I have a personal experience story regarding crows. This is completely anecdotal of course but, to me, compelling.
I live on an island near Seattle, very quiet and rural. We have a lot of wild life. One morning I was woke by persistent crowing by... well crows. Black Crows (not the band).
Having been awoke from wonderful REM sleep I was understandably annoyed. So I went out to the street in front of my house and grabbed a handful of pebbles to throw at these poor little creatures.
I went out on my upper deck and these crows seemed very upset and were circling in a crazy pattern. I looked around, realizing that something was making them crazy, and they were making me crazy. Then I saw, I am not completely sure if it was a racoon or a badger but it was a small animal of some sort that was edging his way out on the limb of a tree where what appeared to be perhaps the little home of the crows and there babies or eggs or something.
So... in my groggy state, I reasoned that if I were to; instead of tossing my pebbles at the crows, I were to toss them at whatever that thing was, then the crows would shut up and let me go back to sleep. I admit, not the most altruistic of motives but, I had a goal.
So I tossed my pebbles at this thing (I am an engineer not a biologist so excuse my ignorance) but the little cat like creature scampered off and left the crows little home in the tree next to my house, alone.
I am completely fine with having crows as neighbors as long as they do not wake me at pre-dawn hours.
The very interesting thing is that since then, it really seems like they have become my little friends. Like little neighbors. OK, I could be a kook, if this had not happened I would think I was a Kook. But when I see them they bob their head. I crow back at them.
They were sitting on the ledge of my roof, and I went out on my deck and they scared me and I screamed. Then I waved at them like... OK it is you. Hi.
They were leaving some sort of bone fragments on my upper deck like a gift of some sort. I didn't know what to do, so I would pick it up and throw it in the trash. But it kept happening. So I eventually would leave it out there and just waive at them.
I have no idea if we are actually communicating but.. they seem highly intelligent to me.
One particularly early, groggy morning I was walking into work and there were a few crows pecking around the grass by the sidewalk. Lost in my thoughts I hear a raspy old man say, "good morning". I look around and don't see anyone, then I look at one of the crows and it looks me right in the eye and repeats, "good morning". I doubted my sanity for a few days before confiding in my wife what happened and was surprised and very much relieved when I learned crows could talk.
I didn't read the article or have anything to add, I just wanted to share this.
There is an American crow at a local wildlife rescue that will periodically say "American crow." I feel fortunate that I got to make a recording of it.
My crow story, which I think I've mentioned on here before.
We have young children, and thus the back of our car is always a little disgusting with things like goldfish crackers littered all over the floor and in-between the cracks of their car seats. We got in the habit of throwing the crumbs out onto the driveway when we got home. It didn't take long for us to notice anytime we pulled in, the crows would be lined up on the power lines waiting for their free meal.
But it gets better. One of my kids loves watching the birds, so we go out there and do so a lot. Sometimes we throw them some crackers etc. for free entertainment.
We were outside one day and someone walked by pretty close to us. They didn't pose any (recognizable) threat, but apparently the crows thought we were in some sort of danger because several swooped down and attacked the person walking by. They were totally fine after the crow mauling, but I did read that crows do view people as friend and foe, depending on what they might be trying to protect.
This makes me wonder if this kind of stalking is the reason behind the association of ravens with war? Many cultures have mythologies of ravens protecting warriors in battle. Maybe they literally followed armies in the past, scavenging food, and attacking the foes of the army.
I understand that they eat carrion, hence their association with the dead. But that wouldn't explain the stories like this:
> According to legend, prior to one battle a gigantic Gallic warrior challenged any Roman to single combat, and Valerius, who asked for and gained the consul’s permission, accepted. As they approached each other, a raven settled on Valerius’ helmet and it distracted the enemy's attention by flying at his face, allowing Valerius to kill the enemy Gaul.
Crows, being social animals, have a concept of friend already.
They also have a concept of foe. Crows are well-documented to wage war against red hawks (buzzards across the pond), and this goes further than just bickering over a tasty bit of carrion: they will actively gang up on red hawks whenever they see them. Which is risky business, red hawks being larger, with sharper beaks and talons.
It's pretty neat that they can extend those concepts to distinct humans!
