
City Birds Are Smarter Than Rural Birds - unitedacademics
http://www.united-academics.org/earth-environment/city-birds-are-smarter-than-rural-birds/
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andrewclunn
Before somebody starts trying to smugly draw some parallel with urban and
rural humans, the finches have natural selection weeding out the weak (or in
this case less intelligent). This isn't happening with people.

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unitedacademics
Sure. Even though humans are still shaped by natural selection, we now have to
consider that we are evolving in a balance between culture and biology.
[http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/04/natural-selection-
sti...](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/04/natural-selection-still-us)
(This article has some interesting (and controversial) remarks on the role of
natural selection in humans).

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pigpaws
"One such test involved setting a dish of food and timing how long it took the
finch to eat it;"

How is this a test of "intelligence"? Biology, metabolism and food drive
maybe, but "intelligence"?

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unitedacademics
The researchers wanted to test whether city birds had 'higher boldness,
reduced neophobia, and enhanced problem-solving and learning skills'. These
specific test was done to see whether they could guarantee reproducibility of
the results. Something like a control

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pigpaws
that still makes no sense as far as 'intelligence' goes. First off, rural and
urban birds have different overall diets. if you stick a french fry in front
of a rural bird, it might not know its supposed to be 'food'. Same can be said
with water-bugs and urban birds. there are too many factors to consider -
though they could have and just not reported the specific metrics.

