
Ravens score just as high as big-brained chimps on cognitive tests - shawndumas
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/04/when-it-comes-to-brains-size-doesnt-matter/
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unicornporn
My fascination for corvus started when I saw Joshua Klein's Ted presentation
in 2008[1]. Inspired by these recent findings I two weeks ago decided to get
to know some crows. I bike commute every weekday and pass a place were I've
noticed there's almost always a flock of hooded crows (corvus cornix).

I decided to feed them twice a day (when going to work and when leaving work).
The first time they were very reluctant to pick up the nuts and seeds I threw
to them. Me throwing things in their direction understandably made them
hesitant. After I left however, I saw from a distance how they inspected the
nuts and picked them up.

I did this two times a day for two more days. The day after that I saw a crow
sitting on the ground a few hundred meters away. Soon it started flying
straight towards me on the bike path. I slowed down and it landed straight in
front of my bike and started cawing. I picked up the plastic bag of nuts, and
it came right to me.

Fast forward to now. When they are at the place they come to meet me. A few
times they have also showed up from nowhere (almost eerily) when I stop with
my bike. One second I swear I can't see a bird anywhere, and a second later
they land next to me. I've also had a fantastic experience were 10-20 crows
flew with me and right next to me (when riding my bike) for a few hundred
meters.

It has become a nice part of the day that lightens up my commute. I will keep
doing this and see how things evolve. All in all, I would recommend building
some interspecies relationships with crows. :)

[1]
[https://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_klein_on_the_intelligence_o...](https://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_klein_on_the_intelligence_of_crows)

~~~
gadders
We've had previous discussions on here about crows etc and I vaguely remember
a story about someone who managed to start a gang fight between rival crow
gangs. I wish I could find the link.

~~~
andrewrice
You may be thinking of the famous World War Crow greentext from 4chan:
[http://i.imgur.com/f50IZJS.png](http://i.imgur.com/f50IZJS.png)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Very cool! But sounds a little poetical - makes a good story anyhow.

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astannard
When I was a teenager I found a baby crow that had been attacked by something
and was in a bad state. I took it home looked after it for a month or so
feeding it on cat food and keeping it in a garage. Maybe not the best move but
I was a teenager. It grew up and lived in the wild in the end but would
sometime fly down and land on my shoulder as I walked to the shops etc. I
would stick it on a post box buy a few things and it would hop back on my
shoulder when I came out. Made me feel quite badass ;)

~~~
neverminder
Crows are extremely intelligent and they live quite a long time. When I was a
kid I went on a vacation with my family to a cabin by a lake. A man living in
the neighborhood had a pet crow. The crow would get cosy around our dining
table that was outside trying to grab some food, so my mother chased it away
once. After that for the next 2 weeks we stayed there the crow would fly over
every day and take a shit on my mother's laundry. There were 5 people in the
family, but the crow would always pick my mother's clothes. This is a true
story.

~~~
astannard
That is hilarious, I wonder if crows have a sense of humour, sounds like they
like toilet humour?

~~~
snowwrestler
Whenever this topic comes up I always find myself thinking "why not?"

We know humans are animals, and as far as we can tell, toilet humor is
universal across cultures. Animals aren't as intelligent as humans, sure--but
does anyone think that poop jokes require a lot of intelligence to get?

I feel like the history of studying animal cognition can be thought of as long
process of us just getting over how special and unique we think we are. First
it was problem-solving vs. pre-programmed instincts, then it was "man, the
tool user", then it was language, and now sense of humor? Well why not?

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ooooo00000
There is a phenomenon where individuals with hydrocephalus, a condition where
the brain cavity is filled with fluid, can still exhibit normal intelligence.
I suppose the two broad explanations are that brain matter is either denser in
these individuals, or that a brain can still compute well with less brain
matter at least in some cases (possibly by sacrificing on some other not-
easily-measured mental faculties)

 _" There's a young student at this university," says Lorber, "who has an IQ
of 126, has gained a first-class honors degree in mathematics, and is socially
completely normal. And yet the boy has virtually no brain."_

[http://www.psych.ufl.edu/~steh/PSB6099/brainnecessary.pdf](http://www.psych.ufl.edu/~steh/PSB6099/brainnecessary.pdf)

~~~
Natanael_L
One guess is that our brains are "lazily" allocating neurons to tasks, since
we have so much space available compared to most animals. The signals are
simply allowed to branch out / propagate much further (and redundancy is
probably involved too). The paths are simply built where the signals goes.