Years ago, we had a dead crow in our yard. We think our dog did it, but we didn't see. My wife and I dealt with it, but had a lot of crow onlookers. They were pissed.
For the next year or so, every time either my wife or I would walk out the door, if crows were in the vicinity they would sound an alarm until they were happy we weren't going to attack them. They never seemed to do that for the dog, though.
Neat! I wonder if a biologist might describe this type of behaviour (attacking perceived threats to the creature that produces your renewable food source) as primitive agriculture.
Maybe the crows were just tending to your children like livestock? ;)
People talk about ants practicing agriculture, but sounds like maybe these crows are making a foray into it as well :)
Hopefully someone in the field will read this and be able to answer my question:
I've spent a lot of time googling research about animal intelligence, and I now know a bunch of things intelligent animals can do, but I have no idea where their limits are, what they can't do. Everything published uses such... nonflexible tasks.
If we're trying to measure general intelligence, why isn't anybody trying to teach corvids, octopi, macaques or dolphins a task that requires building towers of abstraction in their own mind, and then gives them harder and harder "levels"? I know at least octopi can use computer screens, and I know they enjoy hard puzzles that reward them with food, so it should be easy to teach them some computer puzzle game?
Say, we could build a four key keyboard that they can use, then teach them Sokoban, starting with extremely simple levels (walk up once to get a snack; walk up twice to get a snack; walk left twice; walk up twice, then down twice; walk up, then back down and right to get beneath the second crate, then up again...) and progressing towards actual Sokoban levels humans find interesting...
If they possess general intelligence this system could tell us a lot more about its limits than a series of experiments that each requires building a physical apparatus and spending a bunch of time perfecting it and then teaching it to the animals from zero?
Did I miss the answer when googling?
Is it that it's common knowledge among researchers that no animal possesses anywhere near enough intelligence to learn Sokoban (or 2048, or any non-real-time puzzle game with simple discrete controls, but I'm pretty sure Sokoban is a near optimal choice) so nobody even tries, nor bothers publishing it (or it's written in the basic textbooks that I didn't bother looking through)?
Do researchers in the field lack access to a technologist that could help them build something like Sokoban For Crows?
Or is it something else that I don't know I don't know?
> I know at least octopi can use computer screens, and I know they enjoy hard puzzles that reward them with food, so it should be easy to teach them some computer puzzle game?
I'm not sure it's that easy.
For example, suppose a race of hyperintelligent octopuses beam down and decide to study your intelligence. They notice in one test that if you begin scrambling eggs for breakfast and they cut off both your arms at the shoulder, your arms aren't able to finish scrambling the eggs.
"My, the intelligence in this species isn't very well-distributed," they and their tentacles agree.
I used to work at a university and helped build some code for a few neuroscience experiments to the question of lacking technologists - absolutely yes. They basically work with whoever the computer person is in the team/lab, and rarely budget for that as a specific part of their research because how do you even do that? These people are hyper specialized in their field.
This isn't 100% true everywhere, but for the average researcher I think it is true in almost all fields of research.
With my Linux knowledge I was able to turn our solar physics lab into a machine that could pump out way more data than it would have being built by a guy who mainly knew FORTRAN and VMS. (Paul if you are reading this, I'm exaggerating, you have a PhD and worked at the SuperComputing center and are a genius, but I hope you retired)
Even looking back, I could have done a whole lot more if I knew anything about AWS back then, which I didn't, so I used my budget on bare metal all the time, which was a huge waste of time and resources.
I also think there are other issues, because a lot of this research has to have a specific structure, you only get grants for what you propose, and they usually won't give you a ton of money for a wild new idea that's not based on some prior specific precedent.
The entire way we advance human knowledge is kind of fucked up but I don't have a better proposal :)
Definitely a neat idea! Your local cooperative extension service should be able to get you in touch with an animal behavior expert, since they are often affiliated with colleges.
Thinking about the project with corvids in mind, I’d suggest two nuances to your protocol.
1. Stick with plain mazes that have no crates in order to train the association with the onscreen character. Basically just spending more time with navigating mazes of increasing complexity before introducing crates at all. Then if they succeed with those, scale the maze complexity back down and add the crate mechanic.
