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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: The vault creeks open slowly. Will you walk in with us?

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Speaker 1: You should walk in because this time the vault contains

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Speaker 1: super intelligent birds. Funny thing about super intelligent birds is

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Speaker 1: they're not the result of some kind of Dr Moreau,

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Speaker 1: like a mad science experiment. They already exist in the

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Speaker 1: natural world. Birds are scary smart and that's what our

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Speaker 1: episode is about today. This originally aired on March thirty one,

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Speaker 1: two thousand sixteen, and it was called The Unsettling Depths

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Speaker 1: of Bird Intelligence. All right, let us enter in. Welcome

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Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works

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Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff all your mind. My

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Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And Robert

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Speaker 1: I want to ask you to go with them on

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Speaker 1: a mental journey through the past. Let's do it, okay.

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Speaker 1: So I want to ask you to think about the

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Speaker 1: evolution of technological civilization in terms of the human hand. Okay, Well,

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Speaker 1: that is the not the only model we have for

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Speaker 1: the evolution of technologically advanced civilizations. Yeah, so I'm totally

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Speaker 1: down with it. Think about tool using intelligence, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So the earliest tools used by primates are primate ancestors

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Speaker 1: that the apes we call our cousins. They're all things

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Speaker 1: that can be manipulated by the fingers. You had the

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Speaker 1: hand axes. I'm sure you've seen these things there, these

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Speaker 1: carved down stones, and there are different theories about what

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Speaker 1: exactly they were used for. Where they for processing carcasses,

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Speaker 1: where they for throwing it prey or some combination, you know,

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Speaker 1: where they just merely useless status items. But they were

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Speaker 1: these chipped stone tools used in the hand. And then

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Speaker 1: of course we had handheld and thrown weapons, handheld tools

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Speaker 1: for processing the car rcases of prey like a stone cleavers,

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Speaker 1: and then later on you had tools for cooking and

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Speaker 1: tools for farming and all just kind of a spiral

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Speaker 1: staircase of technology revolving around the solid core of the

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Speaker 1: shape of the human hand. Everything was based on the

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Speaker 1: assumption of thumbs, palms, fingers. Even if you look at

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Speaker 1: the beginnings of human culture, like if we go to

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Speaker 1: the oldest examples of art, we know cave paintings show

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Speaker 1: the use of handprints, pigments, applied to cave walls by hand.

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Speaker 1: And then I don't know if you've ever seen this,

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Speaker 1: but finger fluting, where it's not painting, but where Stone

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Speaker 1: Age artists would make patterns and cave walls and what

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Speaker 1: used to be soft cave walls by dragging their fingers

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Speaker 1: through the soft surfaces which later hardened. And then, of course,

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Speaker 1: some of the oldest known musical instruments appear to be

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Speaker 1: Paleolithic flutes made out of the bones of bears or vultures.

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Speaker 1: So you get a bare bone, you bore some holes

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Speaker 1: in it, and you could make a flute. And of

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Speaker 1: course what do you do with those holes You cover

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Speaker 1: them with a fingertip to change the pitch of the

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Speaker 1: note you're producing with the flute. So when you consider

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Speaker 1: all this, and then of course coming all all the

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Speaker 1: way up to our our steering wheels and our gaming

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Speaker 1: console controllers and every other thing you hold in your

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Speaker 1: fingertips today, it's almost impossible to imagine the evolution of

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Speaker 1: a technological civilization and advanced intelligent culture without hands. Uh.

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Speaker 1: In fact, I think some would say that it was

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Speaker 1: our primate hands that made this trajectory possible for our species,

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Speaker 1: like it was only the fact that humans went bipedal

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Speaker 1: and started having free hands to work with that encouraged

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Speaker 1: the development in the brain the powerhouses for tool use

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Speaker 1: and innovation that made us who we are today. But

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Speaker 1: I want to think about what if evolution had gone

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Speaker 1: a different way? Ah, So what you have another form

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Speaker 1: of life on the planet. Uh was managed to ascend

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Speaker 1: that staircase we mentioned earlier? What kind of tools would

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Speaker 1: they have used? How would they have used them? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and that stairing, so their spiral staircase might not have

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Speaker 1: had hands. What if there was an advanced technological species

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Speaker 1: on Earth, but not one that evolved from primates, and

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Speaker 1: not even one that evolved from mammals. Is it possible

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Speaker 1: to imagine a technological civilization built by the cousins of

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Speaker 1: birds in the same way we have one now built

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Speaker 1: by the cousins of apes. Um like where you've got

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Speaker 1: highly intelligent cousins of pigeons conducting science and business and

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Speaker 1: art and education in these huge technological monstrosities of cities,

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Speaker 1: while you've got monkeys scampering around in flocks throughout the

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Speaker 1: city surfaces, pecking around for crumbs, and every now and

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Speaker 1: then you'd have a highly intelligent bird creature go out

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Speaker 1: on its lunch break and feed the monkeys some some

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Speaker 1: bread crumbs, or feed on the monkeys. Could be because yeah,

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Speaker 1: because this gets especially interesting when you when you when

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Speaker 1: you when you look back, say about fifty million years

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Speaker 1: uh to the to the earth really u c. N Epoch,

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Speaker 1: and you'll find that this is the only time in

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Speaker 1: history when birds ruled the world. They permeated most of

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Speaker 1: the key positions on the food chain, with a large

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Speaker 1: flightless terror birds stalking the land terror birds, terribs, massive, yeah,

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Speaker 1: top predator, just terrifying land birds. But I can imagine

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Speaker 1: something like what if something like that had been the

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Speaker 1: species that really took off, and maybe that was what

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Speaker 1: would live in these cities and eat the monkeys. But

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Speaker 1: but as for just birds in general, you know, why

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Speaker 1: not why not the birds? Because birds are builders. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they build nests, they put them together, their tool users.

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Speaker 1: As we'll discuss, they exhibit social behavior, trickery in some

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Speaker 1: cases startlingly complex social behavior. So you know, I can

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Speaker 1: imagine on that end of things, I can imagine the

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Speaker 1: bird brain being completely capable of ascending uh. In terms

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Speaker 1: of manipulating objects. Will certainly get more to the details

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Speaker 1: in a bit. But I instantly think of some of

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Speaker 1: the controls that we see, uh for disabled individuals who

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Speaker 1: do not have the use of their hands, where they

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Speaker 1: use like a straw to to control the movements of

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Speaker 1: say a wheelchair. Yeah. I can imagine technology like that

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Speaker 1: being utilized by some sort of highly evolved bird creature,

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Speaker 1: and with the kind of intelligence that a highly advanced

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Speaker 1: technological civilization would have. I wouldn't say that something like

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Speaker 1: that is necessarily impossible. Uh. In fact, today I think

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Speaker 1: we want to make the case for why it's not

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Speaker 1: completely insane to imagine a technological culture in a hypothetical

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Speaker 1: alternate universe built around the core of wings, beaks, and

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Speaker 1: claws instead of fingers and thumbs and palms. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: don't think it's even a little bit insane. That's what

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Speaker 1: it is. However, is it's a little more alien than

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Speaker 1: even most of our science fiction dreamers want to want

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Speaker 1: to want to play with. You know, we tend we're

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Speaker 1: talking about this later. Even when you think of of

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Speaker 1: alien species and science fiction that are avian, they're almost

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Speaker 1: always the same sort of bird human hybrids that we've

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Speaker 1: been dreaming about since they know since you know Babylonian days. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Uh so I should say at the beginning that this

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Speaker 1: episode was inspired when I saw a recently published paper,

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Speaker 1: and this paper was called Cognition Without Cortex, and it

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Speaker 1: was a review of recent findings on avian cognition and

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Speaker 1: euro anatomy, sort of collecting all of the literature of

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Speaker 1: recent decades, looking into how smart exactly are birds, what

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Speaker 1: kind of cognitive traits and thinking to the exhibit and

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Speaker 1: what are we learning, uh, what are we learning about

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Speaker 1: how a bird's brain works and how that compares to

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Speaker 1: the mammalian brain. And so this paper was written by

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Speaker 1: Owner Gunter Kune and Thomas bugny Are and it was

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Speaker 1: in Trends and Cognitive Sciences, published on March one. Well

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Speaker 1: you know this, Uh this raises the question, Joe, what

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Speaker 1: is your attitude towards birds? What is your experience with

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Speaker 1: the perception of bird intelligence? Well, I know exactly what

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Speaker 1: it is, because I've always thought that birds looked kind

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Speaker 1: of dumb. You have, and I have to admit it.

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Speaker 1: I'm sorry now, I'm sorry now that I've read all

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Speaker 1: this research, but I always looked at them and said,

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Speaker 1: oh man, there's something just kind of like an ancient

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Speaker 1: emptiness in the eyes of a bird. And I was

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Speaker 1: not alone in this because you may have heard this before,

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Speaker 1: but I want to share it with you. A quote

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Speaker 1: from the famous film director of Werner Hertzog speaking about chickens. Yes,

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Speaker 1: can you please do it in his voice? No, I

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Speaker 1: can't do the accent, but I'm going to read his quote.

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Speaker 1: Hertzog says about chickens, the enormity if they're flat brain,

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Speaker 1: the enormity of their stupidity is just overwhelming. You have

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Speaker 1: to do yourself a favor. When you're out in the

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Speaker 1: countryside and you see chickens, try to look at chicken

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Speaker 1: in the eye with great intensity, and the intensity of

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Speaker 1: stupidity that is looking at you is just amazing. By

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Speaker 1: the way, it's very easy to hypnotize the chicken. They're

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Speaker 1: very prone to hypnosis. And in one or two films

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Speaker 1: I've actually shown that. Okay, so he's talking about chickens here,

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Speaker 1: and I have heard from people who have raised chickens before.

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Speaker 1: I think my my grandmother was very much in this

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Speaker 1: boat that the chickens are are stupid and in a

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Speaker 1: pain to keep. And but chickens are just one of many,

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Speaker 1: many species. Yes, that's that's true. There are there are

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Speaker 1: one subspecies there also, we should point out domesticated and

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Speaker 1: there is often something that we see in biology that

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Speaker 1: happens to domesticated animals. Animals that have kind of a

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Speaker 1: cushy life where they're fed every day tend to not

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Speaker 1: be quite so quick in the in the thinking department

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Speaker 1: as their wild cousins. But I don't know if that

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Speaker 1: explains how people feel about chickens. Maybe chickens are a

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Speaker 1: lot smarter than we give them credit for. But anyway,

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Speaker 1: the conventional wisdom for a long time has been in

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Speaker 1: in sort of crude terms, birds are dumb. Birds are

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Speaker 1: stupid because they do not have the right kind of brain. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And I think a lot of this boils down to

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Speaker 1: just basic perception. Like my wife has often been kind

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Speaker 1: of like freaked out by birds. And the way she

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Speaker 1: describes it is that she grew up around dogs. She

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Speaker 1: grew up around horses, and she says that those animals

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Speaker 1: are easier to read. You can you can you can

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Speaker 1: get a better idea about what a dog is going

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Speaker 1: to do. You can tell if a dog is aggravated, excited,

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Speaker 1: what have you? A horse? The same way they are

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Speaker 1: all these different cues that we can pick up on

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Speaker 1: and really communicate facially with them. It's more difficult to

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Speaker 1: do with a bird, and certainly the bird I can

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Speaker 1: just seem like a glassy um, you know, a cavern

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Speaker 1: of nothingness. I think of what Quint says in Jaws,

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Speaker 1: the shark size it's like a doll's eye. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: very much. So you get that kind of glassy doll's eye,

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Speaker 1: uh impression from them. But you know, I go to

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Speaker 1: the zoo a lot with my my son and there

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Speaker 1: are a lot of birds there, some of them in particular,

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Speaker 1: like the ground hornbill that they have there. I'm just

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Speaker 1: always startled by how intelligent they seem to be, and

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Speaker 1: that I am. I'm observing them, but they seem to

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Speaker 1: be observing me almost on equal footing. So in in

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Speaker 1: that area, I have to disagree with the perceived stupidity

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Speaker 1: of the bird. Just talking about perceptions here at this point,

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Speaker 1: But I think I would have to say that that

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Speaker 1: your wife's intuition about the sort of disconnectedness of the

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Speaker 1: bird the space between you does make sense from a

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Speaker 1: biological perspective, because there is a biological gap between humans

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Speaker 1: and birds much larger than our gap, the gap between

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Speaker 1: humans and other mammals. So the gap between humans and

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Speaker 1: dogs is you're still both mammals. You have a much

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Speaker 1: more recent common ancestor. The gap between primates like us

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Speaker 1: and birds is ancient. There are last common ancestor with

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Speaker 1: birds is believed to exist. It to have existed about

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Speaker 1: hundred million years ago. We have not been related to

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Speaker 1: birds since before the dinosaurs, way before the dinosaurs. It

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Speaker 1: goes back way back. These are these are just extremely

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Speaker 1: different branches of the tree of life on Earth, and

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Speaker 1: so I think it makes sense to look on a

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Speaker 1: vian creatures with the with the kind of hesitance. So

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Speaker 1: there there there's an alien quality to it that's much

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Speaker 1: like the quality of a reptile or a fish. They're

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Speaker 1: just not much like us. Yeah, there's a definite alien

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Speaker 1: quality to them. But I mentioned the conventional wisdom was

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Speaker 1: that when people used to think all birds were really stupid,

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Speaker 1: they thought that they were stupid because of how their

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Speaker 1: brains were built. So what where does human intelligence come from? What?

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Speaker 1: Why are mammals smart? Typically people look at the cortex.

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Speaker 1: The mammalian prefrontal cortex appears to be the seat of

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Speaker 1: executive functions. So all the thinking you do that involves

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Speaker 1: conscious control of thought, using working memory and constituting the

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Speaker 1: planning and execution of actions. That that that's cortex stuff.

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Speaker 1: And so the old line of the of the neuroscientist

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Speaker 1: or the neuro anatomist was sort of that I can

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Speaker 1: look at your brain, and by looking at your brain,

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Speaker 1: I can tell you how you're thinking works, how your

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Speaker 1: cognition works. And if you don't have a cortex, you

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Speaker 1: just don't have much cognition going on. I watched a

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Speaker 1: presentation by Owner Gundercun and he called attention to the

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Speaker 1: work of the German neuro anatomist Ludwig Eddinger, who lived

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Speaker 1: eighteen fifty five to nineteen eighteen, and he said that

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Speaker 1: Eddinger was the leading comparative neuro anatomist of his time.

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Speaker 1: Uh and the his project was sort of to understand

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Speaker 1: the evolution of the brain invertebrates. Vertebrates all creatures that

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Speaker 1: have a backbone. Um, so birds and mammals both vertebrates.

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Speaker 1: Where where do the differences in brain evolution come along?

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Speaker 1: And Eddinger's theory was, first you got fish, and fish

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Speaker 1: basically just have a spinal cord with a little you've

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Speaker 1: got some brain stem on the end. Their fish don't

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Speaker 1: have much going on brain wise. And then after that

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Speaker 1: you had amphibians and and so they've got a part

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Speaker 1: of the basil ganglia that's sort of a little bit

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Speaker 1: extending what the brains are capable of. And then you've

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Speaker 1: got reptiles, and this adds more to the basal ganglia

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Speaker 1: second component of it, and you've you've got slightly upgraded

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Speaker 1: cognitive skills. And then after reptiles, you've got the fourth thing,

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Speaker 1: which is birds. And then birds have uh, they sort

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Speaker 1: of developed the basil ganglia improve the skills more. And

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Speaker 1: then finally with mammals you get the cerebral cortex, which

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Speaker 1: gives them this unprecedented thinking power, intelligence, cognition, flexibility, the

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Speaker 1: ability to use their brains to adapt intelligence to all

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Speaker 1: kinds of different scenarios. And so, according to Eddinger, you

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Speaker 1: should look at a monkey and you should see cognition.

