Crows can perform as well as 7- to 10-year-olds on cause-and-effect tasks

http://www.news.ucsb.edu/2014/014330/smarter-second-grader

by evo_9 • 12 years ago

179 72 12 years ago

news.ucsb.edu

bane• 12 years ago

Crows are impressive animals. The more we learn about animal intelligence, the more I wonder what exactly it is that we do with all this extra brain matter we lug around.

http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/crows-could-be-the-key-to...

bambax2• 12 years ago

Crows can do amazing things; a documentary shows crows dropping nuts on roads, waiting for passing cars to crack them open.

But the problem then is to get onto the road to eat the content of the nut without being run over.

Well, crows learned to drop the nuts at pedestrian crossings, and wait for read lights stopping all cars, to go collect the reward. Problem solved.

kryptiskt• 12 years ago

I have observed crows doing this with chestnuts on a crossing. And also a crow burying a chestnut, noticing that it was observed by another crow, then pretending that it buried the nut in another spot and vigorously defending the fake location from the other crow.

Bulkington• 12 years ago

But can they beat chickens at tic-tac-toe?

http://www.nytimes.com/video/nyregion/100000001595360/tick-t...

steveax• 12 years ago

I live in a neighborhood that has lots of crows and lots of walnut trees and not much car traffic. The neighborhood crows have figured out that dropping the walnuts in the intersections increases the chances of them getting crushed.

I'm running my own little social experiment: whenever I'm walking in the 'hood and I see a crow drop a walnut, I walk over and crush it. So far the crows have not started dropping nuts near me when they see me, but I have hopes :-)

Related, crow vending machine: http://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_klein_on_the_intelligence_of...

oldmanjay• 12 years ago

as soon as crows start performing experiments on humans, I might share your wonder.

blendergasket• 12 years ago

Just last night I watched a really, really great documentary on crow intelligence called "A Murder of Crows". I highly, highly recommend it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s472GjbLKQ4

pyre• 12 years ago

Director's Statement: http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/features/directors-statemen...

tunap• 12 years ago

Never saw that, thx. His leap of faith worked out well for them. Another good bird IQ documentary, Nova's Inside Animal Mind: Birds... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-spBaywak7M

An even better read, IMO, but I am partial to the Corvus corax... https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/254704.Mind_of_the_Raven

swamp40• 12 years ago

Stoffel the honey badger is pretty innovative as well, (especially considering he was never trained): http://www.wimp.com/badgerhoudini/

lotsofmangos• 12 years ago

I sometime wonder if wild crows and ravens can understand a lot of human language, but have a cultural ban on revealing this too often due to how much trouble it tends to cause.

nathancahill• 12 years ago

In Tolkein's universe, the ravens of Erebor could understand and speak Westron. As with the rest of his works, Tolkein drew from Norse mythology, in which Odin's messenger ravens brought him news from around the world.

tinco• 12 years ago

In Tolkien's universe, there are trees that understand and speak Westron...

pjmorris• 12 years ago

Gary Larson did a 'Far Side' cartoon where cows were standing, enjoying conversations in the field until one of them yelled 'Car!', where they all went silent and dropped to all fours.

astrobe_• 12 years ago

This echoes to a statement in the "A Murder Of Crows" documentary linked in this thread, which goes like "They are smart, but we are the smartest". If there is an intelligence vastly superior than ours, what are the chances that we find out it exists? Can an "inferior" intelligence identify an other one as "superior"? Put in another way: if a superior AI emerges from one of our experiments, will we be able to understand its output?

boomlinde• 12 years ago

I'd say that if it was in its interest to communicate something, an intelligent being would be better equipped to do so than an unintelligent being.

Qantourisc• 12 years ago

If we ask it to dumb it down sure. Also often it's a lot harder to find a conclusion then to understand the conclusion and how to arrive at the same conclusion. Unless it's so complex our minds cannot comprehend it without years of study on 1 particular problem. But that is already occurring in silence today not ?

randall2• 12 years ago

Another researcher thinks effects like this are due to language in humans. (Maybe not directly linked, but somewhat related)

Basically the experiment was to have a rectangular room with 4 white walls, and then another box with one blue wall.

Researchers put some food in the room to the left of the blue wall, showed it to a rat, then spun the rat around, and the rat got it right 50% of the time. (IE random chance.)

Researchers did the same experiment with kids, and kids under 6 failed every time. Though after age 6, kids start using spacial language and can say the phrase "left of the blue wall", which implies to the researcher we use language to connect different disparate parts of the brain.