2. Make use of audio. Birds have great eyes, but their natural interaction will be with their beaks, and I’m not sure how easy it is for them to track the onscreen motion while pecking. Using sound to signify “move to empty space” vs “tried to move into a wall” vs “pushed a crate” vs “got snack” could tighten the feedback loop for them and let you see them planning ahead: “I see I have to go ‘up, up, right‘ to get the snack, so I’ll press those buttons without checking the screen each time to confirm.” Might even be good for “move to empty space” to have a unique sound for each direction.
This isn’t really an answer to your actual question but I’m reminded about the Aesop’s fable about the crow and the pitcher[0]. Humans have been noticing the general intelligence of crows for over 2,500 years!
The main problem mentioned in the video is that pigeons don't come with a repertoire that allows them to do those tasks naturally. So, the researchers have to teach them each of the behaviors independently. The pigeons then manage to put the behaviors together, in what is arguably a display of creativity.
Well, we can teach animals vocabulary but I'm not aware of any success in teaching grammar where "eat banana" and "banana eat" convey different concepts. People have been trying for a long time without any success that I'm aware of in birds or other primates. What the limits are is very much an area of active research.
It sounds like you're starting off with the assumption that humans are inherently smarter than all other animals and that there are fundamental limitations on other animals' ability to think and you are trying to prove this systematically after other tests/measures (ability to use tools, have language) have failed.
Second time in the week I am doing this here, but I recommend you “Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?” By Frans de Waal. Maybe it can nudge you in the right direction.
The headline of the article, as is often the case, overstates what the actual research shows. Here is the actual claim made in the abstract of the paper:
"We show that single-neuron responses in the pallial endbrain of crows performing a visual detection task correlate with the birds’ perception about stimulus presence or absence and argue that this is an empirical marker of avian consciousness."
In other words: when crows who are trained to look for something show behavioral evidence that they see what they are looking for, the researchers can correlate that with neuron firings in their brains. Which, compared to the overblown claim of "higher intelligence", equates to "whoop de freaking do".
As I understand, this study proves that birds have something equivalent of a cerebral cortex which has been considered exclusive to mammals. Cerebral cortex is critical for awareness, consciousness, thought, memory, and language.
I don't know what's that got to do with "higher intelligence" though.
The actual exercise sounds more like short term memory than the sort of introspection the article hints at with 'know what they know'; there's an obvious evolutionary benefit to being able to link two events 2500ms apart and anticipate/respond accordingly. How non-mammalian neurons handle it might well be interesting, but it sounds like the sort of thing that maybe hasn't been observed in non-mammals mostly because it hasn't been looked for...
You can tell how much smarter crows are just by going to feed the ducks.
The crows watch YOU and your arm, predict where you'll throw and move there in advance, often catching things in mid-air. It's not just reaction speed, they're watching really carefully and making guesses. The ducks are next on the spectrum, they spot it first (after it lands) and geese are the dumbest, the feed can hit them right in the head, and even once they realise what's happening some other duck will usually get there and eat it before they do.
I’ve mentioned this previously but it’s on topic and still amazes me, so I’ll just copy & paste:
I know someone who works at one of the London airports and is responsible for keeping the runway operational. One of the jobs is keeping the birds well clear, and if necessary, sadly, may resort to shooting.
The crows know the score though. This acquiantance says the crows know to disappear if they see the bird clearers. What's "clever" is that they only take flight if it's one of the shooters. They recognise the veichle(s) despite them being all the same fleet. So if someone else is driving round to check something else, the birds completely ignore. If it's the "bird guy" then off they go with little encouragement.
I've wondered about the difference in behavior of crows when they encounter humans at different kinds of places.
I put peanuts out on the rail of my deck for the squirrels (I've got Eastern grey squirrels and Douglas squirrels) and the Steller's jays. If I see crows around, I'll give them some too.
If I'm actually outside on the deck, even far away from where the peanuts are, the crows will not come get them. They wait for me to go in, then get the peanuts, then fly to a nearby tree to wait for me to come put out more peanuts.
I have never been aggressive in any way to the crows, and will toss peanuts to near the foot of the tree they are sitting in. They have also seen me giving peanuts to squirrels. The Eastern greys will run up to near me, and the Douglas' would take them right out of my hand if I let them, so the crows have plenty of evidence I'm happy to give away peanuts. But they will not get close.
