h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Just sparking a thought from the Raven thread there's something I've wondered about for a while.

It seems that certain birds are very intelligent. The raven in that link obviously. But also parrots - think it is the African grey that is well known as being highly intelligent (someone somewhere in the past mentioned a human age of 5 or so?) and there's at least one species of crow (I think) that has been shown to use 2nd (and possibly 3rd) order tools to get what it wants.

Then there's the stories like the s who discovered they could open the old foil tops on milk bottles and that skill travelled through the population in the british isles.

And some sort of wading bird in a park somewhere that had learned to fish by waiting for people to chuck bread in the lake, then fishing it out and dabbing it on the water till a fish came up.

Clearly some birds are very good at problem solving.
The question I have though is about their brains. They're tiny. I know there's the ratio of brain size to body size that is though to count but still, their brains are teeny tiny. So I guess my question is really "How's that work, then?". Maybe the lack of complicated forelimbs frees up some processing power? Or have they distinctly different brain structures?

Or if you are as confused as me, any related stories would be interesting!

Online recently (newspaper? beeb?) a raven/cow was shown determining the number of pebbles to put into a jar of water to get a worm to float to the top and be accessible


and all birds are excellant at crapping on a newly washed car

Aren't human brains so big because aof our ability to speak (grunt if your a teenager<winkeye) So birds may not need big brains as they don't speak which in turn frees up space to aim on clean cars

but some birds can learn to speak, African Grays particularly.
And then there is the Lyre bird with it's seemingly unique ability to mimic. It isn't just speach that makes our brains big, it is all sorts of stuff, most of which we haven't sorted out yet.

The Minah bird is a brilliant mimic of voices and phrases

That's not speech as such, though. It's just mimicry. It means nothing to the parrot/mynah/whatever, so doesn't need the language processing skills of humans.

RF

This thread reads very differently if one is of a sexist nature

RF

Wasn't there the case of an African Grey parrot who learned genuine speech, rather than just mimicry? The Economist ran an obituary for it last year, but I can't remember the name for the life of me.

Her name was Alex: http://www.economist.com/obituary/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9828615

It's not the number of neurons that a brain had but the amount of interconnectedness of them that counts. So many connections maketh the cleverness not necessarily anything else.

Although of course a two-neuron brain is going to struggle so size must matter a bit.

I suspect the problem will be easier to answer when brainy brain scientists begin to fathom out how the brain works. They don't really have all that much of a scooby doo currently.

It's pretty recent that people have figured out that anything other than human beings are capable of reasoning and tool use, so give them time

Realisation might not be that recent :

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8181233.stm


One of Aesop's fables may have been based on fact, scientists report.

In the tale, written more than 2,000 years ago, a crow uses stones to raise the water level in a pitcher so it can reach the liquid to quench its thirst.

Now a study published in Current Biology reveals that rooks, a relative of crows, do just the same when presented with a similar situation.

yeah yeah...

Of course, aesop's fable is *not* a modern western scientific fact accepted by modern western scholars or scientists.

That was sort of my point. There's been lots of theories, but the general consensus has always been that even the 'great apes' are not as smart as us.

We are currently seeing very strong evidence to the contrary, and in the least expected/obvious areas. I mean, we're not that closely related to corvids, but there they are, making and using tools, assessing problems and resolving them at least partly mentally before creating and using tools *designed* for the job! (and also understanding things like displacement etc)

I suppose it was when you said 'people figuring out'.....



also otters have long been known to use stones to open shellfish

basic tool use, bashing things, is fairly well known. More sophisticated tool use such as the water example or using twigs to poke in holes for grubs and termites is the next step up.

But what corvids have also been found to do is second order tool use where they use one tool to make another tool which they then use for whatever.

On the chimpo side, there was a southern american discovery of a site which was dubbed as a chimp stone age site from the prehistoric where stone tool use was in evidence.

I was thinking back to the reasonably recent period when it was believed that all animals were 'dumb' and lesser than humans.

It's a shift in our perception, not animal's ability I think

It's a shift in some peoples perceptions, yes

No, I agree with you really. But thrushes using a favourite stone to smash snail shells against is well known and other such very basic use, but it was assumed to be unintelligent.

I think you'll find there are plenty out there that would still argue that there is a dividing line between other animals and humans - but research is showing more and more clearly that if such a line does exist, it is a very thin one.

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Permanent marker would sort out that problem

blue or red?