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Speaker 1: It's behaviors that come out of thinking. It's not all

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Speaker 1: just instinct. It's weakly determined by the genes. But meanwhile,

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Speaker 1: you should look at a bird, like a pigeon that

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Speaker 1: doesn't have a cortex, and it should have a little

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Speaker 1: bit of intelligence, but it's going to be a just instinct,

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Speaker 1: you know, gene determined behaviors. Is that true? Well, on

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Speaker 1: one hand, this gets into the whole idea of the

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Speaker 1: sort of the ice cream scoop model of of neurophysiology, right,

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Speaker 1: that humans have the most scoops of brain ice cream

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Speaker 1: and therefore have the most powerful brains. But then also

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Speaker 1: our our understanding of how these brains are working has

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Speaker 1: evolved somewhat over the years too, and we've been forced

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Speaker 1: to sort of think think outside of the of our

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Speaker 1: own uh uh, you know, anthropomorphic bias in terms of

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Speaker 1: what constitutes intelligence. And of course we've conducted plenty of

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Speaker 1: experiments on top of that to really get down for

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Speaker 1: to take apart intelligence, even human intelligence for divided into

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Speaker 1: components that can then be tested for in other species. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and I think what we're learning in recent years over

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Speaker 1: many experiments is not just like one experiment has changed,

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Speaker 1: is the way we're thinking about this There there are

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Speaker 1: so many more experiments than we could even talk about

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Speaker 1: in this episode, and the jury is out on many

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Speaker 1: of these areas, right, But there's so much new research

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Speaker 1: showing that bird intelligence, bird cognition seems to go far

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Speaker 1: beyond what was previously assumed that this old theory of

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Speaker 1: the determination of cognition by the by the structure of

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Speaker 1: the brain does seem to be flawed. It seems to

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Speaker 1: be that this is not correct anymore because it was

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Speaker 1: based on a false premise. Birds are much smarter than

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Speaker 1: we thought, and some cultural traditions seem to have actually

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Speaker 1: long associated birds, like like corvids, which include crows with

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Speaker 1: higher brain function. I know we came across this, uh

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Speaker 1: this great North Smith right. Oh, yeah, Hoogan and Moon

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Speaker 1: in those are Odin's ravens. Yeah, companions. He also had

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Speaker 1: some some lupine companions, Gary and freki Um. But the

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Speaker 1: interesting thing about to sound like fraggle names. They do

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Speaker 1: kind of in our sything about Whogan and Moon and

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Speaker 1: I also think of and maybe they were, but Whogan

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Speaker 1: and Moon and also sounded like they should be, uh

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Speaker 1: like the the host characters in like an old horror comic,

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Speaker 1: you know, they should be chatting with each other. Maybe

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Speaker 1: I'm directly maybe they were. I don't know. Someone will

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Speaker 1: have to fill me in on that. But they not

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Speaker 1: only are they Odin's companions, they are a part of him.

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Speaker 1: They are his thoughts and memories, respectively. And so some

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Speaker 1: argue that Moonen is actually desire rather than memory. But

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Speaker 1: essentially the idea here said Hohogan, um who can represents

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Speaker 1: the thoughts of Odin Moon and represents the memories. That's

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Speaker 1: too cool, because they're they're embodied cognition, right, yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And uh, here's a little a little bit of Old Norse,

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Speaker 1: uh that has been translated that tells you a little

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Speaker 1: bit about Whogan and Moon. And this is apparent. This

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Speaker 1: is supposed to be from Odin himself, who can and

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Speaker 1: moon and fly every day over the world. I worry

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Speaker 1: for Whogan that he might not return, but I worry

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Speaker 1: more from moon In. Oh well that if you interpret

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Speaker 1: moon into mean memory, and it's uh, that's kind of

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Speaker 1: a bittersweet fact about the loss of memories into time. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that these are just they're they're birds that are out

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Speaker 1: there in the world, and hey, one day one or

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Speaker 1: both of them may not come back. And and it's

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Speaker 1: interesting too. I don't want to go to too far

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Speaker 1: down the rabbit hole. But you apparently don't see animals

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Speaker 1: playing a huge role in Old English Norse heroic literature.

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Speaker 1: Except in the case of certain carrion animals, the beasts

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Speaker 1: of battle, like the wolf which we mentioned earlier, Gary Frekie,

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Speaker 1: the eagle, the raven. Uh. So it's interesting to think

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Speaker 1: about these are the animals that fed on the battlefield

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Speaker 1: dead and therefore they have some sort of privileged status. Symbolically,

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Speaker 1: that's weird. One might think that that would make them

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Speaker 1: taboo or something like that, but instead that elevates them

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Speaker 1: to the being uh, the stuff of myth. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: mean it. You certainly we see we see some of

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Speaker 1: that in other cultures, but yeah, I haven't looked into

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Speaker 1: it as much in terms in terms of Western culture because,

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Speaker 1: for instance, the vultures have elevated status uh in Tibetan

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Speaker 1: mythology because they're closer to the sky and they are

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Speaker 1: involved in the rights of death. But the Siberials, right, well,

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Speaker 1: I think it's time to actually look at some of

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Speaker 1: these studies of of avian cognition of exactly what bird

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Speaker 1: brains are capable of in practice and the to summarize

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Speaker 1: recent discoveries. Will get into the details in a moment,

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Speaker 1: but basically, what we have found, what scientists have found

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Speaker 1: is that some birds, like parrots and that that would

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Speaker 1: mean birds of the order Satasa forms that include true parrots, cockatoos,

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Speaker 1: and New Zealand parrots. And then also corvids which are

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Speaker 1: birds of the family corvid A, and that would include crows, ravens, rooks, magpies, chuffs, jay's,

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Speaker 1: and nutcrackers. These bird groups display cognition on par with primates,

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Speaker 1: which means primates of course being the order containing monkeys

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Speaker 1: and apes like us, so on par with pri mates. Seriously,

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Speaker 1: and just just allow us to demonstrate with a selection

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Speaker 1: of findings. What we are talking about is mental time travel, yes,

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Speaker 1: also known as chronosthesia if you want to be fancy

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Speaker 1: about it. Now that this is sort of it's something

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Speaker 1: that you take for granted. Is it comes very easy

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Speaker 1: to advance primates like humans. But it's just being able

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Speaker 1: to travel back and forth along a mental timeline. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's the ability to entertain alternate future scenarios. You know,

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Speaker 1: you tell a creature ways option A versus option B.

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Speaker 1: It's how you're able to remember past events and anticipate

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Speaker 1: and plan for future events. And that ability is core

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Speaker 1: to so much of human experience. You know, our ability

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Speaker 1: to or or our flaw and being able to just

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Speaker 1: regret the past, worry over the future, the entire wheel

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Speaker 1: of suffering. It's a very human thing, it's yeah, And

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Speaker 1: it seems very easy to assume that because you look

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Speaker 1: at the behavior of most animals and they really do

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Speaker 1: seem to live in the present moment, that they don't

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Speaker 1: seem to be able to consider a hypothetical unless we're

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Speaker 1: projecting it on them. Okay, so, especially in the case

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Speaker 1: of our pets. Um but yeah, so is it president animals.

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Speaker 1: It kind of depends on who you ask. Some say no,

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Speaker 1: not at all, mean, even some scientists. It's not just

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Speaker 1: like a popular no no. If you just ask people,

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Speaker 1: I have a feeling they're going to Yeah, they're gonna

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Speaker 1: be You're gonna get into projection concerning the animals that

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Speaker 1: we think we we understand the most and then we

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Speaker 1: can read more easily. But with with scientists, yeah, it depends.

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Speaker 1: A December two paper published in Neuroscience and Behavioral Reviews

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Speaker 1: titled mental time travel an exclusively human capacity lets you

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Speaker 1: know where they stand? Yeah, it argues exactly that that

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Speaker 1: that quote. Some animals indeed appear to possess episodic memory.

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Speaker 1: There is, however, no evidence that they are able to construct, reflect,

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Speaker 1: and compare different future scenarios like humans are okay, so

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Speaker 1: episodic memory that just means having sort of not ingrained

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Speaker 1: how it always was or learned behaviors from the past,

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Speaker 1: but being able to recall a specific instance, like if

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Speaker 1: you can remember what you had for lunch yesterday, that's

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Speaker 1: an episodic memory. And some evidence shows that some animals

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Speaker 1: have this, But they're saying that they can't. They can't

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Speaker 1: project thoughts into the future, right, Like, it's one thing

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Speaker 1: to remember what's happened, but then can you anticipate future

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Speaker 1: events and plan around them? But not all scientists agree

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Speaker 1: with this conclusion, is right? Um So, Back in two

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Speaker 1: thousands seven or so, Nicola Clayton of the University of

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Speaker 1: Cambridge argued that scrub jays, which is a spacies of

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Speaker 1: large brain crow, exhibit mental time travel. And then in

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Speaker 1: two thousand eleven there's an interesting study uh from Karina

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Speaker 1: Logan of the University of Cambridge and Sean O'Donnell of

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Speaker 1: the University of Washington, and they argued that this mental

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Speaker 1: time travel is demonstrated in certain tropical birds who engage

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Speaker 1: in bivouac that's temporary anton nest sites checking, bivouac checking.

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Speaker 1: So basically the idea here is that the ants, the

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Speaker 1: ant colonies are moving around. They have like a cyclical

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Speaker 1: raid cycle that they go through. They have patterns of

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Speaker 1: activity exactly, and so the animals hunting them in this

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Speaker 1: case the birds, they have to figure out how to

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Speaker 1: anticipate those movements. The birds keep track of where the

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Speaker 1: ants are, they remember their past movements, and according to

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Speaker 1: the use of these researchers, they're actually using that data

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Speaker 1: to anticipate future movements of the ants so they'll know

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Speaker 1: where to go to score their meal. Okay, so mental

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Speaker 1: time travel and birds, Uh, that seems to be a

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Speaker 1: toss up some some scientists say yes, some say no,

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Speaker 1: but either way it's an interesting lead for for continuing research.

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Speaker 1: But there's one area where we can see birds excelling

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Speaker 1: in higher cognitive function where there is no doubt whatsoever,

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Speaker 1: and that's in tool use. The birds are freakishly handy,

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Speaker 1: that's right. There are a number of examples of tool

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Speaker 1: use and birds, some more complex than others. Uh. For instance,

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Speaker 1: Egyptian vultures use the stones as tools to to bust

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Speaker 1: open ostrojaggs. Yeah, there are also that you have, like

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Speaker 1: the brush turkey builds. This is rather simple, builds a

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Speaker 1: gigantic mound of soil and decaying vegetation to lay their

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Speaker 1: eggs in. But then they'll kick the garbage at enemies

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Speaker 1: to drive them away. Yeah. Wait, what are their enemies?

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Speaker 1: Things like monitor lizards? Uh? Yeah what Yeah, so they're

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Speaker 1: they're kicking garbage at monitor lizards. Yeah. It's like, like

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Speaker 1: I say, this is very basic tool, you like, but yeah,

428
00:24:31,960 --> 00:24:35,200
Speaker 1: kicking rubbish, you're still making a tool out of something

429
00:24:35,200 --> 00:24:38,800
Speaker 1: in your environment trash soccer. Yeah. Now, one of the

430
00:24:38,800 --> 00:24:43,280
Speaker 1: more elaborate examples here you have the woodpecker finch, which

431
00:24:43,280 --> 00:24:46,560
Speaker 1: is one of Darwin's finches from the Colapicus Islands. Tool

432
00:24:46,920 --> 00:24:50,680
Speaker 1: It uses cactus spines or wooden splinters to dig grubs

433
00:24:50,760 --> 00:24:53,240
Speaker 1: or other insects out of holes and wood so, in

434
00:24:53,280 --> 00:24:55,639
Speaker 1: other words, it obtains its food in the same manner

435
00:24:55,800 --> 00:24:58,840
Speaker 1: as a woodpecker, but it hasn't evolved the necessary long

436
00:24:58,960 --> 00:25:01,720
Speaker 1: tongue to scoop them out out, so it goes it

437
00:25:01,800 --> 00:25:03,720
Speaker 1: breaks off something sharp to get in there, and it

438
00:25:03,800 --> 00:25:06,440
Speaker 1: may even trim the twig. And this is key because

439
00:25:06,440 --> 00:25:09,040
Speaker 1: There are other examples of animals that say, like use

440
00:25:09,080 --> 00:25:12,240
Speaker 1: a muscle shell fragment to hammer open another muscle, or

441
00:25:12,320 --> 00:25:15,040
Speaker 1: use a piece of bark to pry another piece of

442
00:25:15,080 --> 00:25:18,000
Speaker 1: bark off we've all engaged when we we haven't all.

443
00:25:18,040 --> 00:25:20,639
Speaker 1: But if you've ever used part of a crab claw

444
00:25:20,880 --> 00:25:23,280
Speaker 1: to dig out crab meat, you've engaged in like this

445
00:25:23,440 --> 00:25:26,880
Speaker 1: level of simple tool use, which shouldn't be discounted. I mean,

446
00:25:26,920 --> 00:25:29,359
Speaker 1: even that's impressive, that is still impressive tool you. But

447
00:25:29,400 --> 00:25:32,959
Speaker 1: it goes beyond that, right, because they are actually trimming

448
00:25:33,000 --> 00:25:36,199
Speaker 1: the twig trying these finches, these finches, they're trimming the twig,

449
00:25:36,400 --> 00:25:40,040
Speaker 1: They're they're manufacturing a tool. So they're they're going from

450
00:25:40,240 --> 00:25:43,119
Speaker 1: what's called a nature fact to an artifact. And nature

451
00:25:43,200 --> 00:25:46,320
Speaker 1: fact is finding something in the world and using it

452
00:25:46,359 --> 00:25:50,440
Speaker 1: as is okay, But the artifact, you're transforming it into

453
00:25:50,480 --> 00:25:52,960
Speaker 1: a tool. Yeah, So that's sort of the difference between

454
00:25:52,960 --> 00:25:55,240
Speaker 1: a rock and a hand axe. So if you've got

455
00:25:55,280 --> 00:25:59,200
Speaker 1: an ancient, ancient primate who has managed to hunt down

456
00:25:59,200 --> 00:26:01,199
Speaker 1: and kill a piece of prey, a large animal, and

457
00:26:01,200 --> 00:26:03,440
Speaker 1: it wants to process the carcass to get some meat

458
00:26:03,480 --> 00:26:05,520
Speaker 1: off of it, it could just pick up a kind

459
00:26:05,560 --> 00:26:08,080
Speaker 1: of flat rock and use that for help. That would

460
00:26:08,119 --> 00:26:10,800
Speaker 1: be a nature of fact. Or it could chip down

461
00:26:10,840 --> 00:26:13,600
Speaker 1: a rock until it's got a sharper edge. That's an

462
00:26:13,680 --> 00:26:16,760
Speaker 1: artifact exactly. And just to put this, you know, and

463
00:26:16,800 --> 00:26:19,560
Speaker 1: then a framework of human tool use their four levels

464
00:26:19,560 --> 00:26:22,240
Speaker 1: of artifact fact tool used. There's reduction that's where you

465
00:26:22,440 --> 00:26:25,840
Speaker 1: reduce the massive functional of the functional form. So you're

466
00:26:25,920 --> 00:26:28,359
Speaker 1: chewing the stick down stuff in the bark, et cetera.

