
Crows can perform as well as 7- to 10-year-olds on cause-and-effect tasks - evo_9
http://www.news.ucsb.edu/2014/014330/smarter-second-grader
======
randall
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/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/91725-words/)

~~~
wyager
>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
> _Language is the serialization format for abstract concepts._

Woa nice! Good analogy. Will steal.

~~~
catshirt
it's a definition, not an analogy.

language is just our best tool for sharing feelings, concepts, etc. funny to
think it's (probably) ultimately not the best tool for that. :)

~~~
e12e
Not that I disagree with your point, but I don't think spoken/written language
is our best tool for sharing feelings. I'd say body-language is better for
that. Or certain forms of art (such as visual art or music). All forms of
communication, obviously.

Language probably is our best way of communicating abstract concepts, however
(now, are feelings abstract or concrete? ;-).

~~~
catshirt
if your definition of "feelings" stops at "happy" and "sad", sure. but
feelings quickly become too complicated to express without language.

example: i want to go out to dinner tonight, but i feel like we went out to
dinner too many times this week.

example: i am happy that the Yankees won, but i am unhappy with Derek Jeter's
performance.

communicating these feelings clearly will, without better technology, require
words.

more importantly, interpreting body language is simply prone to error.
assuming two honest parties, it is much harder to misinterpret words.

~~~
e12e
That's not quite how I meant to use the word feeling above; I'd characterise
what you describe as sentiment. I suppose I might have used the term emotion
rather than feeling.

~~~
catshirt
you're right, feelings seems like a mischaracterization on my part. in that
case i agree body language is can be a better tool for communicating feeling
than verbal language.

not to take this off the deep end, but i'll try to clarify my point.

language (body or verbal) is just our current best attempt at getting _your
brain_ to feel what _my brain_ feels (feelings, sentiments, concepts,
anything). my hunch they are both terribly insufficient compared to some
technology we may be able to develop in the future.

that is, why serialize the data at all? a literal data transfer seems more
reliable. for now, it's because we have no other choice.

------
blendergasket
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](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s472GjbLKQ4)

~~~
pyre
Director's Statement: [http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/features/directors-
statemen...](http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/features/directors-statement)

~~~
tunap
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](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](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/254704.Mind_of_the_Raven)

------
swamp40
Stoffel the honey badger is pretty innovative as well, (especially considering
he was never trained):
[http://www.wimp.com/badgerhoudini/](http://www.wimp.com/badgerhoudini/)

------
CurtMonash
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.

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

~~~
chenelson
I'm talking about spatial intelligence and not the difference between
Aristotelian and Boolean logic. Obviously I have no idea what it feels like to
stack shorter than a pancake (i.e., existing in 2 dimensions). Pedantry aside,
the difference between existence and experience seems obvious.

I've never seen a human fly and well over 99% of my work is performed in the x
and y axis. When communicating directions, I'm rarely concerned about z.
Simple graphing tools (e.g., paper and pen) can be used to illustrate my point
further.

------
gulpahum
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...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14552-mirror-test-shows-
magpies-arent-so-birdbrained.html#.U9K0T1YRZGI)

------
bane
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...](http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/crows-could-be-the-key-to-helping-
humanity-understand-alien-intelligence/)

~~~
bambax
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.

~~~
steveax
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...](http://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_klein_on_the_intelligence_of_crows)

------
whoopdedo
Looking forward to the Crow Computing revolution.

~~~
linker3000
Enabled by crowed funding

~~~
iagooar
You, guys, just crowsed the line.

------
cyorir
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](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3261)

------
lotsofmangos
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.

~~~
astrobe_
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?

~~~
Qantourisc
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 ?

------
pinaceae
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.

~~~
superuser2
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
A huge fraction of those historical self-sufficient kids also died young for
preventable reasons.

~~~
superuser2
But is that because they were treated like adults, or because healthcare was
primitive and unevenly distributed?

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mross462
Excellent PBS Nature episode on the subject too:
[http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/a-murder-of-
crows/fu...](http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/a-murder-of-crows/full-
episode/5977/)

------
erikpukinskis
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".

------
sys32768
These smart crows make chimps seem like mere monkeys.

------
ziggrat
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)

~~~
rsynnott
> 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".