Yet at nearby supermarkets and fast food places, they will walk around the parking lot looking for food and come right near people. They seem completely indifferent to people there, only reacting if someone happens to be walking or driving right toward them, then they casually move to the side.
They don't seem worried at all about the humans at those places. So why are they much more cautious about me at my house?
I wonder if they recognize houses are human nests, and so we might be a lot more touchy about other animals in the area, and so the crows are much more cautious than when they encounter us at the supermarket?
After moving to Portland I've become enamored with our local corvids. Lots of Crows, Scrub Jays, Steller Jays. I toss them peanuts and they peek in the window looking for me.
Its fun to compare how cautious and skittish a murder of crows is compared to a mating pair of Scrub Jays. The little blue birds will swoop right in, feed a foot away from me, out of my hand, occasionally they've even hopped in the front door.
Meanwhile the crows will miss out on lots of tasty peanuts just watching the smaller birds show off their bravery and acrobatics.
That said: there are a lot more crows than scrub jays. The caution pays off.
They're fascinating to watch, the signs of intelligence are so clear, but at the same time they feel alien. They are very much not like us.
I have been repeatedly impressed at how clever crows, ravens, and certain parrots are whenever we figure out how to test them. I've seen videos of Cockatoos figuring out multi-step puzzles, and IIRC, ravens have been able to figure out puzzles with 5+ steps.
I'm not even sure if I can solve a puzzle with 5+ steps :)
One thing that is remarkable about crows is that they are most likely more intelligent than primates, despite having a much smaller brain. It looks like they evolved high intelligence separately, using different brain circuitry from ours.
The capability attributed to crows is that they think about (analyse) their own thinking.
The article arrives at that conclusion using two methods: 1. Behavioural analysis. 2. Reverse engineering neural circuitry.
Is "thinking about thinking" rare, or remarkable? Is it the defining trait that elevates humans above all other animals? The article tells us that the trait isn't unique to humans, because crows have it too.
I do not understand why this is about consciousness. My take of this study is that they establish that there are two type of neurons: (i) those recording whether there is a signal ("neurons signalling stimulus intensity" (ii) those recording how to react on the signal based on a rule ("representing the crows' percept").
This is cool, but what does this to have to do with consciousness?
They mention that they're not sure either about "phenomenal consciousness" and "access consciousness", but I wish they elaborated further on this.
I've had some magpie issues for years, and after trying various things I ended up shooting a couple because they were getting aggressive. It worked and the rest buggered off.
During the entire time a local couple of ravens watched the entire process from afar. Theyv'e never been an issue so I haven't paid attention to them, but to this day, I swear that those two ravens come by with every chick they hatch, watching when I practice shoot teaching their kids to stay away from me if I have my rifle. Otherwise, they mostly ignore me.
> a clueless hedgehog across a highway before it becomes roadkill
Before watching the linked video I thought this was describing crows deliberately placing hedgehogs in harm'ss way so that they could eat the resulting roadkill
"Man has always assumed that he is more intelligent than dolphins because he has achieved so much--the wheel, New York, wars and so on -- while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But, conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons." --Douglas Adams
[+] [-] zw123456|5 years ago|reply
Having been awoke from wonderful REM sleep I was understandably annoyed. So I went out to the street in front of my house and grabbed a handful of pebbles to throw at these poor little creatures.
I went out on my upper deck and these crows seemed very upset and were circling in a crazy pattern. I looked around, realizing that something was making them crazy, and they were making me crazy. Then I saw, I am not completely sure if it was a racoon or a badger but it was a small animal of some sort that was edging his way out on the limb of a tree where what appeared to be perhaps the little home of the crows and there babies or eggs or something.
So... in my groggy state, I reasoned that if I were to; instead of tossing my pebbles at the crows, I were to toss them at whatever that thing was, then the crows would shut up and let me go back to sleep. I admit, not the most altruistic of motives but, I had a goal.
So I tossed my pebbles at this thing (I am an engineer not a biologist so excuse my ignorance) but the little cat like creature scampered off and left the crows little home in the tree next to my house, alone.
