thread about crows on HN many years ago - both comments and referenced articles would contain personal anecdotes about human-crow relationships, and from those I gathered that it's possible to kind of befriend a crow (or a group), and teach them behaviors as a kind of play.

So, I don't expect it's easy to train crows like dogs and pigeons, where one person "pre-trains" them and gives/sells them to someone else. But I think it should be possible to "train" a crow for yourself - bond with it and have it voluntarily indulge you reliably enough that it's pretty much like training.

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