More on this during this radiolab episode: http://www.radiolab.org/story/91725-words/

wyager2• 12 years ago

which implies to the researcher we use language to connect different disparate parts of the brain

I've always felt this was the case in my own mind. Language is the serialization format for abstract concepts.

This is why I'm very interested in constructed languages. I think it might help human cognition if we had a more efficient serialization format for internal concept transport.

skrebbel• 12 years ago

Language is the serialization format for abstract concepts.

Woa nice! Good analogy. Will steal.

autisticimagery• 12 years ago

Language is the serialization format for abstract concepts.

For you maybe, but some people work with images only and most people use a mix of language and images. Autistic people tend to work exclusively with images, or exclusively with words. Some also use music or numbers. You don't need to speak any audible language to invent or understand things. Your own internal language is enough. You'll just be so isolated that you're unlikely to be understood by the masses, that's all.

wcoenen• 12 years ago

This is why I'm very interested in constructed languages

xu do kakne bacru la jbobau

infogulch2• 12 years ago

There is a culture in africa for which the concept of relative direction doesn't exist. How would they perform at this test?

bambax2• 12 years ago

I believe the cultures in question know which way is North at all times, so this would be super easy for them, because the absolute position of an object that doesn't move never changes.

bartonfink• 12 years ago

In a linguistics course in college, this tribe was used as an example of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Supposedly, members who were taught English and spoke it well still had trouble with relative direction because their original language (and culture) didn't have the concept. I always liked the example even if I thought it was dubious. Very cool to hear that someone else can corroborate that and make it at least a shared anecdote.

bostonpete• 12 years ago

Researchers did the same experiment with kids, and kids under 6 failed every time.

How can this be??? If they didn't have the ability to keep track of which way was which, shouldn't they have failed 50% of the time, like the rats?

greatzebu• 12 years ago

I think this should be read as "kids under 6 failed [to perform better than chance] every time"

araes• 12 years ago

Interesting, I often wonder in these kinds of cases whether that implies that Kitty, the best crow, has the equivalent of an internal language or symbolic logic that they're using to frame these ideas? Also, if provided with an easy way to interact with human language, would they be able to develop / learn concepts like grammatical structure, or always be limited to simple relationships like "Red = Food"? Would their reasoning ability improve if provided with such a language framework?

hyp0• 12 years ago

[just your first question] I don't think it necessarily implies an internal language, as crows, not being mammals, have a different brain structure. Specifically, they lack a neocortex. They instead have an independently evolved higher brain structure called a hyperpallium. Corvids (including crows) have the largest of these, amongst birds. Kinda, the apes of the bird world.

So it's possible the relevant processing centers are not separate in them, as they are in mammals, and do not need an internal language to bridge them. Therefore, while it's possible they do have the same problem and solution as us, this experiment doesn't imply it.

I wonder if there's a way to test which it is? e.g. something analogous the interfering with this internal language in humans that a commentor mentioned.

m_darkTemplar• 12 years ago

I heard during AI Class (6.034 w/Patrick Winston) that the same experiment was repeated with adults but they had to say some pre-determined words the whole time, and they regressed back to the level of pre-6 year olds.

Speech uses the same part of the brain as thought apparently, so making someone say words prevents them from thinking during that time.

petercooper• 12 years ago

they had to say some pre-determined words the whole time, and they regressed back to the level of pre-6 year olds

Only slightly related, but this is why I listen to audiobooks every night to fall to sleep. If I'm listening to someone else, I almost literally can't "think" so my brain chatter is basically eradicated and I fall asleep. I know it's not the same for everyone, but I basically turn into a mindless automaton if I'm actively listening to someone else as I'm an extremely verbal thinker.

pinaceae• 12 years ago

well, to take the other perspective: little kids are not smarter than little animals.

it's not like the typical 7-10 year old kid is a fountain of smartness. supervision is still needed, it is not able to sustain its existence by itself, would starve or get killed through its own inexperience - which makes those little animals superior.

Drakim• 12 years ago

Survival can be a result of intelligence, but good survival abilities does not imply intelligence in itself. Tons of things survive without much intelligence at all, such as bacteria, or jellyfish.

In short, survival skills are not a good metric for intelligence, you can have one without the other.

superuser22• 12 years ago

This is certainly true of the average 7-10 year old kid raised in suburbia by ordinary parents and educated and public school, but childhood and helplessness have been vastly prolonged artificially.