I am completely fine with having crows as neighbors as long as they do not wake me at pre-dawn hours.
The very interesting thing is that since then, it really seems like they have become my little friends. Like little neighbors. OK, I could be a kook, if this had not happened I would think I was a Kook. But when I see them they bob their head. I crow back at them.
They were sitting on the ledge of my roof, and I went out on my deck and they scared me and I screamed. Then I waved at them like... OK it is you. Hi.
They were leaving some sort of bone fragments on my upper deck like a gift of some sort. I didn't know what to do, so I would pick it up and throw it in the trash. But it kept happening. So I eventually would leave it out there and just waive at them.
I have no idea if we are actually communicating but.. they seem highly intelligent to me.
[+] [-] Damorian|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jungans|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcswell|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EvanAnderson|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway_pdp09|5 years ago|reply
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/oct/23/talking-...
[+] [-] rtkaratekid|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] soonoutoftime|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taneq|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sharkweek|5 years ago|reply
We have young children, and thus the back of our car is always a little disgusting with things like goldfish crackers littered all over the floor and in-between the cracks of their car seats. We got in the habit of throwing the crumbs out onto the driveway when we got home. It didn't take long for us to notice anytime we pulled in, the crows would be lined up on the power lines waiting for their free meal.
But it gets better. One of my kids loves watching the birds, so we go out there and do so a lot. Sometimes we throw them some crackers etc. for free entertainment.
We were outside one day and someone walked by pretty close to us. They didn't pose any (recognizable) threat, but apparently the crows thought we were in some sort of danger because several swooped down and attacked the person walking by. They were totally fine after the crow mauling, but I did read that crows do view people as friend and foe, depending on what they might be trying to protect.
[+] [-] mywittyname|5 years ago|reply
I understand that they eat carrion, hence their association with the dead. But that wouldn't explain the stories like this:
> According to legend, prior to one battle a gigantic Gallic warrior challenged any Roman to single combat, and Valerius, who asked for and gained the consul’s permission, accepted. As they approached each other, a raven settled on Valerius’ helmet and it distracted the enemy's attention by flying at his face, allowing Valerius to kill the enemy Gaul.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Valerius_Corvus#Early_c...
[+] [-] samatman|5 years ago|reply
They also have a concept of foe. Crows are well-documented to wage war against red hawks (buzzards across the pond), and this goes further than just bickering over a tasty bit of carrion: they will actively gang up on red hawks whenever they see them. Which is risky business, red hawks being larger, with sharper beaks and talons.
It's pretty neat that they can extend those concepts to distinct humans!
[+] [-] Twirrim|5 years ago|reply
For the next year or so, every time either my wife or I would walk out the door, if crows were in the vicinity they would sound an alarm until they were happy we weren't going to attack them. They never seemed to do that for the dog, though.
[+] [-] patcon|5 years ago|reply
Maybe the crows were just tending to your children like livestock? ;)
People talk about ants practicing agriculture, but sounds like maybe these crows are making a foray into it as well :)
[+] [-] TrainedMonkey|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mdavidn|5 years ago|reply
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.201...
[+] [-] SonOfLilit|5 years ago|reply
I've spent a lot of time googling research about animal intelligence, and I now know a bunch of things intelligent animals can do, but I have no idea where their limits are, what they can't do. Everything published uses such... nonflexible tasks.
If we're trying to measure general intelligence, why isn't anybody trying to teach corvids, octopi, macaques or dolphins a task that requires building towers of abstraction in their own mind, and then gives them harder and harder "levels"? I know at least octopi can use computer screens, and I know they enjoy hard puzzles that reward them with food, so it should be easy to teach them some computer puzzle game?
Say, we could build a four key keyboard that they can use, then teach them Sokoban, starting with extremely simple levels (walk up once to get a snack; walk up twice to get a snack; walk left twice; walk up twice, then down twice; walk up, then back down and right to get beneath the second crate, then up again...) and progressing towards actual Sokoban levels humans find interesting...
If they possess general intelligence this system could tell us a lot more about its limits than a series of experiments that each requires building a physical apparatus and spending a bunch of time perfecting it and then teaching it to the animals from zero?