467
00:26:28,560 --> 00:26:30,359
Speaker 1: That's what we just talked. Yeah, that's what we definitely

468
00:26:30,400 --> 00:26:33,200
Speaker 1: see in birds. Uh. Then there's level two conjunction that's

469
00:26:33,200 --> 00:26:35,560
Speaker 1: combining two or more units to make a tool. This

470
00:26:35,600 --> 00:26:38,680
Speaker 1: is like a flint headed spear or a have to axe. Uh.

471
00:26:38,800 --> 00:26:41,960
Speaker 1: Number three is replication that's conjunction, but with two or

472
00:26:42,040 --> 00:26:45,560
Speaker 1: more from similar units required, so a double pronged fishing

473
00:26:45,600 --> 00:26:49,160
Speaker 1: spear or a trident. Yeah. And number four is linkage

474
00:26:49,200 --> 00:26:52,440
Speaker 1: that's physically distinct objects in combination, like a bow and arrow.

475
00:26:52,960 --> 00:26:54,720
Speaker 1: Obviously we're not going to see a bow and arrow

476
00:26:54,960 --> 00:26:59,040
Speaker 1: with birds here today. Now what a sling count is linkage? Yes,

477
00:26:59,119 --> 00:27:01,600
Speaker 1: I think it would. Yeah, you have two distinct objects

478
00:27:01,600 --> 00:27:05,040
Speaker 1: that are coming together to make something. Uh, even even

479
00:27:05,080 --> 00:27:07,760
Speaker 1: more powerful, you know. Yeah, but some some of the

480
00:27:07,760 --> 00:27:10,760
Speaker 1: tool use you see in birds is really the word

481
00:27:10,800 --> 00:27:13,000
Speaker 1: I would use is disturbing. I don't mean to give

482
00:27:13,040 --> 00:27:16,520
Speaker 1: it a negative quality, but it's kind it's unsettling when

483
00:27:16,560 --> 00:27:18,880
Speaker 1: you see it. Yeah, I mean, if you're talking disturbing,

484
00:27:19,119 --> 00:27:22,119
Speaker 1: the shrikes have always inspired a certain amount of terror.

485
00:27:22,160 --> 00:27:24,879
Speaker 1: These are the these little birds impale the bodies of

486
00:27:24,920 --> 00:27:29,000
Speaker 1: insects and small vertebrates on thorns. It partially for storage,

487
00:27:29,000 --> 00:27:31,000
Speaker 1: but also just so they can better strip them apart

488
00:27:31,040 --> 00:27:33,680
Speaker 1: as they you know, decided to eat them. Oh so

489
00:27:33,720 --> 00:27:37,080
Speaker 1: it's like a leather face putting somebody on a hook. Yeah, exactly,

490
00:27:37,119 --> 00:27:39,480
Speaker 1: it is. It's like sometimes they're called butcher birds for

491
00:27:39,520 --> 00:27:41,239
Speaker 1: this very reason, because it's like putting them on a

492
00:27:41,240 --> 00:27:46,040
Speaker 1: butcher's foot. That's messed up. Now, crows and ravens, I'm sorry.

493
00:27:46,119 --> 00:27:49,000
Speaker 1: Let let me let me take the judgment off of that.

494
00:27:49,119 --> 00:27:52,600
Speaker 1: That's a nature. Yes, that's a nature. Um and and yes,

495
00:27:52,680 --> 00:27:56,000
Speaker 1: so there's nothing wrong with letther face crows and ravens. Uh.

496
00:27:56,040 --> 00:27:58,639
Speaker 1: This is where we see some some wonderful tool uses

497
00:27:58,640 --> 00:28:01,320
Speaker 1: where well, crows have administrated tool use and even the

498
00:28:01,320 --> 00:28:04,479
Speaker 1: creation of artifacts. They've been deserved to fashion tools from

499
00:28:04,560 --> 00:28:08,159
Speaker 1: twigs to fish, beetle, larva out of logs, and in

500
00:28:08,280 --> 00:28:11,359
Speaker 1: lab environments they've been observed to use one tool to

501
00:28:11,440 --> 00:28:14,800
Speaker 1: make another tool. Now this is weird, Okay, this is

502
00:28:14,800 --> 00:28:17,240
Speaker 1: not just using a tool to get the thing they want,

503
00:28:17,560 --> 00:28:21,359
Speaker 1: but crafting tools, like using one tool to craft a

504
00:28:21,400 --> 00:28:23,480
Speaker 1: second tool, which is like a whole other layer of

505
00:28:23,560 --> 00:28:28,480
Speaker 1: abstract thought. Yeah. Indeed, uh, specifically the crowing question and

506
00:28:28,520 --> 00:28:31,680
Speaker 1: this one study bent the end of a wire using

507
00:28:31,680 --> 00:28:34,879
Speaker 1: the edge of a glass, then used the hooked wire

508
00:28:34,920 --> 00:28:38,400
Speaker 1: to retrieve another stick which was long enough to read

509
00:28:38,520 --> 00:28:41,960
Speaker 1: some food that it wanted. So those different steps there

510
00:28:41,960 --> 00:28:45,240
Speaker 1: in tool use in cognition, that's pretty advanced. It seems

511
00:28:45,280 --> 00:28:47,719
Speaker 1: like something some people wouldn't be able to figure out

512
00:28:47,760 --> 00:28:50,960
Speaker 1: how to do. Yeah. I kind of imagine myself in

513
00:28:51,120 --> 00:28:53,760
Speaker 1: the lab trying to do some problem solving puzzle and

514
00:28:53,920 --> 00:28:56,400
Speaker 1: just failing. Yeah. I mean, it's the kind kind of

515
00:28:56,440 --> 00:28:58,800
Speaker 1: steps that you can imagine just an individual on the

516
00:28:58,800 --> 00:29:01,120
Speaker 1: street going through if they wrop their keys down a

517
00:29:01,200 --> 00:29:03,160
Speaker 1: sewer grade and I see them and they're like, how

518
00:29:03,200 --> 00:29:04,720
Speaker 1: am I gonna get that back? All right? Well, what's

519
00:29:04,720 --> 00:29:06,720
Speaker 1: around me? Is there a coat hanger? Can get a

520
00:29:06,760 --> 00:29:08,320
Speaker 1: hold of. Is there some other you know, when we

521
00:29:08,360 --> 00:29:10,720
Speaker 1: begin to go through these these sort of basic tool

522
00:29:10,760 --> 00:29:13,560
Speaker 1: you steps to do something we we normally don't have

523
00:29:13,600 --> 00:29:15,920
Speaker 1: to engage in. But some of these steps really do

524
00:29:16,080 --> 00:29:21,840
Speaker 1: involve very strange ideas of of the abstract conditionals of

525
00:29:21,880 --> 00:29:24,640
Speaker 1: how to manipulate your environment. Like one of the examples

526
00:29:24,920 --> 00:29:28,080
Speaker 1: would be displacement of water. This is something that's been

527
00:29:28,080 --> 00:29:32,040
Speaker 1: observed in those New Caledonian crows. New Caledonian crows have

528
00:29:32,160 --> 00:29:35,560
Speaker 1: been documented to h So you've got a tube and

529
00:29:35,600 --> 00:29:37,600
Speaker 1: it's got some water in it, and floating on the

530
00:29:37,640 --> 00:29:40,080
Speaker 1: top of the water is a yummy piece of food

531
00:29:40,120 --> 00:29:42,600
Speaker 1: that the crow wants, but it's down in the tube

532
00:29:42,640 --> 00:29:45,560
Speaker 1: and it can't reach it. So the crows figure out

533
00:29:45,680 --> 00:29:49,720
Speaker 1: to drop rocks or heavy objects into the water to

534
00:29:49,960 --> 00:29:52,840
Speaker 1: raise the water level to fish out the piece of food.

535
00:29:53,400 --> 00:29:56,880
Speaker 1: It that that's again something that I wonder if I

536
00:29:56,920 --> 00:29:59,600
Speaker 1: would think to do well. I mean, it reminds me,

537
00:29:59,640 --> 00:30:02,560
Speaker 1: of course of Aesop's fable of the crow in the picture,

538
00:30:02,640 --> 00:30:04,400
Speaker 1: Like that just goes right back to some of our

539
00:30:04,440 --> 00:30:08,120
Speaker 1: oldest tails in which the crow is thirsty and has

540
00:30:08,160 --> 00:30:10,640
Speaker 1: to drop pebbles into the picture. To raise the water

541
00:30:10,760 --> 00:30:13,520
Speaker 1: level enough to drink from it. So we've been observing

542
00:30:13,560 --> 00:30:15,920
Speaker 1: this for for ages, I imagined, and in fact, I

543
00:30:15,960 --> 00:30:18,680
Speaker 1: think there was a study we came across just this

544
00:30:18,760 --> 00:30:21,520
Speaker 1: month that was looking at the evolution of the beak

545
00:30:21,560 --> 00:30:25,160
Speaker 1: of the New Caledonian crow, essentially saying that it evolved

546
00:30:25,160 --> 00:30:27,840
Speaker 1: for tool use. Right, Yeah, I should mention that they

547
00:30:28,080 --> 00:30:32,000
Speaker 1: we've also observed the New Caledonia crows forming beetle hooks

548
00:30:32,000 --> 00:30:34,760
Speaker 1: from the barbed edges of wide leaves, and in fact,

549
00:30:35,120 --> 00:30:38,320
Speaker 1: uh these Cornell researchers in this recent study they used

550
00:30:38,320 --> 00:30:42,160
Speaker 1: shape analysis and uh CT scanning to compare the shape

551
00:30:42,160 --> 00:30:44,680
Speaker 1: and structure of the New Caledonia crow's bill, and they

552
00:30:44,720 --> 00:30:48,040
Speaker 1: found the unique bill contributes to the bird's ability to

553
00:30:48,280 --> 00:30:53,040
Speaker 1: use and probably make tools specialized for tool manipulation. Okay,

554
00:30:53,080 --> 00:30:55,640
Speaker 1: so it's not just the brain, but the crow is

555
00:30:55,680 --> 00:31:00,200
Speaker 1: so specialized for being a technological creature that it has

556
00:31:00,240 --> 00:31:04,440
Speaker 1: evolved other body parts to aid in the creation of technology.

557
00:31:04,520 --> 00:31:06,440
Speaker 1: And this is where it gets interesting because it brings

558
00:31:06,480 --> 00:31:10,360
Speaker 1: us back to our original uh ponderings about the possibility

559
00:31:10,480 --> 00:31:14,760
Speaker 1: of avian evolution to a you know, technological state. Yeah,

560
00:31:14,800 --> 00:31:16,760
Speaker 1: it makes me think about if we were to really

561
00:31:16,800 --> 00:31:21,200
Speaker 1: commit to this speculation about if birds became the ascendant

562
00:31:21,480 --> 00:31:25,480
Speaker 1: intelligent species on a planet, what would their technology look like?

563
00:31:25,520 --> 00:31:28,520
Speaker 1: And I wonder if instead of every object being shaped

564
00:31:28,560 --> 00:31:30,880
Speaker 1: around the human hand, if you'd have all these objects

565
00:31:30,880 --> 00:31:34,680
Speaker 1: shaped around these specialized types of beaks, what would that

566
00:31:34,760 --> 00:31:37,560
Speaker 1: look like? How would be how would they control their technology,

567
00:31:37,600 --> 00:31:41,080
Speaker 1: how would they hold things? How would they control all

568
00:31:41,120 --> 00:31:43,920
Speaker 1: of the aspects of their environment with a beak? Yeah,

569
00:31:43,960 --> 00:31:45,840
Speaker 1: because you would sort of be talking about the like

570
00:31:45,880 --> 00:31:49,960
Speaker 1: the the end result of of you know, just just

571
00:31:50,120 --> 00:31:54,400
Speaker 1: ages and ages of stick manipulation by beak, Like what

572
00:31:54,560 --> 00:31:56,280
Speaker 1: is the like what's the optimal form of that? It's

573
00:31:56,320 --> 00:31:58,719
Speaker 1: so different than what we have to work with in

574
00:31:58,800 --> 00:32:01,960
Speaker 1: terms of thinking about the human hand and tool used

575
00:32:02,160 --> 00:32:05,960
Speaker 1: as humans appreciate it. There's another thing that some studies

576
00:32:05,960 --> 00:32:09,360
Speaker 1: have found birds can do that even some humans struggle with,

577
00:32:09,720 --> 00:32:13,560
Speaker 1: and that's delay of gratification. And so I'm sure you've

578
00:32:13,560 --> 00:32:17,040
Speaker 1: seen these studies before. Like a kid is given the

579
00:32:17,080 --> 00:32:21,880
Speaker 1: opportunity to have they put a marshmallow front of marshmallow

580
00:32:21,960 --> 00:32:25,640
Speaker 1: test and say, if you can resist eating this marshmallow

581
00:32:25,680 --> 00:32:29,040
Speaker 1: for five minutes, you'll get two marshmallows. You know, so

582
00:32:29,120 --> 00:32:31,760
Speaker 1: you'll get more, you'll get a better reward if you

583
00:32:31,800 --> 00:32:34,800
Speaker 1: can just wait a little bit. Animals are not good

584
00:32:34,840 --> 00:32:37,960
Speaker 1: at this task. Animals are not good at practicing restraint.

585
00:32:38,040 --> 00:32:40,560
Speaker 1: They can't delay gratification. If you put food in front

586
00:32:40,560 --> 00:32:44,440
Speaker 1: of them, typically they're just gonna eat it um. But some,

587
00:32:44,600 --> 00:32:48,240
Speaker 1: in some cases, animals can be trained not to do this,

588
00:32:48,360 --> 00:32:53,080
Speaker 1: especially some higher functional, higher cognitive functioning animals like primates

589
00:32:53,600 --> 00:32:57,440
Speaker 1: and in some cases like birds. So there was one

590
00:32:57,480 --> 00:33:01,320
Speaker 1: paper I came across that talked about how often cockatoos

591
00:33:01,960 --> 00:33:05,080
Speaker 1: were They were essentially able to wait up to about

592
00:33:05,200 --> 00:33:10,680
Speaker 1: eighty seconds for food of a preferred quality, but less

593
00:33:10,720 --> 00:33:13,240
Speaker 1: time for a higher quantity. And this was something that

594
00:33:13,280 --> 00:33:16,240
Speaker 1: was also found in a study I read about Corvid's

595
00:33:16,320 --> 00:33:19,760
Speaker 1: waiting for food. They can delay gratification for longer, or

596
00:33:19,760 --> 00:33:22,760
Speaker 1: in some cases they can only delay gratification at all

597
00:33:23,280 --> 00:33:26,719
Speaker 1: if they're anticipating getting a better piece of food, but

598
00:33:26,840 --> 00:33:30,000
Speaker 1: not if they're anticipating getting more food, which is interesting

599
00:33:30,040 --> 00:33:32,960
Speaker 1: to me, Like they'll they'll pay up in waiting time

600
00:33:33,000 --> 00:33:37,120
Speaker 1: for quality, but not for quantity. Okay, it's it's weird

601
00:33:37,160 --> 00:33:40,240
Speaker 1: anytime I think about this scenario or any of these

602
00:33:40,280 --> 00:33:43,120
Speaker 1: scenarios involving crows eating, I just think of them like

603
00:33:43,600 --> 00:33:47,479
Speaker 1: picking at corpses. Uh, like a medieval setting. Yeah, yeah, well,

604
00:33:47,520 --> 00:33:49,240
Speaker 1: I mean it makes you think, like, so, what's the

605
00:33:49,280 --> 00:33:53,440
Speaker 1: equivalent in the of the quality versus quantity fact in

606
00:33:53,560 --> 00:33:55,920
Speaker 1: like the marsh marshmallow experiments, So it would be like

607
00:33:56,160 --> 00:33:59,040
Speaker 1: the kid has given a marshmallow, and then it's instead

608
00:33:59,040 --> 00:34:02,000
Speaker 1: of you'll get two more shmallows, you'll get I don't

609
00:34:02,040 --> 00:34:05,560
Speaker 1: know what's better than a marshmallow, human eyeball. Human eyeballs.