But when it is constrained, and there's still enough of all the important
brain structures, the density (interference?) of different signals probably
causes them to propagate much less such that the processing of each signal
will get processed by fewer neurons, and the same functions are still
achieved.

Kind of like a space optimized FPGA design vs a lazy one that uses all the
logical elements because there's no need to be compact.

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jrapdx3
In our neighborhood we see quite a few corvids, crows, scrub-jays and
Steller's jays. The jays in particular are entertaining. They are very fond of
raw peanuts in the shell. When the birds are visiting, tossing a few peanuts
leads to observing bird behavior not unlike that of human primates.

They get into "arguments" with each other over possession of the nuts.
Sometimes they seem more interested in "fighting" than eating. So they are
sort of competitive with each other, yet they also cooperate, since most of
the jays wind up with the opportunity to grab a peanut or two.

A few individuals have physical deficits: one's missing part of its lower
mandible, another one has only a right foot. Yet they adapt to these handicaps
figuring out ways to get a share of the peanuts and other goodies we supply.

Reading about avian neuroanatomy shows very differently organized brains. Of
course their brains are smaller in absolute size vs. primates. I've wondered
if the nuclei-organized avian brain is a more efficient "processor" vs.
mammalian layered brain. Maybe that accounts for the surprisingly excellent
corvid performance.

~~~
6stringmerc
Glad you posted and I like how you describe the adaptations and determination
of that particular group. Good notes! Regarding your last point and line of
thinking, I've been studying a lot of flight processing resources and that
might also be a characteristic of their brain structure. Being able to use the
motor skills and air conditions for flight - to me - seems like it's more
complex than walking around on two legs. Fun to think about!

~~~
a3n
You should talk to an experienced skydiver about what it's like to operate in
3 dimensions. I skydived long ago, and while I never got really great at it, I
remember doing things "instinctively" to make or avoid something happening.
For example, dipping a shoulder, especially without thinking about it, to move
somewhere or out of the way of someone.

I guess bicycle riding is another example of making things happen in unnatural
or differently constrained environments.

~~~
geon
Also playing first person games. It is a weird feeling when the buttons
"disappear".

~~~
a3n
Musicians sometimes talk about freeing themselves from their instruments.

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hodwik
Ravens are just better programmed for obtaining difficult to access food
(makes sense, see insects).

Compare human and goldfish intelligence according to whom better understands
tiny currents and you'll find the goldfish wins every time, even against
oceanographers.

~~~
marchenko
Chimpanzees are known to 'fish' for termites, which is a fairly complex
behavior involving a hidden food source, so I'm not sure the test is obviously
biased toward ravens (unless they also administered the Raven's Matrices). It
would be interesting to see if there were any sex-related differences in
performance, as it is female chimps who do most of the insect hunting, and
teach it to their daughters).

~~~
masklinn
> Chimpanzees are known to 'fish' for termites, which is a fairly complex
> behavior involving a hidden food source, so I'm not sure the test is
> obviously biased toward ravens (unless they also administered the Raven's
> Matrices)

Caledonian crows fish for/spear grubs (hidden in wood) using small twigs,
fashioning them into hooks when the sticks aren't naturally barbed.

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jack9
I've yelled at a squawking crow every time it cawed for a few minutes. After
that I stopped and hid from the crow under various rooftops and the crow would
fly around to get a visual vantage point on me (still cawing of course), I
would move out of its visual range, it would fly to a new position to spot me.
It was eerily fun.

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charlesism
"Study suggests we don't yet know how to design meaningful cognitive tests.
Ravens score just as high as big-brained chimps."

