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I love whenever crows become a topic online because people have all these amazing crow stories that they never have another reason to share. How's about we allow a little local flavor while people tell their stories?
Local flavour doesn't have to include stereotypes.
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>will hold a grudge... you's swear they were part Irish There's no need for this.
It was a passing comment, the sun will still rise tomorrow... Meanwhile: Why Irish grudges are passed on - a long tradition of never forgetting https://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/cahirodoherty/why-irish...
I am Irish and live in Ireland.
I am wondering where sulphur-crested cockatoo are on the scale. Before seeing some in freedom up close in Australia, I never realized they actually could grab objects with their claws like they are hands and put them in their mouth. They seemed very smart to me. I wonder if they lose to crow only because they are less prevalent around most labs in the world...
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Agreed. Birds have an inheren limit on head weight, which limits their brain size. They do manage to use what they have quite well (parrots are also remarkable in that regard), but the limit is there. Ultimately intelligence is a tough nut to crack for such a stupid and limited thing as evolution: some have a big brain but no hands, some have hands but cannot have a big brain because space is used for something else…
> It's a miracle that a species like ours could combine all the necessary, quite fragile, ingredients to develop intelligence. The Anthropic Principle says this combination must have happened with probability 1, otherwise there would be noone to observe it not happening.
This article focuses mostly on problem solving, planning, and tool use as the primary hallmarks of intelligence. But what problem does writing a poem solve? Do you have to be intelligent to write a great poem? What about the intelligence need to compose a great whale song[1]? Or paint a great painting? These are things not measured on intelligence tests and that don't fit well in to scientific experiments because the…
The problem of expressing yourself to a specific, deeper, degree than with mere talk? And/or (in olde times, when poems where meant to be accompanied by music/oration) creating something people can be entertained with and sing/dance too.
>Do you have to be intelligent to write a great poem?
Yes. Mind you, it doesn't mean it's technical intelligence, the kind that solves math problems etc. It's intelligence with words, wordplay, expression, feelings, ways of seeing, etc.
If you're interested in this topic a good book is "Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?", by Frans de Waal.
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>Early humans didn't have poetry. [Citation Needed]
OK so speech has begun 100,000 years ago (perhaps earlier). My point stands: Would humans without poetry not be considered intelligent? Hardly.
They would be considered less intelligent than humans that have developed speech, and later poetry and other refined forms of expression.
The same way humans that painted their caves are considered more intelligent than the humanoids that proceeded them, that weren't as able to express themselves.
Which tells you how smart dinosaurs could have been...
Lots of other comments talking about crows using cars to crack nuts. In this talk, he traces the behaviour to a driving school on the or skirts of Tokyo. The behaviour then spread across Tokyo.
https://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_klein_a_thought_experiment_...
We 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.