Did I miss the answer when googling?
Is it that it's common knowledge among researchers that no animal possesses anywhere near enough intelligence to learn Sokoban (or 2048, or any non-real-time puzzle game with simple discrete controls, but I'm pretty sure Sokoban is a near optimal choice) so nobody even tries, nor bothers publishing it (or it's written in the basic textbooks that I didn't bother looking through)?
Do researchers in the field lack access to a technologist that could help them build something like Sokoban For Crows?
Or is it something else that I don't know I don't know?
[+] [-] jancsika|5 years ago|reply
I'm not sure it's that easy.
For example, suppose a race of hyperintelligent octopuses beam down and decide to study your intelligence. They notice in one test that if you begin scrambling eggs for breakfast and they cut off both your arms at the shoulder, your arms aren't able to finish scrambling the eggs.
"My, the intelligence in this species isn't very well-distributed," they and their tentacles agree.
[+] [-] codezero|5 years ago|reply
This isn't 100% true everywhere, but for the average researcher I think it is true in almost all fields of research.
With my Linux knowledge I was able to turn our solar physics lab into a machine that could pump out way more data than it would have being built by a guy who mainly knew FORTRAN and VMS. (Paul if you are reading this, I'm exaggerating, you have a PhD and worked at the SuperComputing center and are a genius, but I hope you retired)
Even looking back, I could have done a whole lot more if I knew anything about AWS back then, which I didn't, so I used my budget on bare metal all the time, which was a huge waste of time and resources.
I also think there are other issues, because a lot of this research has to have a specific structure, you only get grants for what you propose, and they usually won't give you a ton of money for a wild new idea that's not based on some prior specific precedent.
The entire way we advance human knowledge is kind of fucked up but I don't have a better proposal :)
[+] [-] filoeleven|5 years ago|reply
Thinking about the project with corvids in mind, I’d suggest two nuances to your protocol.
1. Stick with plain mazes that have no crates in order to train the association with the onscreen character. Basically just spending more time with navigating mazes of increasing complexity before introducing crates at all. Then if they succeed with those, scale the maze complexity back down and add the crate mechanic.
2. Make use of audio. Birds have great eyes, but their natural interaction will be with their beaks, and I’m not sure how easy it is for them to track the onscreen motion while pecking. Using sound to signify “move to empty space” vs “tried to move into a wall” vs “pushed a crate” vs “got snack” could tighten the feedback loop for them and let you see them planning ahead: “I see I have to go ‘up, up, right‘ to get the snack, so I’ll press those buttons without checking the screen each time to confirm.” Might even be good for “move to empty space” to have a unique sound for each direction.
[+] [-] everly|5 years ago|reply
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crow_and_the_Pitcher
[+] [-] miltondts|5 years ago|reply
The main problem mentioned in the video is that pigeons don't come with a repertoire that allows them to do those tasks naturally. So, the researchers have to teach them each of the behaviors independently. The pigeons then manage to put the behaviors together, in what is arguably a display of creativity.
[+] [-] j_crick|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Symmetry|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mike00632|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] patcon|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petemir|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sosuke|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m463|5 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PXjhMzvv4M
[+] [-] pdonis|5 years ago|reply
"We show that single-neuron responses in the pallial endbrain of crows performing a visual detection task correlate with the birds’ perception about stimulus presence or absence and argue that this is an empirical marker of avian consciousness."
In other words: when crows who are trained to look for something show behavioral evidence that they see what they are looking for, the researchers can correlate that with neuron firings in their brains. Which, compared to the overblown claim of "higher intelligence", equates to "whoop de freaking do".
[+] [-] sedatk|5 years ago|reply
As I understand, this study proves that birds have something equivalent of a cerebral cortex which has been considered exclusive to mammals. Cerebral cortex is critical for awareness, consciousness, thought, memory, and language.
I don't know what's that got to do with "higher intelligence" though.
[+] [-] notahacker|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ricksharp|5 years ago|reply
I read the article, and I was like, "so they remembered a light flashed and got rewarded?"
A basic lstm will do that - GPT-3 will do far more.
How does that have anything to do with higher intelligence?
