from the Science publication:
We report here an experiment inspired by the observation that a captive female spontaneously bent a piece of straight wire into a hook and successfully used it to lift a bucket containing food from a vertical pipe (Fig. 1A). This occurred on the fifth trial of an experiment in which the crows had to choose between a hooked and a straight wire and only after the hooked wire had been removed by the other subject (a male). [ed.: that is, he stole it!] The animals had prior experience with the apparatus, but their only previous experience with pliant material was 1 hour of free manipulation with flexible pipe-cleaners a year before this experiment, and they were notfamiliar with wire (6).
I've mentioned before that I came out of Animals in Translation feeling that birds are:
a) the smartest animals (smartest I know of, at any rate)
b) probably as smart as we are
c) possibly smarter than we are
No idea whether that's true.
But that's what I came out of the book feeling.
A bird's eye view of cognition
Shaping of hooks in New Caledonian Crows (pdf file)
Give them SMART boards and let them teach our children math.
ReplyDeleteHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHA
ReplyDeleteThey could probably do it.
ReplyDeleteBirds are VERY scary.
When I was working on Animals in Translation Temple told me a story about a crow who was haunting a guy's back yard, basically harassing the heck out of him.
ReplyDeleteThe crow knew when the guy went inside his house to get his gun.
That is, if the guy went inside to go to the bathroom or get something to drink, the crow stayed put, waiting for the guy to reappear so he could harass him some more.
If the guy went to his house to get his gun, the crow disappeared.
Temple had some whole long behavior-mod explanation for this, but I no longer believe it.
I say the crow knew the guy was pissed and was going for his gun.