Maybe not a 10 year old, but a 12 year old in the Industrial Revolution would have been earning enough to cover his costs and contribute to the family. A 14 year old could also be doing just fine as a mother. It's not as if teenagers' poor life-skills are functions of their age, we just choose not to let them have the requisite experience until they are "old enough." Children are technically capable of much more than we give them credit for, we just would rather they spend time gaining the education to be knowledge workers instead of replaceable cogs in factories.

You couldn't just throw an average modern 10-year-old on the streets and expect him to be fine, but it's historical fact that it is possible for children not to be so helpless.

JoshTriplett• 12 years ago

A huge fraction of those historical self-sufficient kids also died young for preventable reasons.

pcrh• 12 years ago

Unless they're your own kids, in which case they're really intelligent!

It goes without saying that a 7 yr old human can do a much wider variety of intellectual tasks an adult crow, however.

rwallace• 12 years ago

There is a similar experiment showing pigeons outperforming Harvard students at an even simpler cognitive task.

One response to this would be to conclude that it's not like the typical Harvard student is a fountain of smartness; it is not able to sustain its existence by itself, would starve or get killed through its own experience (true enough; the average Harvard student wouldn't survive a month lost alone in the jungle) - which makes little animals superior.

A more sensible response would be to notice that humans actually are smarter than birds (I'm prepared to revisit that conclusion if any crows or pigeons can post reasoned arguments to the contrary), but that you can prove anything is superior to anything else if you cherry-pick the test carefully enough.

whoopdedo• 12 years ago

Looking forward to the Crow Computing revolution.

linker3000• 12 years ago

Enabled by crowed funding

iagooar• 12 years ago

You, guys, just crowsed the line.

cyorir• 12 years ago

This is kind of off-topic but birds can be pretty advanced in surprising ways. In particular, birdsongs can be pretty complex and some species have evolved specific cognitive functions for understanding, replicating, and producing birdsongs. It is conceivable that features evolved in relation to some tasks may also enhance behavior in other cognitive tasks. I would not be surprised if quite a few species besides crows perform just as well for the task mentioned in the article, and others.

Here is a neat review relating to songbirds:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3261

gulpahum• 12 years ago

Crows and magpies are the smartest birds on earth. European magpies pass the mirror test, something very rare animals and only children over 18 months do: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14552-mirror-test-show...

mross462• 12 years ago

Excellent PBS Nature episode on the subject too: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/a-murder-of-crows/fu...

ziggrat• 12 years ago

In Islam we are told to love kids till 7 by holding them close to us. Just conversation and love. Tell them to pray when they are 10 and use harsh language if necessary after 10. I know i am talking to a highly intelligent audience in this forum, most of which is atheist. I love you as a fellow human and would request you to know about Islam through Quran not through the Media or by looking at Muslims(coz most of us are doing it wrong)

ChikkaChiChi• 12 years ago

You may have been expecting to post this in another thread. Otherwise, it's off-topic.

rsynnott• 12 years ago

In Islam we are told to love kids till 7 by holding them close to us. Just conversation and love.

The Jesuits put this a little more sinisterly: "Give me the child until he is seven and I’ll give you the man".

sys32768• 12 years ago

These smart crows make chimps seem like mere monkeys.

CurtMonash• 12 years ago

Two reasons to think birds excel at spatial reasoning:

1. Migration. 2. Nest-building.

If you gave the same pile of materials to a robin and to me, I think the robin might do a better job of building a nest with it. I base this conjecture upon robin nests I've seen around my house.

chenelson2• 12 years ago

Most humans don't experience much of the z axis without tools.

Brain-machine interface with weak AI (translation) could drastically alter the intelligence debate.

beachstartup• 12 years ago

what in the world are you talking about? "most" humans exist in 3 dimensions (x,y,z), all the time, with or without tools.

erikpukinskis• 12 years ago

We'll go to amazing lengths to modify these tests so that crows can perform at a 7 year old level, and we all accept that as fair, but when someone talks about modifying tests so that kids of a certain class/race background can score highly everyone thinks you're cheating and violating the sanctity of the test.

Imagine if Google made an alternate set of tests for low income applicants that let them in at a 200% higher rate and announced "low income applicants perform at 22 year old level in Google applications with modified test".

Crows can perform as well as 7- to 10-year-olds on cause-and-effect tasks

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