[+] [-] dang|5 years ago|reply
2020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23598939
2019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21769575
2017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15486368
2015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10789631
2014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8086105
2009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=470840
Pretty sure there have been other good threads too...
[+] [-] jonplackett|5 years ago|reply
The crows watch YOU and your arm, predict where you'll throw and move there in advance, often catching things in mid-air. It's not just reaction speed, they're watching really carefully and making guesses. The ducks are next on the spectrum, they spot it first (after it lands) and geese are the dumbest, the feed can hit them right in the head, and even once they realise what's happening some other duck will usually get there and eat it before they do.
[+] [-] arooaroo|5 years ago|reply
I know someone who works at one of the London airports and is responsible for keeping the runway operational. One of the jobs is keeping the birds well clear, and if necessary, sadly, may resort to shooting. The crows know the score though. This acquiantance says the crows know to disappear if they see the bird clearers. What's "clever" is that they only take flight if it's one of the shooters. They recognise the veichle(s) despite them being all the same fleet. So if someone else is driving round to check something else, the birds completely ignore. If it's the "bird guy" then off they go with little encouragement.
[+] [-] NDizzle|5 years ago|reply
https://youtu.be/1WupH8oyrAo
[+] [-] tzs|5 years ago|reply
I put peanuts out on the rail of my deck for the squirrels (I've got Eastern grey squirrels and Douglas squirrels) and the Steller's jays. If I see crows around, I'll give them some too.
If I'm actually outside on the deck, even far away from where the peanuts are, the crows will not come get them. They wait for me to go in, then get the peanuts, then fly to a nearby tree to wait for me to come put out more peanuts.
I have never been aggressive in any way to the crows, and will toss peanuts to near the foot of the tree they are sitting in. They have also seen me giving peanuts to squirrels. The Eastern greys will run up to near me, and the Douglas' would take them right out of my hand if I let them, so the crows have plenty of evidence I'm happy to give away peanuts. But they will not get close.
Yet at nearby supermarkets and fast food places, they will walk around the parking lot looking for food and come right near people. They seem completely indifferent to people there, only reacting if someone happens to be walking or driving right toward them, then they casually move to the side.
They don't seem worried at all about the humans at those places. So why are they much more cautious about me at my house?
I wonder if they recognize houses are human nests, and so we might be a lot more touchy about other animals in the area, and so the crows are much more cautious than when they encounter us at the supermarket?
[+] [-] bamurphymac1|5 years ago|reply
Its fun to compare how cautious and skittish a murder of crows is compared to a mating pair of Scrub Jays. The little blue birds will swoop right in, feed a foot away from me, out of my hand, occasionally they've even hopped in the front door.
Meanwhile the crows will miss out on lots of tasty peanuts just watching the smaller birds show off their bravery and acrobatics.
That said: there are a lot more crows than scrub jays. The caution pays off.
They're fascinating to watch, the signs of intelligence are so clear, but at the same time they feel alien. They are very much not like us.
[+] [-] tombert|5 years ago|reply
I'm not even sure if I can solve a puzzle with 5+ steps :)
[+] [-] isolli|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wombatmobile|5 years ago|reply
The article arrives at that conclusion using two methods: 1. Behavioural analysis. 2. Reverse engineering neural circuitry.
Is "thinking about thinking" rare, or remarkable? Is it the defining trait that elevates humans above all other animals? The article tells us that the trait isn't unique to humans, because crows have it too.
[+] [-] qq12as|5 years ago|reply
This is cool, but what does this to have to do with consciousness? They mention that they're not sure either about "phenomenal consciousness" and "access consciousness", but I wish they elaborated further on this.
[+] [-] fogihujy|5 years ago|reply
During the entire time a local couple of ravens watched the entire process from afar. Theyv'e never been an issue so I haven't paid attention to them, but to this day, I swear that those two ravens come by with every chick they hatch, watching when I practice shoot teaching their kids to stay away from me if I have my rifle. Otherwise, they mostly ignore me.
[+] [-] kimi|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] biggc|5 years ago|reply
Before watching the linked video I thought this was describing crows deliberately placing hedgehogs in harm'ss way so that they could eat the resulting roadkill
[+] [-] neckardt|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sedatk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brianush1|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] puranjay|5 years ago|reply