[texbirds] Are some crows smarter than 1st graders?
- From: Dan Smith <dan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: TexBirds <texbirds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2014 18:07:22 -0500
I havent been able to get out into the field much this year for a variety of
reasons, but stories of avian intelligence continue to be among the more
interesting topics to me. In todays Science Daily (science daily.com), is a
report of a study of New Caledonian Crows by researchers in California and New
Zealand that draws on the Aesop fable about the crow using pebbles to raise the
water level in a vessel until it can reach it to drink.
Here are the 1st 3 paragraphs:
<<In Aesop's fable about the crow and the pitcher, a thirsty bird happens upon
a vessel of water, but when he tries to drink from it, he finds the water level
out of his reach. Not strong enough to knock over the pitcher, the bird drops
pebbles into it -- one at a time -- until the water level rises enough for him
to drink his fill.
Highlighting the value of ingenuity, the fable demonstrates that cognitive
ability can often be more effective than brute force. It also characterizes
crows as pretty resourceful problem solvers. New research conducted by UC Santa
Barbara's Corina Logan, with her collaborators at the University of Auckland in
New Zealand, demonstrates the birds' intellectual prowess may be more fact than
fiction. Her findings appear today in the scientific journal PLOS ONE.
Logan is lead author of the paper, which examines causal cognition using a
water displacement paradigm. "We showed that crows can discriminate between
different volumes of water and that they can pass a modified test that so far
only 7- to 10-year-old children have been able to complete successfully. We
provide the strongest evidence so far that the birds attend to cause-and-effect
relationships by choosing options that displace more water.>>
The link to the full article is here:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140723180824.htm
The article points out that 7-10 year olds are able to sort out the causality
involved in the experiments but that 4-6 year olds are not. Near the end of the
article, the observe that they are expanding their work to include grackles,
which are innovative but smaller brained. It will be interesting to see if we
might have similarly intelligent critters in Texas.
Dan Smith
dan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
512-451-2632
http://www.wordsmithofaustin.com
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