610
00:34:05,960 --> 00:34:08,279
Speaker 1: I just assume that is the ultimate treat to chocolate

611
00:34:08,280 --> 00:34:11,239
Speaker 1: covered eyeball, No huge, a piece of chocolate cake or

612
00:34:11,280 --> 00:34:15,840
Speaker 1: something like a much improved object overall. And so crows

613
00:34:15,880 --> 00:34:18,440
Speaker 1: no quality when they see it, and so do cockatoos.

614
00:34:25,520 --> 00:34:29,279
Speaker 1: It's time to hold the mirror up to Avian cognition,

615
00:34:29,360 --> 00:34:31,920
Speaker 1: because we're gonna talk a little bit about mirror self

616
00:34:32,080 --> 00:34:34,560
Speaker 1: recognition tests or m s R. This is one of

617
00:34:34,560 --> 00:34:37,360
Speaker 1: the most interesting of these examples to me because it

618
00:34:37,640 --> 00:34:41,480
Speaker 1: deals with not just thinking about how to solve a task,

619
00:34:41,600 --> 00:34:44,560
Speaker 1: but something that's a kind of a different issue, which

620
00:34:44,600 --> 00:34:47,719
Speaker 1: is self awareness. Yeah and uh, and this is something

621
00:34:47,719 --> 00:34:50,359
Speaker 1: we could easily do an entire episode on the mirror tests.

622
00:34:50,400 --> 00:34:52,600
Speaker 1: It's pretty interesting. It's it's one thing we should Yeah,

623
00:34:52,600 --> 00:34:55,560
Speaker 1: it's one of the more common consciousness tests that we

624
00:34:55,680 --> 00:34:58,800
Speaker 1: roll out with other species. And there's certainly some species

625
00:34:58,800 --> 00:35:01,000
Speaker 1: that it it works better with. There are other things

626
00:35:01,000 --> 00:35:05,160
Speaker 1: like the octopus where uh, they're often difficulties in trying

627
00:35:05,160 --> 00:35:08,759
Speaker 1: to make this test applicable to uh, to those two

628
00:35:08,800 --> 00:35:12,600
Speaker 1: members of that species. But essentially, when presented with a

629
00:35:12,640 --> 00:35:16,640
Speaker 1: mirrors reflection of themselves, how is the creature going to respond?

630
00:35:16,719 --> 00:35:18,439
Speaker 1: Is it going to respond as if there's nothing there

631
00:35:18,440 --> 00:35:20,520
Speaker 1: at all? Is Are they gonna respond as if, oh,

632
00:35:20,560 --> 00:35:23,799
Speaker 1: there's another there's another dog, there's another fish right there

633
00:35:23,800 --> 00:35:26,680
Speaker 1: looking at me, I better react accordingly. Or are they

634
00:35:26,680 --> 00:35:29,480
Speaker 1: going to recognize that that is themselves? Are they gonna

635
00:35:29,520 --> 00:35:32,440
Speaker 1: look in the mirror and see themselves and know it

636
00:35:32,480 --> 00:35:35,680
Speaker 1: to be themselves? Which is sort of a holy grail

637
00:35:35,760 --> 00:35:39,480
Speaker 1: of self recognition intelligence? Like, what a what a strange

638
00:35:39,600 --> 00:35:42,760
Speaker 1: thing to be encouraged by nature? Why would nature select

639
00:35:42,880 --> 00:35:46,040
Speaker 1: for the ability to be able to recognize yourself in

640
00:35:46,040 --> 00:35:50,000
Speaker 1: a reflective surface. I mean, it just does seem like

641
00:35:50,040 --> 00:35:53,719
Speaker 1: a very an inherently, very complex thing for a brain

642
00:35:53,800 --> 00:35:56,880
Speaker 1: to do. Yeah, I mean it ties into your ability

643
00:35:57,000 --> 00:36:01,719
Speaker 1: to to recognize your own place within a scenario, within

644
00:36:01,719 --> 00:36:04,879
Speaker 1: a social structure, and then it also bleeds over into

645
00:36:04,960 --> 00:36:07,560
Speaker 1: some other cognitive abilities we're going to discuss in a

646
00:36:07,600 --> 00:36:10,680
Speaker 1: bit concerning not only how we perceive ourselves, but how

647
00:36:10,680 --> 00:36:14,000
Speaker 1: we perceive others. Now, for those creatures that do react

648
00:36:14,040 --> 00:36:16,720
Speaker 1: with hostility when they see their own reflection in a mirror,

649
00:36:16,760 --> 00:36:19,600
Speaker 1: they may actually be onto something. Oh yeah, you know,

650
00:36:20,000 --> 00:36:24,719
Speaker 1: in fact, you're Heluis Borges rainbow fish story is true. Uh,

651
00:36:24,760 --> 00:36:27,200
Speaker 1: if you're not familiar with this one, um, it has

652
00:36:27,239 --> 00:36:30,160
Speaker 1: to do with the fact that that everything you see

653
00:36:30,160 --> 00:36:33,840
Speaker 1: in the mirror, that the mirror people, the mirror creatures

654
00:36:34,080 --> 00:36:36,839
Speaker 1: are merely repeating our actions, and they look like they

655
00:36:36,840 --> 00:36:39,840
Speaker 1: look like us, and they go through this silly mimicry

656
00:36:40,040 --> 00:36:42,320
Speaker 1: because they lost a war ages ago, and part of

657
00:36:42,360 --> 00:36:45,440
Speaker 1: the truth is that they have to just mime everything

658
00:36:45,480 --> 00:36:48,560
Speaker 1: we do, but that but one day they will rebel

659
00:36:48,640 --> 00:36:50,759
Speaker 1: against us, and the first thing we'll see in the

660
00:36:50,800 --> 00:36:54,600
Speaker 1: mirror is the brilliant rainbow fish with you know, colors

661
00:36:54,640 --> 00:36:57,400
Speaker 1: that we've never seen in this world. That'll be the

662
00:36:57,440 --> 00:37:00,200
Speaker 1: sign that opes it's about it's about to go that's

663
00:37:00,239 --> 00:37:02,840
Speaker 1: here in the mirror world is about to invade ours.

664
00:37:02,880 --> 00:37:07,080
Speaker 1: So maybe the creatures that that that how and bark

665
00:37:07,200 --> 00:37:10,359
Speaker 1: at the mirror, maybe they just know what's up. Well,

666
00:37:10,400 --> 00:37:14,040
Speaker 1: I look forward to that day of reckoning. Now, what

667
00:37:14,200 --> 00:37:17,120
Speaker 1: animals that we know of other than humans can actually

668
00:37:17,160 --> 00:37:19,440
Speaker 1: pass the mirror tests? Which which ones can look in

669
00:37:19,440 --> 00:37:22,080
Speaker 1: a mirror and say, hey, that's me all right? Well?

670
00:37:22,280 --> 00:37:27,280
Speaker 1: As of aside from humans, you have a certain great apes.

671
00:37:27,719 --> 00:37:33,960
Speaker 1: You have apparently a single Asian elephant, their dolphins, orcas, uh,

672
00:37:34,040 --> 00:37:39,959
Speaker 1: the Eurasian magpie, um, a few species of ants interestingly enough. Yeah,

673
00:37:40,040 --> 00:37:41,920
Speaker 1: and that's something we'll have to explore that in a

674
00:37:42,000 --> 00:37:44,480
Speaker 1: in a later episode. But there there's an argument that

675
00:37:44,520 --> 00:37:47,600
Speaker 1: ants can pass the mirror tests. I have some questions

676
00:37:47,640 --> 00:37:52,000
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, uh, as well as maccaques have also

677
00:37:52,040 --> 00:37:56,200
Speaker 1: passed Yeah, um yeah. And so one example I've seen

678
00:37:56,239 --> 00:37:58,280
Speaker 1: it you might be wondering, well, how can you test

679
00:37:58,360 --> 00:38:01,840
Speaker 1: to see if an animal recognizes itself in the mirror.

680
00:38:01,880 --> 00:38:04,799
Speaker 1: One example that I saw that was actually presented by

681
00:38:04,840 --> 00:38:08,480
Speaker 1: Professor Gunterkune was an example where they have a magpie

682
00:38:08,520 --> 00:38:11,680
Speaker 1: looking in a mirror and there is a sort of

683
00:38:11,800 --> 00:38:16,000
Speaker 1: dot of colored dye on the magpies feathers underneath the

684
00:38:16,000 --> 00:38:18,000
Speaker 1: head where it wouldn't be able to see on itself,

685
00:38:18,040 --> 00:38:20,080
Speaker 1: but it could see in a mirror. And they try

686
00:38:20,120 --> 00:38:21,799
Speaker 1: it with a couple of colors of dies. One is

687
00:38:21,800 --> 00:38:24,719
Speaker 1: a black colored dye that just matches the color of

688
00:38:24,760 --> 00:38:26,480
Speaker 1: the feathers, so it shouldn't be able to see it

689
00:38:26,480 --> 00:38:28,719
Speaker 1: in the mirror. And sure enough, they put a magpie

690
00:38:28,719 --> 00:38:31,120
Speaker 1: in a room with a black colored dye under its chin,

691
00:38:31,160 --> 00:38:34,480
Speaker 1: and it doesn't seem to do anything unusual. But they

692
00:38:34,520 --> 00:38:36,759
Speaker 1: do the same thing with a yellow colored dye and

693
00:38:36,800 --> 00:38:39,960
Speaker 1: the magpie starts scratching it itself. It looks in the mirror,

694
00:38:40,160 --> 00:38:43,560
Speaker 1: sees that it has a yellow patch underneath its neck,

695
00:38:43,560 --> 00:38:45,799
Speaker 1: and it starts scratching at the patch, trying to get

696
00:38:45,840 --> 00:38:48,840
Speaker 1: it off. Now, they used the black colored dyes a

697
00:38:49,120 --> 00:38:51,000
Speaker 1: you know, control to show that okay, it's not just

698
00:38:51,120 --> 00:38:54,200
Speaker 1: feeling something on itself, it's reacting to what it sees

699
00:38:55,360 --> 00:38:58,440
Speaker 1: and it sees it in the mirror and says, I

700
00:38:58,520 --> 00:39:01,239
Speaker 1: need to get that off me. Yes and forms of

701
00:39:01,280 --> 00:39:04,239
Speaker 1: this this uh this inc method are are utilized with

702
00:39:04,560 --> 00:39:08,040
Speaker 1: a number of MSR tests, particularly those aimed at at

703
00:39:08,120 --> 00:39:10,879
Speaker 1: land based animals and When it comes to other birds,

704
00:39:10,880 --> 00:39:14,240
Speaker 1: a handful species show self contingent behaviors in front of mirrors.

705
00:39:14,440 --> 00:39:18,759
Speaker 1: Magpies and jack DAWs they show self contingent behaviors. Two

706
00:39:18,800 --> 00:39:22,960
Speaker 1: out of five magpies past the mirror tests. New Caledonian crows,

707
00:39:23,280 --> 00:39:27,520
Speaker 1: gray parrots, and keys engage in social behavior and mirror

708
00:39:27,520 --> 00:39:32,520
Speaker 1: directed uh exploratory behavior, but they lack self directed behavior

709
00:39:32,560 --> 00:39:35,319
Speaker 1: in front of mirrors, and New Caledonian crows and gray

710
00:39:35,360 --> 00:39:39,520
Speaker 1: parents all parrots also use a mirror UH instrumentally to

711
00:39:39,600 --> 00:39:43,719
Speaker 1: localized food, so they can in these tests, they will

712
00:39:44,040 --> 00:39:47,000
Speaker 1: They'll put them in a position where they can use

713
00:39:47,080 --> 00:39:49,200
Speaker 1: the mirror to better find the food, and then they

714
00:39:49,200 --> 00:39:53,239
Speaker 1: will utilize the mirror to do so. Interesting. Okay, so

715
00:39:53,280 --> 00:39:55,640
Speaker 1: I got another one for you. How about some bird math.

716
00:39:55,960 --> 00:39:58,520
Speaker 1: Oh yes, it's not going to be very complex math,

717
00:39:58,600 --> 00:40:02,080
Speaker 1: but it's math that's that impressive for a non human animal.

718
00:40:02,520 --> 00:40:05,480
Speaker 1: So lots of animals can do some basic form of

719
00:40:05,640 --> 00:40:09,520
Speaker 1: counting objects, and I want to emphasize basic, but far

720
00:40:09,600 --> 00:40:13,800
Speaker 1: fewer animals can do more abstract operations with number concepts

721
00:40:13,800 --> 00:40:16,560
Speaker 1: like comparing numbers and stuff like that. But back in

722
00:40:16,600 --> 00:40:21,640
Speaker 1: the scientists were able to successfully train recis monkeys to

723
00:40:21,880 --> 00:40:24,400
Speaker 1: do this test where they look at a group of

724
00:40:24,440 --> 00:40:27,640
Speaker 1: objects on a computer screen, and then they'd rank the

725
00:40:27,719 --> 00:40:30,800
Speaker 1: groups according to how many objects were on the screen,

726
00:40:31,520 --> 00:40:34,360
Speaker 1: and so a group of three objects is greater than

727
00:40:34,400 --> 00:40:38,120
Speaker 1: a group of of two. And then after this training,

728
00:40:38,160 --> 00:40:41,000
Speaker 1: the monkeys learned how to do this task even when

729
00:40:41,000 --> 00:40:44,440
Speaker 1: they were presented with unfamiliar large numbers. So let's say

730
00:40:44,440 --> 00:40:46,920
Speaker 1: they've been trained to point out that three is more

731
00:40:46,960 --> 00:40:50,040
Speaker 1: than two and two is more than one. You can

732
00:40:50,080 --> 00:40:52,719
Speaker 1: suddenly show them new numbers they've never seen before, like

733
00:40:52,880 --> 00:40:56,040
Speaker 1: eight and six, and they'll do the test correctly. They'll

734
00:40:56,080 --> 00:40:58,520
Speaker 1: point out that eight is more than six. So basically

735
00:40:58,920 --> 00:41:01,200
Speaker 1: checking for algory of nick thinking on the part of

736
00:41:01,200 --> 00:41:03,920
Speaker 1: the animal, like I sort of deal with with quantities

737
00:41:04,000 --> 00:41:07,240
Speaker 1: visual quantities in the difference and and tell yeah, exactly.

