
Are Cities Making Animals Smarter? - dsr12
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/cities-animal-intelligence-fishing-cats/567538/?single_page=true
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giardini
Recently in a supermarket parking lot I saw a crow repeatedly jumping up and
pecking at a car grill. Watching awhile I realized that he was using car
grills as a food source for dead, dehydrated bugs.

The crow went from car to car, searching for bugs. Finding one, he would jump
using both front legs, grab the bug with his beak and pull it off the grill,
jump back to the ground and eat. Periodically he would take a break to drink
cold water from the air conditioner drippings that cars leave when parked.

Crows and other birds have probably been using vehicles as bug food scoops for
decades. But I'd never heard of it or seen it before.

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csomar
I'm pretty sure Urbanization will make animals (that are closer to humans like
dogs and cats) incredibly smarter. Dogs got closer to humans thousands of
years ago. Their role was to protect. In the process, they became less
intelligent than their ancestors: The wolf.

But things are changing. Human are now picking dogs to be a companion, not for
protection. They are letting their dogs inside the house. They are playing
with them. Human also select smarter dogs like German Shepherd because they
are easy to train.

The trend is new. I mean we are only a few hundred years into urbanization and
genetics is a slow process. But selection is real and humans are very
selective. This will keep the most intelligent race/dogs and breed even
smarter dogs.

I know for a fact that my german is more skillful than my parents'. That's
because living in an apartment requires extra skills. As human select animals
that are more adapted, we'll have dogs who are savvy about doors, bells, cars,
refrigerator, toilets, etc...

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trgv
> Dogs got closer to humans thousands of years ago. Their role was to protect.
> In the process, they became less intelligent than their ancestors: The wolf.

I don't think it's fair to say wolves are smarter than dogs. They specialize
at different things, that's for sure.

In general I disagree with your post.

If you imagine a dog living in a stone age village versus a dog living in a
town today, it doesn't seem to follow that the latter is going to be smarter
because human technology is more advanced. A stone age dog might recognize a
knock on the hut of a door and the modern dog might recognize an alarm going
off. Seems like the same thing to me.

If you want smart dogs the answer is eugenics. Breed the smartest ones. This
is tried and true and it's how breeds like border collies or german shepherds
got so smart: they were bred for obedience, intelligence, and ability to
perform their jobs. More pets and fewer working dogs (which is definitely the
trend) is going to result in friendlier, cuter, but less intelligent dogs
(compared to working breeds anyway).

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dig1
I my town, I noticed dogs (that are usually freely wandering), are able to
stop on red light and wait green light, not matter if humans are around. I
guess this is because dogs are able to learn from those who are hit by cars.

Second case are crows - they will pick up walnuts, wait for cars and throw in
front of them, hoping car wheels will smash them. After that, they'll pick up
eatable parts.

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ct0
How do you suppose these dogs are learning from stories of other dogs getting
hit? Reading the news paper?

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phil248
Reminded me of this recent article in Atlas Obscura that talks about the
unique ecosystem found in a metro station deep under Stockholm.

It doesn't go in to much detail tough...
[https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/kungstradgarden-metro-
st...](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/kungstradgarden-metro-station)

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delbel
No. But this is a good example of the anthropomorphic fallacy

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PacifyFish
Nope, evolution doesn’t happen that quickly.

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crooked-v
Short generations and very strong selection pressure can result in dramatic
changes in a single human lifetime. See, for example, domesticated Russian
foxes, which are the result of a project that started in only 1959 and are
already dramatically different from their wild cousins in social behavior and
even some points of appearance.

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gizmo686
You don't even need evolution at all. We know that an animals behaviour is a
combination of their genes and their environmnet. It is reasonable to propose
that growing up in an urban environment would cause an animal to be smarter
than it would have been if that same animal grew up in a more traditional
natural environment.

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ridgeguy
I would say "better adapted to an urban environment than a rural environment".

That distinction may be different from smarter or more intelligent. I think
it's complicated.

~~~
gizmo686
The hypothesis that they will grow to be better adapted to an urban
environment is far more likely to be true (regardless of if we are talking
about the effect of evolution or nor).

However, the article is talking about a specific claim that they would also be
more intelligent. This is a far harder hypothesis to predict the truth of (and
to test). But, to the extent that "intelligent" is well defined it is still a
reasonable hypothesis to have. In fact, I think that, by far, the least likely
scenario is that they are equally as intelligent as their rural counterparts,
as that would mean that environment has no effect on their intelligence. While
this is probably true of some animals, It would be very surprising to me if it
held for the more cognitive ones. The question then becomes how big of an
effect is it, and in what direction.

Of course, when we drill into what "intellegence" means, we will probably find
that it is a multi-dimensional notion, and refine the discussion to more/less
intelligent in certain dimensions.

EDIT: it is also conceivable that an animal that grew up in environment A,
then moved to environmnet B could be better suited for environment B than the
one that had lived in B for its whole life.

