I saw some video once about intelligence tests on crows. In one experiment they had a tall but thin glass of water with some treat floating on the surface but it was too low for the crow to reach. So the crow started dropping rocks into the glass, causing the water level to rise, until it could reach the treat.
I was so impressed, I wanted to replicate that. I went to a park around the corner with some nuts to befriend some crows. My plan was to just feed them for a while so they would trust me. But after a few days I had flock of crows following me everywhere through the city. That was a bit too much.
Birds are wild. Found a chickadee fledgling in the road earlier this year and nursed him for a couple days before we found a legitimate rehab. Little guy would just hop out of his box, perch on your finger, and sing as loud as he could until you fed him scrambled eggs. Really got me thinking about how special birds are. We have a hummingbird that visits and he'll do stuff like fly into the garage if the door is open, hover and stare at you for 1-2 seconds, and then take off. It's happened so many times I've stopped being startled by the sudden brrrr noise you hear from their wings flapping (they're so fast they can show up in the blink of an eye).
The bumblebees do something similar (I've oddly nursed three different bees with sugar water—all just happened to be in my field of vision crawling around on the ground but not flying). Now you get a bumble or two per day checking in with a quick hover and bob kind of movement before shooting off into the distance.
Does anyone know of any research into this or books identifying behavior like this?
This is more about beehaiviour research and playing with your balls, but the basic idea seems to be that even "small" brains do the same stuff the big brains do - like forming relationships, playing for fun, using tools, etc.
Crows are somewhat unique as an animal in that they've got the ability to pass information off to other members of the flock, and to continue passing information down through generations as necessary. The bird saved in this story, if it has offspring, will likely teach them that she is a safe and beloved human. At the very least, there's lots of research into this topic. I can't speak to the others, sorry.
> Crows are somewhat unique as an animal in that they've got the ability to pass information off to other members of the flock, and to continue passing information down through generations as necessary.
Not that unique. My grandfather was a forester, his favourite time passing was to whistle back bird's song, changing only a little bit at a time, turning it slowly into something totally different. The changed song was passed to other birds and offsprings no probs.
The result was quite hilarious, you went to the primeval woods and you could hear wild birds singing the Für Elise... I bet it freaked out ornithologists!
(My granddad died about 30 years ago, sadly the bird "dialect" has vanished since, but I still have some old tapes in the attic.)
Yes! This is a heartwarming story. But the opposite is true. If you happen to piss off a crow, your life will become very difficult. You might as well move towns.
Here in Australia, magpies do something similar but in a bad way. During nesting season they'll swoop you, remember your face, and keep targeting you. My daughter got attacked two weeks ago.
That makes me wonder: If you happened to piss them off, is there a way to appease them again sort of by redeeming yourself and thereby amend the diplomatic relationship?
Crows reach fabulous levels of (animal) intelligence with a brain that is a fraction of the size of the brain of great apes. I wonder what progress has been made in studying the differences in organisation between the two.
I saw some video once about intelligence tests on crows. In one experiment they had a tall but thin glass of water with some treat floating on the surface but it was too low for the crow to reach. So the crow started dropping rocks into the glass, causing the water level to rise, until it could reach the treat.
I was so impressed, I wanted to replicate that. I went to a park around the corner with some nuts to befriend some crows. My plan was to just feed them for a while so they would trust me. But after a few days I had flock of crows following me everywhere through the city. That was a bit too much.
Birds are wild. Found a chickadee fledgling in the road earlier this year and nursed him for a couple days before we found a legitimate rehab. Little guy would just hop out of his box, perch on your finger, and sing as loud as he could until you fed him scrambled eggs. Really got me thinking about how special birds are. We have a hummingbird that visits and he'll do stuff like fly into the garage if the door is open, hover and stare at you for 1-2 seconds, and then take off. It's happened so many times I've stopped being startled by the sudden brrrr noise you hear from their wings flapping (they're so fast they can show up in the blink of an eye).
The bumblebees do something similar (I've oddly nursed three different bees with sugar water—all just happened to be in my field of vision crawling around on the ground but not flying). Now you get a bumble or two per day checking in with a quick hover and bob kind of movement before shooting off into the distance.
Does anyone know of any research into this or books identifying behavior like this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sqnxlzLakU
This is more about beehaiviour research and playing with your balls, but the basic idea seems to be that even "small" brains do the same stuff the big brains do - like forming relationships, playing for fun, using tools, etc.
You will like reading Niko Tinbergen's Curious Naturalists
Crows are somewhat unique as an animal in that they've got the ability to pass information off to other members of the flock, and to continue passing information down through generations as necessary. The bird saved in this story, if it has offspring, will likely teach them that she is a safe and beloved human. At the very least, there's lots of research into this topic. I can't speak to the others, sorry.
> Crows are somewhat unique as an animal in that they've got the ability to pass information off to other members of the flock, and to continue passing information down through generations as necessary.
Not that unique. My grandfather was a forester, his favourite time passing was to whistle back bird's song, changing only a little bit at a time, turning it slowly into something totally different. The changed song was passed to other birds and offsprings no probs.
The result was quite hilarious, you went to the primeval woods and you could hear wild birds singing the Für Elise... I bet it freaked out ornithologists!
(My granddad died about 30 years ago, sadly the bird "dialect" has vanished since, but I still have some old tapes in the attic.)
Yes! This is a heartwarming story. But the opposite is true. If you happen to piss off a crow, your life will become very difficult. You might as well move towns.
Here in Australia, magpies do something similar but in a bad way. During nesting season they'll swoop you, remember your face, and keep targeting you. My daughter got attacked two weeks ago.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-30/magpie-swooping-seaso...
That makes me wonder: If you happened to piss them off, is there a way to appease them again sort of by redeeming yourself and thereby amend the diplomatic relationship?
I feel like there's gotta be
Have a friend, in a mask, kidnap one of the crows. Then you appear, and set it free, and give it cookies. (And your friend stops using the mask.)
This makes the assumption that crows can identify people only by the face. It's quite likely they could recognise something else.
That is not so much an assumption as a conclusion, backed up by research:
https://urban.uw.edu/news/crows-hold-grudges-against-individ...
https://crowlingo.org/journal/marzluff-mask-experiments-expl...
So we need to research if we can apologize to crows.
My ex mother in law bonded with a crow. She had it spending time on her shoulder whenever she was spending time in her garden.
It was quite a sight, especially when she was wearing dark clothing.
A few centuries before people would have had her burned for being a witch.
I submit this days ago, not sure why it says I submit it 5 hours ago ... but sure ... change my submission time like it's completely meaningless.
It would have been in the 2nd chance pool. https://news.ycombinator.com/pool
Here's the announcement post. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308
Crows reach fabulous levels of (animal) intelligence with a brain that is a fraction of the size of the brain of great apes. I wonder what progress has been made in studying the differences in organisation between the two.
Bird brains are on 2nm process nodes while mammals are 32nm chips
Lol
Well, it has been shown that birds have twice the density of neurons to mammals, and their brain is larger as a proportion of body mass: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1517131113
So their brain can be equivalent to a much larger primate.
They apparently evolved intelligence separately from mammals: https://www.wired.com/story/intelligence-evolved-at-least-tw...
I appreciate your AI (Avian Intelligence) contribution to HN.
LOL, man, you made my day! Thank you!
(ps. There's a new episode of Mini Fantasy Theater I haven't seen yet, hurray! https://www.davidrevoy.com/tag/minifantasytheater)
This is special. Thanks for sharing. Warmed my heart.
Obligatory "Rick & Morty did it first"