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awinter-py
intelligent birds use a structure called the 'visual wulst' for reasoning
tasks, a highly-evolved brain 'bulge' used for making decisions about visual
stimuli.

It's in some ways different from our cortex but similar in that it's a recent
structural addition, under selection pressure and impairs learning when
damaged.

There may be some truth to the author's claim that 'absolute brain size is
less important than relative'. Spider brains are so important that some small
jumping spiders have neural tissue spreading into their legs for lack of
space. (Not the same phenomenon as octopi with distributed brains in their
arms; spiders have one large central brain). And jumping spiders have a
reputation for learning / reasoning smarts.

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okonomiyaki3000
At first I thought it meant the Baltimore Ravens and I was like, "No way..."
but now I see they mean those birds and that makes more sense.

~~~
w23j
Anticipating such tests to be on the horizon the Baltimore Ravens drafted this
guy:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Urschel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Urschel)

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ludamad
I'm a bit confused "forgo a quick reward in favor of a bigger one that comes
later" but as I read it, it was smacking head against glass or not?

~~~
te_platt
Yeah, that was a bit awkwardly written. I tried looking up more info on it but
got worried the article itself was some kind of meta test to measure human
intelligence and decided to just move on...

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im3w1l
> [Animal a] could do [task]. [Animal b] could do [task].

Ok, but it doesn't follow that they are similarly intelligent. You may have
just picked a too easy task to distinguish.

~~~
restalis
They did not tested if the animals were intelligent or not, that was a known
fact. They seem to have tested the intelligence relative to different species
(instead of testing the intelligence absolute limit) and it wasn't an easy
task at all because even primates like gorillas failed more at it!

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a3n
If you click through one of the links in the article, you'll see a couple
crows instigate a fight between two cats. I was wondering if they were trying
to get one cat to kill the other, so there'd be something to eat. That'd be
some long term thinking.

Also, honeyguides are birds that guide humans to beehives, so the humans will
open the hive for their own purposes. The birds then eat the leftovers.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_honeyguide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_honeyguide)

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exclusiv
I never knew how smart they were until I saw them at a small zoo and the
keeper gave a talk.

Apparently they will setup bait in their cage for other smaller free birds so
they can capture and eat them.

They also sometimes trade their treats with birds on the outside. Thug life.

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ajnin
> The Corvus species performed on a similar level to the great apes, despite
> vastly smaller absolute brain sizes. A chimpanzee brain is roughly 26 times
> larger than a raven's; nevertheless, both species achieve 100% success.

I don't think that you can conclude from that that ravens and chimps have
similar intelligence. Rather, you test was too easy. You need some level of
failure to be able to measure a difference in performance.

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kaik
For some reason, not being a native English speaker I thought this referred to
the Baltimore Ravens, and not to the animal of the same name...

~~~
cronjobber
Even worse, Raven's is an intelligence test.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven%27s_Progressive_Matrices](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven%27s_Progressive_Matrices)

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Symmetry
Conveniently next up on my Kindle reading list is a book about why we should
look at the number of neurons in a brain rather than the brain volume when
thinking about how intelligent a creature is.

[https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/human-
advantage](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/human-advantage)

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cottonseed
AI has reached peak hype. I think it's time to start an uplift breeding
program to create intelligent animals. I say we start with ravens or
octopuses.

~~~
amelius
[http://www.thecrowbox.com/](http://www.thecrowbox.com/)

> The Crow Box is a device designed to autonomously train crows.

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CamperBob2

       Except, as the researchers on this new study point out, 
       the original study did not test corvids, known to be among 
       the most intelligent birds.
    

There has to be more to it than this. How could supposedly-intelligent
researchers make an error like that?

~~~
elcct
They are just big apes in the end...

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koolba
Prior to clicking the link I really thought this would be about concussions in
the NFL Baltimore Ravens. I chalk that up to a working "raise awareness"
campaign.

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ljw1001
Nevermore.

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elcct
It is best to give wildlife some money, take them to the shop and let them
pick what they like.

~~~
dang
We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11540734](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11540734)
and marked it off-topic.

