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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

#21

Post by nradov »

imoverclocked wrote: post #11

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?

Some marine mammals can do cognitive things with 3D echolocation that humans can't. (A few visually impaired people have learned to do a bit of echolocation but in a much more limited way.) Cephalopods use multiple mini-brains to independently control their arms in a way humans can't.

Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought

#22

Post by jumploops »

> This kind of feat, according to animal behavior researchers, requires the ability to form “mental templates.” Essentially, a mental template is an image in the mind of what a particular object looks like, even when that object is not present.

As someone with aphantasia, can I get points for recreating something I've seen _without_ having an "image in the mind"?

Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought

#23

Post by CuriouslyC »

lll-o-lll wrote: post #4
naikrovek wrote: post #3

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.

We're finding through LLM research that smaller models aren't necessarily dumber, so much as their intelligence is more limited in terms of domains and knowledge encoding ability. Those small brains might have limited knowledge encoding ability, but that doesn't mean they can't reason about the things they have encoded.

Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought

#24

Post by jumploops »

imoverclocked wrote: post #11

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?

There was a bunch of hype around superior memory in chimpanzees for certain tasks[0].

However, this has subsequently been debunked[1].

Still impressive on the part of chimps!

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNrWUS13th8

[1]https://www.jasoncollins.blog/posts/humans-1-chimps-0-correc...

Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought

#25

Post by thelastparadise »

sitkack wrote: post #19
lr4444lr wrote: post #7

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…

Found Gary Larson's alt account. 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 weapo…

No, it most definitely is not.

Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought

#26

Post by teleforce »

Fun facts, according to Quran in human very first murder crime when one of Adam's sons killed his younger brother out of disagreement on offerings to God, the crow showed him how to properly bury the dead body:

Then Allah sent a crow digging a grave in the ground for a dead crow, in order to show him how to bury the corpse of his brother. He cried, “Alas! Have I even failed to be like this crow and bury the corpse of my brother?” So he became regretful.

https://quran.com/en/al-maidah/31

Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought

#27

Post by tux1968 »

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 me the entire time, dive bombing my head, and screaming bloody murder at me. It was a little spooky.

When I finally got back inside and upstairs, I went and looked out the living room window, which looked out the same direction as the back alley. The crow had flown back around and was at the 8th floor looking in the window, from the other side of the pigeon netting we had on our balcony. On the inside of the pigeon netting, was another crow, desperately trying to figure out how it could escape. Not really sure how it had got itself through the pigeon netting in the first place.

I went out and sliced a hole through the netting and the trapped crow quickly joined its mate outside, who finally stopped screaming bloody murder. To this day it still amazes me that the crow's mate, knew which apartment I lived in and spotted me downstairs.

Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought

#28

Post by nradov »

nkrisc wrote: post #9
naikrovek wrote: post #3

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.

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

Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought

#29

Post by ggm »

The article could be clearer how many shapes they had to train to and something like complexity eg vertex count. A triangle and a square can be a judgement call when you're using your beak to tear it off.

I'd worry "eh good enough" is distorting the outcome.

Re: Crows are even smarter than we thought

#30

Post by manbitesdog »

pajeets wrote: post #16
mensetmanusman wrote: post #6

Apparently you can scare a few of them like crazy from your land and they will tell their bros to stay away.

This is what I find most fascinating. That crows are capable of gossip, organization, planning and execution. "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…

Some years ago I started leaving food in my patio for one crow that lived in an electric post nearby. Then he started leaving random shiny stuff in the outside table: pieces of metal, coins and once an SD card. The most suprising thing to me was that the stuff was always in the exact center of the round table.
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