The Magic of Bird Brains

https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/the-magic-of-bird-brains

by chapulin • 2 years ago

129 37 2 years ago

Disappointing to see the various crow garbage vending machines not pan out. I wonder of it's actually impossible or if it's just been poorly executed.

nicklecompte• 2 years ago

Mollaret seemed to think that, because crows are smart, their behavior should be predictable and programmable—even if his own behavior wasn’t. He was treating ecology like a subset of mechanics, as though the crows themselves could be turned into cogs in a machine.

In particular it's hard to get a crow to do tedious, boring chores for some almonds or whatever when they know there's relatively fresh pizza in a dumpster 2 blocks down the street.

Swizec2• 2 years ago

In particular it's hard to get a crow to do tedious, boring chores for some almonds or whatever when they know there's relatively fresh pizza in a dumpster 2 blocks down the street.

I have the same problem with my parrot. He’s too smart and unlike dogs has zero desire to please. If he doesn’t like the trick you’re teaching him, or it’s taking too long, he’ll just fly to the nearest food bowl and help himself. He even knows where the treats are and will get them himself if you’re taking too long.

On the other hand, he actively prefers treats in foraging boxes. He’ll fly to his treat bag, get your attention, then fly to a foraging puzzle and indicate “yo put that shit in here”. They love foraging.

bagels2• 2 years ago

My first thought was that if they are smart enough to trade for food, they're also smart enough not to.

Solvency2• 2 years ago

Out in California, living near massive crow populations is a plus, because they terrorize the hell out of the hawks would otherwise mercilessly pick off your backyard chickens. It's truly impressive stuff, watching the crows coordinate comms and attacks from massive distances over a single hawk in the area.

hinkley• 2 years ago

It does mean more rats though.

Razengan• 2 years ago

Does the solution mean more cats?

micromacrofoot• 2 years ago

I've seen Blue Jays do something similar, it started off as a single male jay dive bombing the hawk with 2-3 more Jays showing up in a few minutes. It occurred to me that the birds must have a "flee" call that's distinct from a "help" call because while they seemed to want to scare away the hawk I've seen them simply flee when a cat's around.

bagels2• 2 years ago

I've had the same experience. Crows work with scrub jays to get rid of hawks and housecats for the benefit of other animals.

KineticLensman3• 2 years ago

Not a lot about bird brains in general, instead discussion of some informal experimentation with urban crows.

I volunteer at a raptor conservation centre and have been impressed by the behaviours of the different birds, and the degree of mentation that is going on (or not). The smartest birds I met there were Caracaras [0] which could be trained to do various tricks, including carrying objects from one place to another, and could solve simple puzzles. Perhaps surprisingly, given their reputation for being wise, owls were some of the least intelligent, partly because their skulls have so much space occupied by their eyes compared with diurnal birds.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caracara_(genus)

tech_ken• 2 years ago

Any reading recs for actual info on bird brains?

tokai• 2 years ago

Olkowicz, et al. (2016) Birds have primate-like numbers of neurons in the forebrain

https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1517131113

KineticLensman3• 2 years ago

Sorry, nothing specific. A while ago I read 'Bird Sense' by Tim Birkhead but this is about their sensory systems rather than their intelligence as such, and is a bit discursive. There are a couple of useful starting points on Wikipedia, such as [0] and [1].

In general, birds are sometimes surprisingly different to mammals. Their eyes are quite different. For example, raptor vision has a much higher acuity and framerate than ours, and many birds do different things with their left and right eyes. Their respiration is also different (including lungs that have 'in' and 'out' pipes), which allows something like a falcon to eat the moment it has finished hunting, unlike say a cheetah, which has to get its breath back before eating after a successful chase.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avian_brain

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_intelligence

bwestergard• 2 years ago

Jennifer Ackerman's "The Bird Way"

Fricken• 2 years ago

Instagram. There's a bottomless supply of videos showing birds being clever

vadim_phystech• 2 years ago

awesome comment! Thank you, KineticLensman! (and nickname is also super cool)

KineticLensman3• 2 years ago

Thank you! Nickname is a play on where I used to work and one of my hobbies.

ratrocket• 2 years ago

There's a great book about caracaras from a few years ago called "A Most Remarkable Creature: The Hidden Life and Epic Journey of the World's Smartest Birds of Prey" by Jonathan Meiburg. I highly recommend it! (And a trivia note, the author is perhaps better known as a musician, most notably in the bands Shearwater and Loma.)

Book (no wiki link, but this seems OK): https://www.npr.org/2021/03/31/982631076/-a-most-remarkable-...

Author: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Meiburg

Didn't think I'd see caracaras mentioned when I opened up hacker news this morning, thanks!

rotexo• 2 years ago

Second this book recommendation. He is a very engaging author (and his music is amazing too).

goberoi• 2 years ago

As an aside: owls being wise is a cultural belief. In India, owls are considered unintelligent, and calling someone an owl is akin to calling them a fool. Interesting how these perceptions are diametrically opposite!

yencabulator• 2 years ago

In Finnish, owl translates as pöllö, which in modern day everyday spoken language also means dumb/silly/crazy. I can't quickly find any evidence of any old owl symbology that wouldn't just be imported from a different culture. Most of the surrounding countries considered owls to be birds of death, accidents and misfortune. So yeah, I'd say Finland agrees with India on this.

anemoknee• 2 years ago

Jennifer Ackerman's The Genius of Birds is a great read on this subject.

https://www.jenniferackermanauthor.com/genius-ofbirds

strangattractor• 2 years ago

May I suggest the book "Mind of the Raven" by Bernd Heinrich. Excellently written and extremely interesting. He has spent a life time studying animal behavior in particular Corvidae.

"Bernd Heinrich is a biologist and author of numerous books on the natural world. He lives in Richmond, VT, and in a cabin in the forests of western Maine."

https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Raven-Investigations-Adventures-...

gwern• 2 years ago

The quote at the end from Eiseley is more interesting than it sounds: https://www.101bananas.com/library2/eiseley1.html It's about a crow being terrified to nearly fly into Eiseley's head on an extremely foggy day (where you couldn't see the ground), and Eiseley speculating that the crow inferred that Eiseley, uniquely among humans, had somehow learned to walk in the sky, and was scared of him ever after.

JosephK• 2 years ago

That was marvellous. Thank you for sharing.

joe8756438• 2 years ago

I raise geese. Had no idea, before I started, how interesting and varied their behaviors are.

They are very intelligent, it seems like a lot of their brainpower goes toward their social interactions.

Of course, individually they have distinct personalities, they have a group dynamic, and they also make specific friendships (apart from their mating partners).

Also their relationship with me and other people that care for them — they know and behave differently according to who’s around.

I’m documenting my observations on one breed called the cotton patch goose [1]. At some point I’ll put together a more comprehensive report.

1. https://hedgerider.substack.com/p/the-cotton-patch-goose

tomalbrc• 2 years ago

https://archive.ph/w8s6e

PlunderBunny• 2 years ago

New Zealand Kea are notoriously smart - they can work together to solve problems, and even seem to have something akin to laughter:

https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/90639503/kea-are-smarter...

The Magic of Bird Brains

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