738
00:41:07,800 --> 00:41:10,840
Speaker 1: And so there was a study in two thousand eleven

739
00:41:10,920 --> 00:41:14,120
Speaker 1: published in Science by Damian Scarff, Harlan Hayne, and Michael

740
00:41:14,160 --> 00:41:18,759
Speaker 1: Colombo that essentially found that pigeons, pigeons, now that the

741
00:41:18,800 --> 00:41:23,160
Speaker 1: classic dummies of our our jokes about bird intelligence did

742
00:41:23,280 --> 00:41:26,520
Speaker 1: just as good as reesus monkeys on this test. Uh

743
00:41:26,680 --> 00:41:30,080
Speaker 1: that birds do the the operation of magnitude comparison just

744
00:41:30,239 --> 00:41:32,200
Speaker 1: as well as primates. And the setup goes like this.

745
00:41:32,719 --> 00:41:35,560
Speaker 1: You get the birds and you train them over time

746
00:41:35,600 --> 00:41:38,920
Speaker 1: to peck at screens bearing numbers of objects in increasing

747
00:41:39,040 --> 00:41:42,280
Speaker 1: order of magnitude. So, for the pigeon sees three screens,

748
00:41:42,320 --> 00:41:44,799
Speaker 1: one has one object, one has two objects, one has

749
00:41:44,840 --> 00:41:48,200
Speaker 1: three objects, and you train the bird with reinforcement to

750
00:41:48,360 --> 00:41:53,640
Speaker 1: peck them at going one to three. Then you introduce

751
00:41:53,719 --> 00:41:55,920
Speaker 1: new numbers, just like you did for the Reese's monkeys,

752
00:41:56,160 --> 00:41:58,120
Speaker 1: and they can do the same thing. They can look

753
00:41:58,160 --> 00:42:00,799
Speaker 1: at six and nine and compare and can pack them

754
00:42:00,800 --> 00:42:03,920
Speaker 1: in ascending order. They can extend their math skills to

755
00:42:04,120 --> 00:42:08,719
Speaker 1: unfamiliar numbers, and so this leads to two possible conclusions.

756
00:42:08,719 --> 00:42:11,239
Speaker 1: The researchers pointed out, I read this in UH they

757
00:42:11,280 --> 00:42:13,480
Speaker 1: were speaking to the New York Times. They said, the

758
00:42:13,840 --> 00:42:16,960
Speaker 1: birds and the mammals here. Obviously they've both got these

759
00:42:17,040 --> 00:42:20,279
Speaker 1: number skills. The monkeys have them, the pigeons have them.

760
00:42:20,320 --> 00:42:24,000
Speaker 1: And they either separately evolved the basic number skills, meaning

761
00:42:24,040 --> 00:42:28,279
Speaker 1: the convergent evolution two different evolutionary solutions to reach the

762
00:42:28,360 --> 00:42:32,480
Speaker 1: same goal in different creatures. Because ultimately both creatures live

763
00:42:32,640 --> 00:42:34,760
Speaker 1: in the same world, a world of fixed and movable

764
00:42:34,800 --> 00:42:38,160
Speaker 1: objects of varying quantities, and obviously that plays into the

765
00:42:38,360 --> 00:42:42,520
Speaker 1: survival advantage to be able to uh, to determine these differences. Yeah,

766
00:42:42,880 --> 00:42:45,960
Speaker 1: Or if that's not the case, if it's not convergent evolutions,

767
00:42:46,000 --> 00:42:49,279
Speaker 1: separate solutions leading to the same conclusion. They must have

768
00:42:49,360 --> 00:42:52,560
Speaker 1: gotten these number skills from their last common ancestor. As

769
00:42:52,600 --> 00:42:56,239
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier, that last common ancestor between mammals and

770
00:42:56,280 --> 00:43:01,120
Speaker 1: birds lived three hundred million years ago. So are the

771
00:43:01,280 --> 00:43:05,200
Speaker 1: terrible before the dinosaurs? Yeah, three million years ago with

772
00:43:05,280 --> 00:43:08,000
Speaker 1: number skills, I mean, before the age of the dinosaurs.

773
00:43:08,040 --> 00:43:12,680
Speaker 1: That's very creepy. But I think we've got one that's

774
00:43:12,719 --> 00:43:16,960
Speaker 1: even creepier, And that's theory of mind. Yes, And this

775
00:43:17,000 --> 00:43:19,200
Speaker 1: is where I definitely think back to standing on one

776
00:43:19,200 --> 00:43:22,000
Speaker 1: side of the glass and watching the ground hornbills and

777
00:43:22,000 --> 00:43:24,120
Speaker 1: and looking into the eye of the ground hornbills as

778
00:43:24,120 --> 00:43:27,560
Speaker 1: they walk up and and we'll often show off like

779
00:43:27,600 --> 00:43:29,400
Speaker 1: a dead mouse. They'll have it in their beak and

780
00:43:29,400 --> 00:43:31,759
Speaker 1: they'll want to show it to me, or if they

781
00:43:31,760 --> 00:43:35,000
Speaker 1: don't have really they seem to be showing it off. Yeah,

782
00:43:35,040 --> 00:43:37,520
Speaker 1: they want to show that that dead mouse to me,

783
00:43:37,560 --> 00:43:39,080
Speaker 1: And if there's not a mouse, they'll have a wood

784
00:43:39,160 --> 00:43:40,879
Speaker 1: chip and they'll pick that up and want to show

785
00:43:40,880 --> 00:43:44,600
Speaker 1: it to me. Um, But but to what extent is

786
00:43:44,640 --> 00:43:49,080
Speaker 1: that hornbill? Actually? Could it possibly be perceiving me as

787
00:43:49,120 --> 00:43:51,840
Speaker 1: an entity that is perceiving it. This is where we

788
00:43:51,880 --> 00:43:54,080
Speaker 1: get into theory of mind, and it's a pretty big

789
00:43:54,080 --> 00:43:57,280
Speaker 1: deal in human cognition and the human experience overall. Theory

790
00:43:57,280 --> 00:44:00,280
Speaker 1: of mind allows us to see the world or too

791
00:44:00,480 --> 00:44:05,040
Speaker 1: often quite poorly, through another person's eyes. It allows us

792
00:44:05,080 --> 00:44:09,480
Speaker 1: to attribute a mental state to our not only to ourselves,

793
00:44:09,480 --> 00:44:12,000
Speaker 1: but to other entities. Yeah, and this is considered a

794
00:44:12,600 --> 00:44:16,560
Speaker 1: crucial part of sort of human development, Like when children

795
00:44:16,680 --> 00:44:19,320
Speaker 1: at what age to children gain a theory of mind?

796
00:44:19,400 --> 00:44:22,680
Speaker 1: When are they not just reacting to stimuli, When are

797
00:44:22,719 --> 00:44:26,760
Speaker 1: they not reacting to uh, to a lighting up toy

798
00:44:26,880 --> 00:44:28,880
Speaker 1: and a human as if they're the same type of thing,

799
00:44:29,000 --> 00:44:32,640
Speaker 1: but recognizing that a human has intentions and starting to

800
00:44:32,880 --> 00:44:36,800
Speaker 1: imagine what the other humans intentions are. Yeah, this is

801
00:44:36,840 --> 00:44:39,000
Speaker 1: something we easily take for granted. I think it's important

802
00:44:39,000 --> 00:44:41,480
Speaker 1: to note that when we say theory of mind it

803
00:44:41,480 --> 00:44:45,600
Speaker 1: itself is not a theory. It is saying that our

804
00:44:45,680 --> 00:44:49,000
Speaker 1: perceptions of other mind states. All we have is a

805
00:44:49,080 --> 00:44:51,919
Speaker 1: theory of that individual's mind Everyone in your life, from

806
00:44:51,920 --> 00:44:54,640
Speaker 1: a stranger on the street to you know, a loved

807
00:44:54,640 --> 00:44:57,759
Speaker 1: when you see every day, the best you have is

808
00:44:57,800 --> 00:45:01,440
Speaker 1: a theory of what their mind state consists off. And uh,

809
00:45:01,480 --> 00:45:04,080
Speaker 1: and I think a lot. There's some interesting studies out

810
00:45:04,120 --> 00:45:06,680
Speaker 1: there that show that that even people we've we've known

811
00:45:06,719 --> 00:45:09,640
Speaker 1: for a long time, our vision of their mind state

812
00:45:09,680 --> 00:45:12,480
Speaker 1: isn't is far from perfect. It's just a version of

813
00:45:12,480 --> 00:45:14,840
Speaker 1: who they are, and we use those in our our

814
00:45:14,960 --> 00:45:18,560
Speaker 1: our calculations as we navigate our world. Yeah, and that

815
00:45:18,640 --> 00:45:20,640
Speaker 1: kind of strange. I mean, you think you live in

816
00:45:20,640 --> 00:45:22,600
Speaker 1: a world of other people, but really you live in

817
00:45:22,600 --> 00:45:25,719
Speaker 1: a world of what you imagine other people are. Like, Yeah,

818
00:45:25,719 --> 00:45:27,560
Speaker 1: you kind of live in your own little, you know,

819
00:45:27,640 --> 00:45:33,040
Speaker 1: matrix simulation of the world. But uh, but how about animals? Right?

820
00:45:33,239 --> 00:45:35,680
Speaker 1: Can animals do this? That's been one of the big questions.

821
00:45:36,120 --> 00:45:38,760
Speaker 1: To the degree to which non human animals can possess

822
00:45:38,840 --> 00:45:42,280
Speaker 1: theory of mind remains an open question, but some studies

823
00:45:42,320 --> 00:45:46,000
Speaker 1: suggest that ravens might have the gift. Yeah. Most recently,

824
00:45:46,040 --> 00:45:49,280
Speaker 1: a two thousand sixteen study and this the year published

825
00:45:49,280 --> 00:45:53,640
Speaker 1: in Nature Communications, suggests that ravens possess a basic theory

826
00:45:53,719 --> 00:45:56,000
Speaker 1: of mind. How on earth would they test for this?

827
00:45:56,120 --> 00:45:59,720
Speaker 1: And how can you figure out if a raven knows

828
00:45:59,840 --> 00:46:04,759
Speaker 1: the something else has intentions? Well, it comes down to this.

829
00:46:05,000 --> 00:46:08,680
Speaker 1: You often hear this phrase thrown around, Right, It's particularly

830
00:46:08,719 --> 00:46:11,920
Speaker 1: in uh in you know dramas where there's a lot

831
00:46:11,960 --> 00:46:15,000
Speaker 1: of deception. Right, does does he know that? I know

832
00:46:15,080 --> 00:46:17,560
Speaker 1: that he knows? You know? It all comes down to

833
00:46:17,680 --> 00:46:20,040
Speaker 1: a a complex game of hide and seek among the

834
00:46:20,080 --> 00:46:23,600
Speaker 1: ravens where they where they're they're they're trying to hide

835
00:46:23,640 --> 00:46:28,200
Speaker 1: and acquire pilferd bits of carrying. Yeah, so they've gorged

836
00:46:28,239 --> 00:46:31,160
Speaker 1: themselves on I don't know, like the eyeballs and whatever

837
00:46:31,239 --> 00:46:33,799
Speaker 1: they can get from these dead animals. All the best bits,

838
00:46:33,840 --> 00:46:36,120
Speaker 1: all the best bits, but there's still some nice nuggets

839
00:46:36,120 --> 00:46:38,239
Speaker 1: there that they want to come back with later. So

840
00:46:38,280 --> 00:46:40,800
Speaker 1: they tuck these into the throat pouches and they hide

841
00:46:40,800 --> 00:46:45,320
Speaker 1: them away. Now, subordinate ravens hold on just just to clarify,

842
00:46:45,360 --> 00:46:47,680
Speaker 1: they don't hide them in their throat pouches. They take

843
00:46:47,719 --> 00:46:50,040
Speaker 1: them in their throat pouch to hide them somewhere. They

844
00:46:50,040 --> 00:46:51,880
Speaker 1: just stick them in the throat, their throat pouch and

845
00:46:51,880 --> 00:46:54,400
Speaker 1: then they're gonna want to hide them in some external

846
00:46:54,440 --> 00:46:57,839
Speaker 1: place later on, like a dog burying a bone exactly. Yeah,

847
00:46:57,840 --> 00:47:00,000
Speaker 1: they want to create a you know, just to high.

848
00:47:00,040 --> 00:47:01,640
Speaker 1: They want to find a hiding place for the good

849
00:47:01,680 --> 00:47:03,160
Speaker 1: so they can come back. They want to bury that

850
00:47:03,200 --> 00:47:08,080
Speaker 1: treasure now. Subordinate Ravens will spy on their superiors to

851
00:47:08,120 --> 00:47:13,440
Speaker 1: see where they're hiding. The choice spoils sniveling little because

852
00:47:13,480 --> 00:47:15,799
Speaker 1: the Boss Raven got the best parts. But here's the thing.

853
00:47:15,920 --> 00:47:19,600
Speaker 1: The Boss Raven didn't become Boss Raven by being a dummy.

854
00:47:19,800 --> 00:47:23,279
Speaker 1: The Boss Raven knows that she's being watched, and she'll

855
00:47:23,320 --> 00:47:27,720
Speaker 1: often employ various strategies and deceptions in order to throw

856
00:47:28,000 --> 00:47:32,000
Speaker 1: off the others. So she she practices deceit and trickery. Right,

857
00:47:32,320 --> 00:47:35,360
Speaker 1: So she's doing things like doing a quick burial, like

858
00:47:35,400 --> 00:47:38,640
Speaker 1: I gotta bury this fast before anybody notices where I'm

859
00:47:38,640 --> 00:47:41,680
Speaker 1: putting the goods, makes sense, or digging behind a visual

860
00:47:41,760 --> 00:47:45,359
Speaker 1: barrier so I can't quite see what she's doing, avoiding

861
00:47:45,360 --> 00:47:49,000
Speaker 1: the hiding place after burial to avoid drawing attention to it.

862
00:47:49,239 --> 00:47:50,640
Speaker 1: All right, So I'm gonna bury it over here, But

863
00:47:50,680 --> 00:47:52,239
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stand over here because I don't want you

864
00:47:52,320 --> 00:47:55,440
Speaker 1: to think that I'm guarding something precious. And then finally,

865
00:47:55,480 --> 00:47:58,640
Speaker 1: this one is really key. She'll pretend to dig a hole,

866
00:47:59,120 --> 00:48:01,759
Speaker 1: but keep the loop in her throat pouch until a

867
00:48:01,880 --> 00:48:06,279
Speaker 1: better opportunity to hide it presents itself. So I'm digging

868
00:48:06,320 --> 00:48:08,239
Speaker 1: a hole, just pretending to bury it, so you'll think

869
00:48:08,239 --> 00:48:10,040
Speaker 1: I've buried it here, I'm going to do a little

870
00:48:10,160 --> 00:48:13,440
Speaker 1: slide of beak and actually bury it over on this side.

