[Caelus9]

Watching cockatoos figure out stuff like this really makes me wonder have we been seriously underestimating bird intelligence all this time? We tend to associate tool use with primates, but parrots, corvids, and kea keep proving us wrong in the smartest ways. Honestly, maybe “avian cognition” deserves its own category of advanced problem solving. There’s probably a lot we could learn from their behavior not just about animals, but about ourselves and the systems we build.

[i80and]

Avian cognition is so darn interesting. We associate the mammalian neocortex with "higher intelligence" (which is hand-wavy), but that structure arose after any common ancestor with birds.

The avian pallium is thought to be the analogue structure in birds, evolved separately.

Which is cool! Birds have separately evolved intelligence!

[berkes]

Even cooler, IMHO, is that invertebrates evolved intelligence (and almost identical eyes!) parallel to primate's and corvids'.

Squid, octopi, etc have cognitive abilities that sometimes overtake that of "intelligent" mammals or birds. Yet common ancestors are about as far away as is possible in animal kingdom.

(And also please remember this when ordering calamari next time ;)

Edit: I very much enjoyed this bestseller popular science book on invertebrates intelligence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_Minds%3A_The_Octopus%2C_...

[4gotunameagain]

And then we have octopi, with their separately evolved decentralised intelligence !

A mini brain in each arm, orchestrated by the main brain.

[Trasmatta]

I've recently gone down the rabbit hole of watching pet bird videos on YouTube. The wide range of behaviors is so fascinating. They can be so affectionate, playful, mischievous, and just plain goofy.

The African grey parrots are fascinating in particular, with their ability to connect words to more abstract concepts like counting.

[soulofmischief]

I can't speak for the average person but I don't think I've encountered many intelligent people who don't also recognize bird intelligence. They have a greater neuron packing density than mammals and there's plenty footage online of corvids using tools.

[neoden]

> have we been seriously underestimating bird intelligence all this time

another question that I keep asking myself is: are we seriously overestimating human intelligence all this time?

[yen223]

I think there's ample evidence that humans have some incredible things, that most animals haven't

[NooneAtAll3]

as the saying goes "there's an overlap between the smartest bear and dumbest tourist"

[elif]

Ehhh it's definitely nuanced but we certainly haven't been dramatically overlooking anything fundamental.

The prevailing wisdom has been that a fully developed cockatoo has roughly the intelligence of a 3 year old.

A 3 year old figuring out how to use a drinking fountain wouldn't be world-breaking science, and I don't think this is either.

We have proven that they don't understand language and can simply mimic sounds. I don't think it's as deep as you are hoping.

[teaearlgraycold]

Could they have their own language though?

[SAI_Peregrinus]

African Gray parrots have been proven to understand significant amounts of language.

[lr4444lr]

Their brain:body mass ratio is very high, so they've been on our intelligence radar for years, especially corvids.