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Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

bbc.com

221–230 of 443 posts

Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't actually care, I just wanted to point it out to you, so that you understand how strongly it's colouring your views. We all have our biases, and we should all be aware of them.

How strongly is it coloring my views of what somebody else presumably from the same country said?

The fact that you presume him to also be American is another super American trait.

Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

#222
Once I was sitting on a bench under a walnut tree and a walnut fell to the pavement near me and got cracked. I thought it fell from the tree and picked it up and ate it. Suddenly a crow appeared and started screaming and flying around me. I suspect the walnut didn't drop from a tree but it was the crow who throw it to crack it open. I said sorry, but it kept cursing :(, so I quickly left.

Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

#223
post #204

Does the title really fit the article? The article discusses how smart crows are. It doesn't compare them in any way to other smart non-primates like elephants, cetaceans and cephalopods. Of course their tool use is a pretty big deal, but it's not the only aspect of intelligence. Squids have shown to be amazing problem solvers too. By the way, a while back I read that the tool-using crows of New Caledonia had their e…

> a group of crows (on Hawaii I think) also used tools.

You're thinking of the New Caledonian crows.

https://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/news/00000161-1f5...

Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

#225
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They 'bomb' the street with walnuts where i live to open them. That's smart but not that impressive. What's impressive is - they don't do it on the parking lots where cars rarely drive, nor on the main road where cars drive constantly. They target pedestrian crossing near the main road, wait for cars to crack the walnut, then eat it. They understand where the perfect number of cars is gonna be.

Could also just be trial and error.

Which also sums up most of human history.

Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

#226
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They 'bomb' the street with walnuts where i live to open them. That's smart but not that impressive. What's impressive is - they don't do it on the parking lots where cars rarely drive, nor on the main road where cars drive constantly. They target pedestrian crossing near the main road, wait for cars to crack the walnut, then eat it. They understand where the perfect number of cars is gonna be.

Could also just be trial and error.

Exploration vs exploitation in action.

Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

#227
post #204

Does the title really fit the article? The article discusses how smart crows are. It doesn't compare them in any way to other smart non-primates like elephants, cetaceans and cephalopods. Of course their tool use is a pretty big deal, but it's not the only aspect of intelligence. Squids have shown to be amazing problem solvers too. By the way, a while back I read that the tool-using crows of New Caledonia had their e…

Indeed, it's more about the specifics of crows and less about relative comparison.

Crows are clever beyond tools, but tool using isn't that exclusive and can even be found in fish. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KKjqXxxp-Q

Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

#228
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a little misleading. An individual child will not be able to fluently acquire language if not exposed during the so-called "critical period"; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child for plenty of examples. _Groups_ of humans with no common means of communication will form pidgins ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin ) as an (essentially grammarless) means of communication; children then raised in an en…

I we where that stupid we wouldn't be able to learn new languages as an adult.

> I we where that stupid we wouldn't be able to learn new languages as an adult.

That is after successfully having acquired a language already. What the critical period theory suggests is that if no language is acquired during that period, subsequent language acquisition is not possible.

Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

#230
post #47
post #25

Previously I heard about crows in Japan leaving nuts on the way of the cars to crash them when traffic lights are red and collecting them the next cycle. This summer I witnessed the exact same thing when I was driving through a particularly jammy traffic light here in Europe. Are these crows inventing the method over and over again independently, like scientists finding the same thing at the same time in different pa…

Exact thing happened to me one or two days ago. I was driving home and on a small street near my apartment a crow flew out of the bushes and dropped something right in front of the car and then it landed on the other side of the street. When I looked back in the mirror, the crow had gone back to collect what looked like a walnut. On a semi-related note, magpies are also doing really well in that race. End of last yea…

I thought magpies were supposed to be thieves, but you seem to have an honest one that pays for its food.
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