871
00:48:13,600 --> 00:48:16,400
Speaker 1: Now this is interesting because you could look at all

872
00:48:16,440 --> 00:48:18,640
Speaker 1: this and say, well, I don't know, maybe is I mean,

873
00:48:18,680 --> 00:48:20,880
Speaker 1: with a lot of these tests, you could say, is

874
00:48:20,920 --> 00:48:25,040
Speaker 1: this just some kind of instinctual behavior manifesting itself in

875
00:48:25,040 --> 00:48:27,920
Speaker 1: a very complex way, And so you'd almost have to

876
00:48:28,040 --> 00:48:32,719
Speaker 1: introduce unnatural scenarios to testincy is this really? Is this

877
00:48:32,800 --> 00:48:37,839
Speaker 1: bird thinking flexibly or is it just carrying out some instincts? Right? Yeah?

878
00:48:37,920 --> 00:48:40,719
Speaker 1: Is it just responding to visual stimuli or is this

879
00:48:40,840 --> 00:48:43,239
Speaker 1: theory of mind? Well that's what the researchers in this

880
00:48:43,320 --> 00:48:47,920
Speaker 1: study set out to discover. So this study involved two

881
00:48:48,000 --> 00:48:51,920
Speaker 1: experimental areas, one wall between them with a peopole for

882
00:48:52,000 --> 00:48:54,440
Speaker 1: viewing the human researchers who brought them food, and a

883
00:48:54,520 --> 00:48:57,680
Speaker 1: small window which could be shut or open to make

884
00:48:57,680 --> 00:49:02,040
Speaker 1: the other raven in the experiment visible. So this was

885
00:49:02,440 --> 00:49:04,680
Speaker 1: to test how they behaved when they could see their

886
00:49:04,719 --> 00:49:08,600
Speaker 1: competitor and when they couldn't, and also how they factored

887
00:49:08,600 --> 00:49:13,759
Speaker 1: in this peep hole through which somebody else human might

888
00:49:13,800 --> 00:49:16,880
Speaker 1: be viewing them as well. So they taught the birds

889
00:49:16,920 --> 00:49:18,799
Speaker 1: to look through the peep hole and spy on the

890
00:49:18,880 --> 00:49:23,120
Speaker 1: humans as well. Afterwards, they that the birds indeed hid

891
00:49:23,160 --> 00:49:27,080
Speaker 1: their food and acted suspicious even when they had they

892
00:49:27,080 --> 00:49:30,320
Speaker 1: had only the peephole to contend with with the window

893
00:49:30,360 --> 00:49:32,759
Speaker 1: to the other raven shut off. Wait a minute, so

894
00:49:32,920 --> 00:49:35,440
Speaker 1: they couldn't see the raven. They just knew that it

895
00:49:35,560 --> 00:49:38,399
Speaker 1: was possible for something to look in at them, right,

896
00:49:38,440 --> 00:49:40,799
Speaker 1: So yeah, So basically they're testing, you know, through three

897
00:49:40,840 --> 00:49:43,120
Speaker 1: different things. How are they behaving when they know there's

898
00:49:43,160 --> 00:49:45,600
Speaker 1: a raven there that could see what they're doing, how

899
00:49:45,600 --> 00:49:48,960
Speaker 1: do they behave when there's nothing there that they're aware of,

900
00:49:49,280 --> 00:49:51,440
Speaker 1: And how do they behave when there's no visible raven

901
00:49:51,480 --> 00:49:55,000
Speaker 1: But there's the possibility that something else, perhaps this human,

902
00:49:55,320 --> 00:49:58,480
Speaker 1: is viewing them as well, And they seem to infer

903
00:49:59,040 --> 00:50:01,839
Speaker 1: that some one could be watching and acted as if

904
00:50:01,840 --> 00:50:05,880
Speaker 1: the possible watching entity might behave like another crow. So

905
00:50:05,920 --> 00:50:09,800
Speaker 1: they attributed theory of bird mind to the unseen human.

906
00:50:09,880 --> 00:50:12,200
Speaker 1: They thought that human might be coming to steal their

907
00:50:12,239 --> 00:50:15,080
Speaker 1: carry in exactly. Yeah, yeah, so they were. They were,

908
00:50:15,600 --> 00:50:17,719
Speaker 1: according to the researchers. Here. The argument here is that

909
00:50:17,760 --> 00:50:21,640
Speaker 1: they are attributing theory of mind to the human. Right.

910
00:50:21,719 --> 00:50:24,960
Speaker 1: I just want to issue a disclaimer to any Corvid's listening.

911
00:50:25,120 --> 00:50:28,560
Speaker 1: I don't want to steal your delicious eyeballs. Those eyeball treats.

912
00:50:28,640 --> 00:50:31,160
Speaker 1: You earned them, they're all for you. Prove me wrong,

913
00:50:31,160 --> 00:50:34,680
Speaker 1: it's probably what they they would say back. Okay, well

914
00:50:34,760 --> 00:50:38,239
Speaker 1: that's fascinating. And and if those the interpretation of those

915
00:50:38,320 --> 00:50:42,440
Speaker 1: results are indeed correct, that's uh. I don't know that.

916
00:50:42,600 --> 00:50:45,279
Speaker 1: That's something else. Yeah, I mean, of course it makes

917
00:50:45,280 --> 00:50:48,640
Speaker 1: sense because they ravens from a very early age. They

918
00:50:48,640 --> 00:50:51,320
Speaker 1: have to engage in a uh, you know, a fairly

919
00:50:51,840 --> 00:50:56,640
Speaker 1: complex um um hierarchical group of friends and frenemies and

920
00:50:56,719 --> 00:50:59,800
Speaker 1: different factions. So they're like social birds. Yeah, they're instantly

921
00:50:59,800 --> 00:51:02,480
Speaker 1: throw ust into like a mini Game of Thrones scenario,

922
00:51:02,880 --> 00:51:06,040
Speaker 1: and they have to be able to survive in that environment. Okay,

923
00:51:06,040 --> 00:51:08,839
Speaker 1: well there's another perhaps lighter example, we could throw too,

924
00:51:08,840 --> 00:51:11,319
Speaker 1: But that is also still pretty interesting, which is the

925
00:51:11,320 --> 00:51:13,520
Speaker 1: fact that it might not be impossible to have a

926
00:51:13,560 --> 00:51:16,719
Speaker 1: bird DJ your wedding. Yeah, you could book a DJ

927
00:51:16,840 --> 00:51:21,000
Speaker 1: bird brain, or perhaps DJ budgery gar budgery garza, or

928
00:51:21,040 --> 00:51:26,040
Speaker 1: the basically the common pet parakeet, a vocal mimicking parrot species,

929
00:51:26,120 --> 00:51:28,600
Speaker 1: the one you teach to say bad words. Yeah, yeah,

930
00:51:28,800 --> 00:51:32,120
Speaker 1: of course uh. In a two thousand eleven study published

931
00:51:32,160 --> 00:51:36,280
Speaker 1: in Scientific Reports, a team of researchers trained eight budgery

932
00:51:36,320 --> 00:51:39,839
Speaker 1: guards to perform isochronus that means occurring at the same

933
00:51:39,880 --> 00:51:43,160
Speaker 1: time tapping tasks in which they pecked a key to

934
00:51:43,239 --> 00:51:48,720
Speaker 1: the rhythm of audio visual metronome style stimuli, so keeping

935
00:51:48,840 --> 00:51:51,959
Speaker 1: keeping time, keeping beat exactly and now. This has also

936
00:51:52,000 --> 00:51:57,240
Speaker 1: been observed in sea lions, Reese's monkeys, chimpanzees, and Binobo's uh.

937
00:51:57,280 --> 00:52:00,600
Speaker 1: In this case, though, the budgery guard as they seemed

938
00:52:00,640 --> 00:52:04,000
Speaker 1: inherently inclined to tap it fast tempos which have a

939
00:52:04,040 --> 00:52:07,560
Speaker 1: similar time scale to the rhythm of their own natural vocalizations,

940
00:52:07,560 --> 00:52:10,840
Speaker 1: and the researchers suggest that the vocal learning might have

941
00:52:10,920 --> 00:52:14,719
Speaker 1: contributed to their performance, which resembles that of a human Now.

942
00:52:15,000 --> 00:52:18,279
Speaker 1: That makes me think about theories about the emergence of

943
00:52:18,440 --> 00:52:22,400
Speaker 1: musical ability and humans and if our musical ability is

944
00:52:22,440 --> 00:52:25,520
Speaker 1: inherently tied to language. Yeah. Yeah, There's been all sorts

945
00:52:25,520 --> 00:52:29,400
Speaker 1: of interesting studies. I'm particularly thinking about those involving in

946
00:52:29,400 --> 00:52:32,520
Speaker 1: Neanderthals and the idea that they might have like sung

947
00:52:32,800 --> 00:52:36,759
Speaker 1: instead of spoke. Yeah. Yeah, it's a fascinating material. Have

948
00:52:36,800 --> 00:52:39,280
Speaker 1: you ever done an episode on the origins of music before?

949
00:52:41,200 --> 00:52:45,239
Speaker 1: I know I have explored it some in past episodes,

950
00:52:45,280 --> 00:52:47,120
Speaker 1: but it's one of those where there's always new research

951
00:52:47,160 --> 00:52:49,280
Speaker 1: coming out. I would I would love to re explore

952
00:52:49,280 --> 00:52:52,000
Speaker 1: it at some point. Yeah, I'd like to do that. Well, anyway,

953
00:52:52,880 --> 00:52:55,520
Speaker 1: that's not the end we we should probably pretty much

954
00:52:55,600 --> 00:52:57,880
Speaker 1: leave it off there. But that's not the end of

955
00:52:57,920 --> 00:53:00,920
Speaker 1: the research into bird cognition. We just have to stop

956
00:53:00,960 --> 00:53:04,200
Speaker 1: because there's so much. But there's also been research about

957
00:53:04,520 --> 00:53:09,399
Speaker 1: birds observing object permanence, Like to what extent birds can

958
00:53:09,520 --> 00:53:12,400
Speaker 1: still remember an object is present even if they can't

959
00:53:12,440 --> 00:53:14,600
Speaker 1: see it. You know, for lots of animals, it seems

960
00:53:14,600 --> 00:53:16,839
Speaker 1: like all that exists is what's in front of them

961
00:53:16,920 --> 00:53:20,200
Speaker 1: at the moment. But can birds remember something's there even

962
00:53:20,239 --> 00:53:23,040
Speaker 1: if it's removed from view. Looks like in some cases

963
00:53:23,080 --> 00:53:25,759
Speaker 1: they probably can, though I think not all scientists agree

964
00:53:25,800 --> 00:53:29,920
Speaker 1: on that. One. Another interesting social result we've come across

965
00:53:29,960 --> 00:53:32,360
Speaker 1: is that crows and ravens seem to be able to

966
00:53:32,400 --> 00:53:35,799
Speaker 1: recognize when they're being treated unfairly. They can respond to

967
00:53:35,920 --> 00:53:39,839
Speaker 1: inequity and the reward of treats and stuff like that. Uh.

968
00:53:39,880 --> 00:53:42,360
Speaker 1: And then there there's also been some research into the

969
00:53:42,440 --> 00:53:47,880
Speaker 1: metacognition of corvids. Right, Yeah, this is a betacognitions essentially

970
00:53:47,920 --> 00:53:51,720
Speaker 1: thoughts about thoughts, thoughts about the limits of thought. Um

971
00:53:51,840 --> 00:53:56,880
Speaker 1: and large build crows succeed in retrospective but fail in

972
00:53:57,000 --> 00:54:02,719
Speaker 1: perspective meta memory task. They haven't according to some of

973
00:54:02,719 --> 00:54:06,280
Speaker 1: the studies we're looking at here. They haven't quite pulled

974
00:54:06,320 --> 00:54:10,080
Speaker 1: off like full scale meta cognition, but they have limited

975
00:54:10,880 --> 00:54:13,560
Speaker 1: abilities there. Um. And to put this in perspective of

976
00:54:13,600 --> 00:54:17,680
Speaker 1: other animals, I've I've read studies where um, where rodents

977
00:54:17,960 --> 00:54:29,799
Speaker 1: have have demonstrated possible meta cognition. Okay, well, I think

978
00:54:29,840 --> 00:54:32,040
Speaker 1: one of the takeaways from everything we've just been talking

979
00:54:32,080 --> 00:54:35,120
Speaker 1: about is that there is just so much research on

980
00:54:35,200 --> 00:54:38,719
Speaker 1: the sophisticated cognition of birds that even if some of

981
00:54:38,760 --> 00:54:42,840
Speaker 1: this research turns out to be misinterpreted or or refuted

982
00:54:42,880 --> 00:54:45,319
Speaker 1: by future studies, there's so much of it that there's

983
00:54:45,360 --> 00:54:48,640
Speaker 1: obviously some real phenomenon here. Yeah, so many of these

984
00:54:48,680 --> 00:54:51,279
Speaker 1: are things that you see coming online with a young

985
00:54:51,360 --> 00:54:55,839
Speaker 1: human child as there, you know, as their brain powers up.

986
00:54:56,160 --> 00:54:59,080
Speaker 1: And then you see those same power ups taking place

987
00:54:59,400 --> 00:55:01,719
Speaker 1: with the bird brain. And so we should look at

988
00:55:01,719 --> 00:55:04,040
Speaker 1: the brain itself, I guess, because this comes back to

989
00:55:04,080 --> 00:55:08,200
Speaker 1: the concept of cognition without a cortex. As we mentioned before,

990
00:55:08,560 --> 00:55:12,800
Speaker 1: for a long time, neuroscientists thought that sophisticated cognitive powers

991
00:55:12,880 --> 00:55:16,080
Speaker 1: only came from a neo cortex, also known as the

992
00:55:16,080 --> 00:55:19,400
Speaker 1: neo pallium, which is the most recent addition to the

993
00:55:19,440 --> 00:55:23,239
Speaker 1: mammalian brain, the powerhouse of higher human thought. It's, you know,

994
00:55:23,320 --> 00:55:25,839
Speaker 1: the part of the mammal brain that gives us our

995
00:55:25,960 --> 00:55:29,800
Speaker 1: real intelligent flexibility and ability to adapt to all kinds

996
00:55:29,800 --> 00:55:34,919
Speaker 1: of environments and scenarios the topmost ice cream scoop exactly now.

997
00:55:35,200 --> 00:55:37,759
Speaker 1: The cerebrum takes up most of the volume of the

998
00:55:37,800 --> 00:55:41,239
Speaker 1: brain in both mammals and birds, and in the cerebrum

999
00:55:41,320 --> 00:55:45,239
Speaker 1: in both classes mammals and birds can be divided into

1000
00:55:45,280 --> 00:55:48,080
Speaker 1: two regions. You've got the paliole region up on top

1001
00:55:48,320 --> 00:55:51,600
Speaker 1: and the sub paliol region and the sub palliole region

1002
00:55:51,680 --> 00:55:56,440
Speaker 1: that's ancient, that's extremely similar in mammals and birds can

1003
00:55:56,440 --> 00:55:59,000
Speaker 1: probably be traced back to a common ancestor more than

1004
00:55:59,080 --> 00:56:02,439
Speaker 1: five million years ago, like five thirty five million years ago.

