Story of a crow who adopted a kitten and nursed it back to health: https://youtu.be/inbPgr8IMlM
Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates
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Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes that is true. But birds feel less than cats and dogs. They have less neurons. This is a stupid article but god knows people on this site love to read articles and then parrot them as fact immediately after
Neuron count isn't necessarily the basis for the depth of feeling, is it?
Any other metric is speculative at best.
Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates
#73A couple of years ago we were holidaying in Kent, UK, and went for a walk on the South Downs. There was a guy in a hide shooting crows. He was at the edge of a field and had put some sort of lure in the middle of the field. Crows would fly down and he would shoot them. There were thirty or so dead birds grouped around the lure, but the crows continued to fly down, and continued to get shot. This makes me think that crow intelligence is as it were not general.
Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes that is true. But birds feel less than cats and dogs. They have less neurons. This is a stupid article but god knows people on this site love to read articles and then parrot them as fact immediately after
Would you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebaity comments to HN? You've done it repeatedly and we ban accounts that do this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates
#75A couple of years ago we were holidaying in Kent, UK, and went for a walk on the South Downs. There was a guy in a hide shooting crows. He was at the edge of a field and had put some sort of lure in the middle of the field. Crows would fly down and he would shoot them. There were thirty or so dead birds grouped around the lure, but the crows continued to fly down, and continued to get shot. This makes me think that c…
We need to put signs next to cliffs to remind people not to fall to their deaths while taking photos of themselves. Let's not pretend humans aren't incredibly stupid animals at times as well.
Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates
#76I was recently reading the Wikipedia page about comparative neuron counts in the brains of various animals. The most notable observation to me at the time was that ravens have a similar neuron count that of to pigs and dogs--far more than cats, for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_n...
It seems neuron counts matter, but at the same time they don't have a big effect? Elephants are intelligent but not that much per the number of cells. Raccons are probably more intelligent than cats and have more neurons, ok. And why are Capybaras surprisingly high on the list?
This author seems a little too eager to attribute exceptional behavior, but they provide some interesting anecdotes and videos about capybara behavior: https://capybaraworld.wordpress.com/2017/05/14/theory-of-min...
Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates
#77We have crows and jackrabbits in our neighborhood. You drive down the road toward a bunch (I think they prefer the term "murder") of crows having a meeting in the middle of the road. They'll eventually start nonchalantly strolling to the side at a calm, measured pace perfectly timed to just barely get out of the way as you pass and stroll back again, no feathers ruffled. Jackrabbits will be sitting safely in the gras…
To be fair though, birds have had to adapt long ago to evaluating the movement of very fast moving objects, while rabbits and most mammals have not really had to cope with fast speeds until humans invented cars just a century ago.
Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates
#78We have crows and jackrabbits in our neighborhood. You drive down the road toward a bunch (I think they prefer the term "murder") of crows having a meeting in the middle of the road. They'll eventually start nonchalantly strolling to the side at a calm, measured pace perfectly timed to just barely get out of the way as you pass and stroll back again, no feathers ruffled. Jackrabbits will be sitting safely in the gras…
To be fair though, birds have had to adapt long ago to evaluating the movement of very fast moving objects, while rabbits and most mammals have not really had to cope with fast speeds until humans invented cars just a century ago.
Predators like lions and cheetahs achieve top speeds comparable to a car driving on freeway tho.
Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates
#79Which tells you how smart dinosaurs could have been...
Re: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates
#80[deleted]