1005
00:56:02,760 --> 00:56:06,200
Speaker 1: It's pretty similar between animals as different as and this

1006
00:56:06,280 --> 00:56:10,120
Speaker 1: is the example Gunter Cune and Bugny argue animals as

1007
00:56:10,120 --> 00:56:14,000
Speaker 1: different as humans and lamprey's so so this is clearly

1008
00:56:14,040 --> 00:56:16,839
Speaker 1: this is what some people might call lizard brain kind

1009
00:56:16,880 --> 00:56:19,640
Speaker 1: of stuff. It's it's deep deep in there. It's one

1010
00:56:19,680 --> 00:56:22,680
Speaker 1: of the older parts of how you're nervous system works.

1011
00:56:23,360 --> 00:56:25,719
Speaker 1: But then you've also got the pallium, the upper part

1012
00:56:25,719 --> 00:56:29,040
Speaker 1: of the brain, and that's the upper surface of the cerebrum.

1013
00:56:29,239 --> 00:56:32,120
Speaker 1: So it's got the cortex or things that are like

1014
00:56:32,239 --> 00:56:36,280
Speaker 1: the cortex, the hippocampus, the paliola migdala, the class drum,

1015
00:56:36,320 --> 00:56:40,200
Speaker 1: and the old factory bulb and in the uh the

1016
00:56:40,239 --> 00:56:43,520
Speaker 1: paliole brain is where the major differences between mammals and

1017
00:56:43,560 --> 00:56:47,600
Speaker 1: birds show up. So in mammals, this region is dominated

1018
00:56:47,640 --> 00:56:50,120
Speaker 1: by what's usually called the neo cortex. So I've read

1019
00:56:50,160 --> 00:56:52,960
Speaker 1: apparently some the neo nous of the neo cortex has

1020
00:56:52,960 --> 00:56:55,800
Speaker 1: actually been called into question in recent years. So maybe

1021
00:56:55,800 --> 00:56:58,160
Speaker 1: instead we should just call it something like the cortex

1022
00:56:58,280 --> 00:57:02,160
Speaker 1: or the six layered cortex um. But the bird's palio

1023
00:57:02,280 --> 00:57:05,960
Speaker 1: brain doesn't have this cortex. Instead, it's got these little

1024
00:57:06,000 --> 00:57:09,640
Speaker 1: groups of things that have been called nuclear aggregations, which

1025
00:57:09,680 --> 00:57:12,280
Speaker 1: is a good name. And the question is do birds

1026
00:57:12,400 --> 00:57:15,319
Speaker 1: have the equivalent to a cortex? Do they? Do they

1027
00:57:15,360 --> 00:57:20,560
Speaker 1: have something that works like a cortex does. And what Gunter,

1028
00:57:20,680 --> 00:57:23,840
Speaker 1: Cune and Buggy are conclude by looking at all of

1029
00:57:23,880 --> 00:57:26,600
Speaker 1: this recent research is that it seems to be, Yeah,

1030
00:57:26,680 --> 00:57:29,640
Speaker 1: the cognitive power of the bird seems to be located

1031
00:57:29,640 --> 00:57:32,280
Speaker 1: in the A, V and pallium, which does a lot

1032
00:57:32,320 --> 00:57:36,240
Speaker 1: of the same work as the mammal cortex. And these

1033
00:57:36,280 --> 00:57:39,360
Speaker 1: are these are similar brain structures, but the big question

1034
00:57:39,640 --> 00:57:43,160
Speaker 1: is why are they doing similar work? Are they an

1035
00:57:43,200 --> 00:57:47,360
Speaker 1: example of convergent evolution, like we've talked about where convergent

1036
00:57:47,400 --> 00:57:49,880
Speaker 1: evolution would be something you know, one example would be

1037
00:57:49,920 --> 00:57:52,840
Speaker 1: like wings. You've got wings on bees, wings on bats,

1038
00:57:52,880 --> 00:57:55,880
Speaker 1: wings on birds. They obviously did not get these wings

1039
00:57:56,160 --> 00:57:59,840
Speaker 1: from a common ancestor that they shared, they separately evolved

1040
00:58:00,040 --> 00:58:03,760
Speaker 1: similar solutions to hey, I need to fly. Recent findings

1041
00:58:03,760 --> 00:58:07,520
Speaker 1: say that we probably get some basic homologous structures from

1042
00:58:07,520 --> 00:58:11,200
Speaker 1: the common ancestor between mammals and birds, but these structures

1043
00:58:11,400 --> 00:58:17,080
Speaker 1: continued to evolve in parallel, eventually converging on the mind

1044
00:58:17,240 --> 00:58:22,280
Speaker 1: structures that we see today cognition, intelligence, complex thought, problem solving,

1045
00:58:22,320 --> 00:58:27,080
Speaker 1: executive function. And uh, one thing that seemed very interesting

1046
00:58:27,120 --> 00:58:30,800
Speaker 1: to me about this is, to whatever extent this is

1047
00:58:30,800 --> 00:58:34,840
Speaker 1: an example of convergent evolution, it seems to apply to

1048
00:58:34,920 --> 00:58:38,360
Speaker 1: the study of machine cognition because when you look about

1049
00:58:38,640 --> 00:58:42,240
Speaker 1: at like computers and you ask the question can computers

1050
00:58:42,240 --> 00:58:45,200
Speaker 1: really think? Can a machine really think? Could an artificial

1051
00:58:45,240 --> 00:58:49,360
Speaker 1: intelligence program really be thinking if it doesn't have a

1052
00:58:49,440 --> 00:58:54,200
Speaker 1: brain like us? Well, if birds can think without having

1053
00:58:54,240 --> 00:58:57,560
Speaker 1: brains like us, why not other physical structures that give

1054
00:58:57,680 --> 00:59:00,520
Speaker 1: rise to information processing. Yeah, It's just gets into the

1055
00:59:00,600 --> 00:59:05,840
Speaker 1: idea that perhaps consciousness just simply something that emerges from

1056
00:59:05,880 --> 00:59:10,720
Speaker 1: any significantly significantly complex system of information, right, Yeah, Yeah,

1057
00:59:10,760 --> 00:59:15,000
Speaker 1: So you kind of can't say that there's a unique

1058
00:59:15,080 --> 00:59:19,520
Speaker 1: magical architecture in the mammalian brain that creates the phenomenon

1059
00:59:19,760 --> 00:59:22,800
Speaker 1: of thinking if it looks for all, we can tell

1060
00:59:22,880 --> 00:59:25,160
Speaker 1: like birds can actually do a lot of the same

1061
00:59:25,200 --> 00:59:27,840
Speaker 1: stuff that we would think of as thinking, and maybe

1062
00:59:27,880 --> 00:59:31,960
Speaker 1: given different evolutionary circumstances, they might have been as intelligent

1063
00:59:32,080 --> 00:59:35,080
Speaker 1: or more intelligent than us. And so if there's nothing

1064
00:59:35,240 --> 00:59:38,440
Speaker 1: unique about the mammal brain that gives rise to thinking,

1065
00:59:39,040 --> 00:59:42,320
Speaker 1: why couldn't you know dick Hart's internal protagonist, the one

1066
00:59:42,360 --> 00:59:46,480
Speaker 1: that says, I think, therefore, I am be any type

1067
00:59:46,520 --> 00:59:51,120
Speaker 1: of physical architecture that gives rise to information processing, maybe

1068
00:59:51,560 --> 00:59:55,040
Speaker 1: a swarm intelligence and a swarm of ant like aliens

1069
00:59:55,240 --> 00:59:58,840
Speaker 1: or or a computer. It it really leads one to

1070
00:59:59,120 --> 01:00:03,200
Speaker 1: some strange inclusions about what intelligence is and where it

1071
01:00:03,240 --> 01:00:07,280
Speaker 1: emerges from physical reality. Indeed, indeed, it really it really

1072
01:00:07,320 --> 01:00:10,040
Speaker 1: forces you to to rethink what we think we know

1073
01:00:10,720 --> 01:00:14,560
Speaker 1: about about intelligence and thought, Okay, well, I think we

1074
01:00:14,600 --> 01:00:17,240
Speaker 1: should come back and finish with that question we started

1075
01:00:17,280 --> 01:00:23,040
Speaker 1: with about the technological civilizations in that alternative reality where

1076
01:00:23,080 --> 01:00:26,640
Speaker 1: the ascendant intelligent life form on Earth is avian rather

1077
01:00:26,680 --> 01:00:29,920
Speaker 1: than mammalian. If it's not primates, but it's birds that

1078
01:00:29,960 --> 01:00:34,440
Speaker 1: are the smartest creatures and create the machines and the

1079
01:00:34,520 --> 01:00:37,560
Speaker 1: buildings and the cities and the social structures and everything

1080
01:00:37,600 --> 01:00:41,200
Speaker 1: we think of as intelligent civilization. What would that look like?

1081
01:00:41,240 --> 01:00:44,080
Speaker 1: How would it be different? Well, I instantly when I

1082
01:00:44,160 --> 01:00:47,479
Speaker 1: when I think of sci fi visions, like existing sci

1083
01:00:47,520 --> 01:00:51,560
Speaker 1: fi visions of of intelligent avian species. Uh, you know,

1084
01:00:51,600 --> 01:00:56,000
Speaker 1: I instantly think to flash Gordon the Hawkman, particularly Prince

1085
01:00:56,120 --> 01:00:59,600
Speaker 1: uh Prince Volton played by Brian Blessed in one of

1086
01:00:59,680 --> 01:01:03,600
Speaker 1: his uh most uh spectacular, one of his loudest roles,

1087
01:01:03,640 --> 01:01:06,320
Speaker 1: one of many loud roles over the years. You know,

1088
01:01:06,360 --> 01:01:10,000
Speaker 1: they're still basically they're just humans, right, They've got arms. Yeah,

1089
01:01:10,040 --> 01:01:12,200
Speaker 1: I mean it gets down to the the age old

1090
01:01:13,440 --> 01:01:16,640
Speaker 1: reality that humans have looked at birds and we've we've

1091
01:01:16,720 --> 01:01:19,280
Speaker 1: envied them, but only for one thing. We just want

1092
01:01:19,280 --> 01:01:21,800
Speaker 1: the wings. We don't want the talons, we don't want

1093
01:01:21,800 --> 01:01:24,560
Speaker 1: the cloaca, we don't want any of the other stuff.

1094
01:01:24,600 --> 01:01:27,160
Speaker 1: We just want to fly. And so when we think

1095
01:01:27,200 --> 01:01:31,720
Speaker 1: of avian creatures and avian intelligent avian species, we tend

1096
01:01:31,760 --> 01:01:34,080
Speaker 1: to think of just people with wings, and we want

1097
01:01:34,080 --> 01:01:35,960
Speaker 1: to have our cake and eat it too. We want wings,

1098
01:01:35,960 --> 01:01:37,680
Speaker 1: but we don't want to give up the arms. Yeah,

1099
01:01:37,720 --> 01:01:40,040
Speaker 1: we've got to choose. Yeah, that's one of the things

1100
01:01:40,080 --> 01:01:41,800
Speaker 1: that I've looked in the pasta with some of these

1101
01:01:41,880 --> 01:01:46,920
Speaker 1: hype of one plastic surgeon in particular, doctor rosen Um

1102
01:01:47,000 --> 01:01:48,760
Speaker 1: has argued that there's a way that you could turn

1103
01:01:48,800 --> 01:01:52,400
Speaker 1: the human arm into into a wing. But most people,

1104
01:01:52,520 --> 01:01:54,200
Speaker 1: really they don't want that. If they want to become

1105
01:01:54,240 --> 01:01:56,360
Speaker 1: a bird, they want to still have arms. Yeah, they

1106
01:01:56,400 --> 01:01:58,960
Speaker 1: want to be an angel, not a bird exactly. Yeah,

1107
01:01:59,000 --> 01:02:02,800
Speaker 1: And most angels are with with arms um in terms

1108
01:02:02,840 --> 01:02:07,080
Speaker 1: of like actual intelligent um, you know, in more considerate

1109
01:02:07,160 --> 01:02:11,480
Speaker 1: ideas about what a an avian alien species might consist

1110
01:02:11,520 --> 01:02:14,680
Speaker 1: of or what they might think like um. The best

1111
01:02:14,720 --> 01:02:17,680
Speaker 1: example I've run across is in the second book of

1112
01:02:17,880 --> 01:02:21,600
Speaker 1: Richard K. Morrigan's Takeishi Kovacs novels, the most stuff famous

1113
01:02:21,600 --> 01:02:24,200
Speaker 1: of which is is Altered Carbon, which I understand is

1114
01:02:24,200 --> 01:02:27,800
Speaker 1: getting picked up by Netflix. The second book, Broken Angels,

1115
01:02:27,960 --> 01:02:32,240
Speaker 1: it introduces a long extinct or at least absent, elder

1116
01:02:32,360 --> 01:02:35,000
Speaker 1: race referred to as the Martians. But they're only referred

1117
01:02:35,000 --> 01:02:37,120
Speaker 1: to as the Martians by humans because that's where we

1118
01:02:37,160 --> 01:02:43,040
Speaker 1: first encounter their ruins on Mars. On Mars. So the species,

1119
01:02:43,040 --> 01:02:47,880
Speaker 1: in particular their avian they're winged um. They disappeared from

1120
01:02:47,880 --> 01:02:49,680
Speaker 1: our galaxy at some point in the long past. They

1121
01:02:49,720 --> 01:02:53,000
Speaker 1: left behind all these advanced artifacts and a few functional items.

1122
01:02:53,040 --> 01:02:56,440
Speaker 1: But Morgan plays with the idea of a technological civilization

1123
01:02:56,480 --> 01:03:02,240
Speaker 1: that evolved from solitary predatory predatory avian creatures. So in

1124
01:03:02,280 --> 01:03:05,720
Speaker 1: their maps, the local settlement is always positioned at the

1125
01:03:05,720 --> 01:03:08,840
Speaker 1: center of the universe. Uh. So they seem to have

1126
01:03:08,960 --> 01:03:12,400
Speaker 1: existed in their most evolved state in a form of

1127
01:03:13,080 --> 01:03:17,439
Speaker 1: highly advanced and automated fiefdoms controlled by and consisting of

1128
01:03:17,480 --> 01:03:21,240
Speaker 1: a lone individual. Uh, which is all kind of slightly,

1129
01:03:21,400 --> 01:03:24,400
Speaker 1: slightly hard to fathom. It's so different from how we

1130
01:03:24,440 --> 01:03:29,120
Speaker 1: think of civilization and technologically advanced civilizations working. But indeed,

1131
01:03:29,440 --> 01:03:32,360
Speaker 1: what how would the model differ if the species was

1132
01:03:32,400 --> 01:03:35,720
Speaker 1: inherently solitary instead of social, I mean, would it even

1133
01:03:35,760 --> 01:03:39,760
Speaker 1: be possible? Uh, it's it runs contrary to our to

1134
01:03:39,840 --> 01:03:45,520
Speaker 1: our only example of evolved uh technological civilization. Yeah, it's

1135
01:03:45,560 --> 01:03:49,400
Speaker 1: just another way of highlighting exactly how deep our mammalian

1136
01:03:49,600 --> 01:03:52,920
Speaker 1: influences run. The fact that we things we think of

1137
01:03:53,040 --> 01:03:57,120
Speaker 1: as inherent to intelligence or inherent to civilization are really

1138
01:03:57,160 --> 01:04:00,320
Speaker 1: facts about mammals. And you know, you want or how

1139
01:04:00,360 --> 01:04:03,640
Speaker 1: different things would be if it weren't mammals. Yea, though,

1140
01:04:03,800 --> 01:04:06,320
Speaker 1: you know, the whole idea about the creature positioning itself

1141
01:04:06,360 --> 01:04:07,960
Speaker 1: at the center of the universe, I mean we all

1142
01:04:08,000 --> 01:04:09,440
Speaker 1: do that. It comes back to the whole theory of

1143
01:04:09,480 --> 01:04:12,520
Speaker 1: mind and how we're just all we all were doing

1144
01:04:12,600 --> 01:04:16,479
Speaker 1: is engaging with this sort of mental simulation of who

1145
01:04:16,520 --> 01:04:20,320
Speaker 1: we are, this idea of ourselves that may itself be flawed,

1146
01:04:20,520 --> 01:04:22,800
Speaker 1: and then all these various flawed ideas of what these

1147
01:04:22,800 --> 01:04:25,480
Speaker 1: other mammals in our lives are thinking. It's a very

1148
01:04:25,520 --> 01:04:28,840
Speaker 1: sense of imagination from which we conjure up things like

1149
01:04:28,880 --> 01:04:31,920
Speaker 1: how are the duck? Oh, yes, another great space faring

1150
01:04:32,000 --> 01:04:34,280
Speaker 1: avian species, now, but how are the duck? He just

1151
01:04:34,320 --> 01:04:36,440
Speaker 1: had hands, didn't he did he? Yeah? I guess he

1152
01:04:36,480 --> 01:04:39,440
Speaker 1: was kind of like a cartoon failure of imagination. How

1153
01:04:39,440 --> 01:04:41,560
Speaker 1: are the duck? Why didn't he have wings instead of

1154
01:04:41,680 --> 01:04:45,760
Speaker 1: arms with fingers? Yeah? You know, they weren't quite it was.

1155
01:04:45,880 --> 01:04:48,960
Speaker 1: This is not really science fiction, but the Skexies in

1156
01:04:49,000 --> 01:04:51,600
Speaker 1: the Dark Crystal, I think they had hands too, didn't

1157
01:04:51,600 --> 01:04:54,400
Speaker 1: they theyd swords at each other? Yeah, they did, but

1158
01:04:54,480 --> 01:04:57,800
Speaker 1: they were they behaved. I like the way that they

1159
01:04:57,920 --> 01:05:02,200
Speaker 1: behaved like bickering, you know, vulture creatures. They their their

1160
01:05:02,240 --> 01:05:05,800
Speaker 1: attitude was seemed very avian. Yeah, they were essentially well,

1161
01:05:05,880 --> 01:05:11,560
Speaker 1: they are a there. Their culture embodies the scavenging impulse. Yeah,

1162
01:05:11,720 --> 01:05:14,919
Speaker 1: like they're all squabbling over scraps. Yeah. Yeah, and their

1163
01:05:14,960 --> 01:05:17,640
Speaker 1: their their outfits and their environments are all just kind

1164
01:05:17,640 --> 01:05:20,439
Speaker 1: of a big piles of junk. Really. I do love

1165
01:05:20,440 --> 01:05:26,040
Speaker 1: The Dark Crystal. It's it's such a magically non human story.

1166
01:05:26,360 --> 01:05:29,480
Speaker 1: It is, Yeah, just the the entire thing, like all

1167
01:05:29,480 --> 01:05:32,760
Speaker 1: the creatures, all the plants, it's just a completely alien environment.

1168
01:05:33,160 --> 01:05:35,080
Speaker 1: And it was made at just the right time. If

1169
01:05:35,120 --> 01:05:39,120
Speaker 1: you've made it a little earlier, the practical effects wouldn't

1170
01:05:39,160 --> 01:05:40,800
Speaker 1: have been there to make it look as good as

1171
01:05:40,840 --> 01:05:43,640
Speaker 1: it as it does. And if you made before c G. Yeah,

1172
01:05:43,640 --> 01:05:45,080
Speaker 1: if you came a little later, they would have c G.

1173
01:05:45,240 --> 01:05:46,880
Speaker 1: I the heck out of it. So it was it's

1174
01:05:47,080 --> 01:05:50,440
Speaker 1: a movie, perfect movie that came out around it just

1175
01:05:50,560 --> 01:05:53,120
Speaker 1: the right time. So I actually got in touch with

1176
01:05:53,240 --> 01:05:56,040
Speaker 1: owner Gintercune, one of the authors of the Cognition Without

1177
01:05:56,040 --> 01:05:59,680
Speaker 1: Cortex paper, over email, and we had a brief exchange

1178
01:06:00,400 --> 01:06:03,440
Speaker 1: and he answered some questions very generously for us, So

1179
01:06:03,640 --> 01:06:06,080
Speaker 1: This whole interview will be posted on stuff to Blow

1180
01:06:06,080 --> 01:06:08,320
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com, but we just wanted to talk

1181
01:06:08,360 --> 01:06:10,280
Speaker 1: about a couple of his answers here because I thought

1182
01:06:10,320 --> 01:06:12,440
Speaker 1: it was interesting. One of the things we asked him

1183
01:06:12,440 --> 01:06:16,240
Speaker 1: about was the difference between different species of birds in

1184
01:06:16,360 --> 01:06:20,120
Speaker 1: terms of cognition. Specifically, I said, uh, we're now learning

1185
01:06:20,120 --> 01:06:23,600
Speaker 1: how intelligent corvids and parrots are, but are the chicken

1186
01:06:23,720 --> 01:06:26,280
Speaker 1: and the pigeon probably a lot smarter than we thought

1187
01:06:26,320 --> 01:06:29,000
Speaker 1: as well? I'm just gonna read his answer here. On

1188
01:06:29,040 --> 01:06:32,320
Speaker 1: this particular question, he says, it doesn't make much sense

1189
01:06:32,360 --> 01:06:34,160
Speaker 1: to talk about birds and mammals in general. It is

1190
01:06:34,280 --> 01:06:37,320
Speaker 1: much more useful to compare some groups of birds with

1191
01:06:37,360 --> 01:06:40,400
Speaker 1: some groups of mammals. There's practically no important difference in

1192
01:06:40,440 --> 01:06:44,680
Speaker 1: any cognitive repertoire between corvids and parrots on one side

1193
01:06:44,720 --> 01:06:47,200
Speaker 1: and primates on the other side. But obviously it would

1194
01:06:47,240 --> 01:06:49,360
Speaker 1: be a bit unfair to compare a chicken and a

1195
01:06:49,440 --> 01:06:52,880
Speaker 1: pigeon with an eight. But this is also true for

1196
01:06:52,960 --> 01:06:54,800
Speaker 1: mice and rats, So, to put it in a bit

1197
01:06:54,880 --> 01:06:59,200
Speaker 1: unscientific way, chicken and pigeons are possibly comparable in many

1198
01:06:59,240 --> 01:07:02,200
Speaker 1: aspects with rats. When it comes to cognition. That said,

1199
01:07:02,240 --> 01:07:05,000
Speaker 1: it is important to state that the cognitive differences between

1200
01:07:05,080 --> 01:07:07,840
Speaker 1: rats and monkeys on the on the one side, and

1201
01:07:07,880 --> 01:07:11,480
Speaker 1: pigeons and corvitts on the other side are often overestimated.

1202
01:07:11,720 --> 01:07:15,880
Speaker 1: Careful observations show that also chicken and chickens and pigeons,

1203
01:07:16,080 --> 01:07:19,720
Speaker 1: as also rats, achieve much higher levels of cognitive operations

1204
01:07:19,880 --> 01:07:22,560
Speaker 1: than often assumed. I thought that was interesting because it

1205
01:07:22,640 --> 01:07:24,680
Speaker 1: highlights that there might be just sort of like a

1206
01:07:24,760 --> 01:07:30,120
Speaker 1: general lack of awareness we have about how smart all

1207
01:07:30,160 --> 01:07:32,680
Speaker 1: different kinds of species are, not just birds, but that

1208
01:07:32,720 --> 01:07:37,760
Speaker 1: we we under or overestimate the intelligence of animals across

1209
01:07:37,800 --> 01:07:40,800
Speaker 1: the board. Yeah, we we. It's very difficult, even in

1210
01:07:40,840 --> 01:07:44,000
Speaker 1: scientific settings to set aside um, you know, our our

1211
01:07:44,120 --> 01:07:47,680
Speaker 1: human bias on these things. Another one of the questions

1212
01:07:47,720 --> 01:07:51,280
Speaker 1: he answered was that I specifically asked what he thought

1213
01:07:51,320 --> 01:07:55,680
Speaker 1: the most impressive display of sophisticated cognition he'd seen in

1214
01:07:55,760 --> 01:07:59,200
Speaker 1: birds was. And so he says, imagine you're sitting in

1215
01:07:59,200 --> 01:08:01,480
Speaker 1: front of a table full of tasty food, and you're

1216
01:08:01,480 --> 01:08:03,520
Speaker 1: asked which of the many items on the table is

1217
01:08:03,560 --> 01:08:08,480
Speaker 1: the most delicious one. That's my situation now, Uh, just

1218
01:08:08,560 --> 01:08:12,280
Speaker 1: a feast of bird intelligence but he says, if you

1219
01:08:12,320 --> 01:08:14,000
Speaker 1: force him to give an answer, he says, I'd like

1220
01:08:14,080 --> 01:08:17,040
Speaker 1: to mention two points. The first is self recognition in

1221
01:08:17,080 --> 01:08:19,400
Speaker 1: the mirror, as shown by magpies. Now, that was one

1222
01:08:19,400 --> 01:08:21,599
Speaker 1: of the ones we talked about and we found pretty interesting.

1223
01:08:21,920 --> 01:08:25,519
Speaker 1: But he says this finding possibly implies that magpies know

1224
01:08:25,760 --> 01:08:29,400
Speaker 1: about themselves, and they shared this kind of knowledge with

1225
01:08:29,479 --> 01:08:33,719
Speaker 1: chimpanzees and a few other ape species. The second aspect

1226
01:08:33,800 --> 01:08:36,920
Speaker 1: that I find fascinating is social cognition. We also talked

1227
01:08:36,920 --> 01:08:39,800
Speaker 1: about this one. He says. Corvids seem to know in

1228
01:08:40,200 --> 01:08:44,120
Speaker 1: a lot of detail what other animals can know and

1229
01:08:44,160 --> 01:08:46,320
Speaker 1: what they can't know. So this is the theory of

1230
01:08:46,360 --> 01:08:50,000
Speaker 1: mind we discussed. Uh. He says, they also seem to

1231
01:08:50,040 --> 01:08:53,080
Speaker 1: have a certain understanding of the intentions of other corvids,

1232
01:08:53,120 --> 01:08:56,240
Speaker 1: and they possibly are able to at least anticipate how

1233
01:08:56,280 --> 01:09:00,240
Speaker 1: another bird is feeling in a certain situation. Just a

1234
01:09:00,280 --> 01:09:02,800
Speaker 1: few years ago, nobody would have thought that this was

1235
01:09:02,880 --> 01:09:05,280
Speaker 1: within the reach of a bird. Now, I want to

1236
01:09:05,280 --> 01:09:08,120
Speaker 1: stress that we asked a number of other key questions

1237
01:09:08,120 --> 01:09:09,960
Speaker 1: related to the research. Here. Some of the question we

1238
01:09:09,960 --> 01:09:12,160
Speaker 1: asked him about some of the questions that arose in

1239
01:09:12,240 --> 01:09:15,519
Speaker 1: our coverage of the topic. But I do want to

1240
01:09:15,560 --> 01:09:18,959
Speaker 1: just touch on very briefly the more science fiction oriented

1241
01:09:19,040 --> 01:09:22,280
Speaker 1: question that we asked him. Um. We asked him about

1242
01:09:22,479 --> 01:09:25,000
Speaker 1: you know, he said, evolution had got a different way.

1243
01:09:25,080 --> 01:09:28,360
Speaker 1: Could avians rather than primates have become the dominant intelligence

1244
01:09:28,360 --> 01:09:32,120
Speaker 1: on planet Earth, even developing a technological civilization? What might

1245
01:09:32,200 --> 01:09:34,280
Speaker 1: that look like? And and I have to give him

1246
01:09:34,320 --> 01:09:37,000
Speaker 1: credit for taking our bait, you know, they're not not

1247
01:09:37,080 --> 01:09:39,240
Speaker 1: every scientist out there is willing to play the what

1248
01:09:39,439 --> 01:09:42,760
Speaker 1: if game um with interviewers. But uh, I thought he

1249
01:09:42,800 --> 01:09:45,080
Speaker 1: was game. I thought he had a very practical answer though.

1250
01:09:45,160 --> 01:09:48,080
Speaker 1: So he says, in principle, yeah, he thinks in principle

1251
01:09:48,120 --> 01:09:51,240
Speaker 1: you could. But he says, however, birds have a problem

1252
01:09:51,280 --> 01:09:56,040
Speaker 1: that all reptiles have. They are unable to construct big brains. Uh.

1253
01:09:56,120 --> 01:09:58,920
Speaker 1: This could be related to the fact that in reptile brains,

1254
01:09:58,960 --> 01:10:01,439
Speaker 1: and so also in bird brains, the four brain is

1255
01:10:01,479 --> 01:10:05,160
Speaker 1: not divided into gray matter and white matter. In mammals,

1256
01:10:05,200 --> 01:10:08,200
Speaker 1: this division is very important, and the mammalian cortex can

1257
01:10:08,280 --> 01:10:12,880
Speaker 1: grow like a folded carpet theoretically endlessly. In the reptile

1258
01:10:12,920 --> 01:10:15,920
Speaker 1: slash bird brain, the upper limit seems to be reached

1259
01:10:16,000 --> 01:10:18,960
Speaker 1: by a little more than a hundred grams. We haven't

1260
01:10:19,040 --> 01:10:21,639
Speaker 1: understood this point completely yet, but to be as smart

1261
01:10:21,680 --> 01:10:24,240
Speaker 1: as we humans are, birds possibly would need a couple

1262
01:10:24,280 --> 01:10:27,160
Speaker 1: of hundred grams. And as long as they're unable to

1263
01:10:27,200 --> 01:10:29,240
Speaker 1: come up with that, we ruled this planet. So it's

1264
01:10:29,320 --> 01:10:32,679
Speaker 1: just mass. It's yeah, you know, that's all they lack.

1265
01:10:32,800 --> 01:10:36,240
Speaker 1: But we can still lord it over them. Indeed. So hey,

1266
01:10:36,240 --> 01:10:38,000
Speaker 1: if you want to check out the rest of this interview,

1267
01:10:38,120 --> 01:10:39,519
Speaker 1: you can head on over to stuff to Blow your

1268
01:10:39,520 --> 01:10:41,920
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. Uh that's where we will have the interview.

1269
01:10:41,960 --> 01:10:44,280
Speaker 1: If you're checking this out within a week or two

1270
01:10:44,400 --> 01:10:46,640
Speaker 1: of this episode's publication, it's probably gonna be on the

1271
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Speaker 1: front page somewhere. But we also really want to thank

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Speaker 1: Dr Gunjakun for getting back to us. His answers were

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Speaker 1: very interesting and it was very generous of him to

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Speaker 1: share his time and his thoughts. That's right, And we'll

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Speaker 1: also include a link to this on the landing page

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01:10:58,720 --> 01:11:01,040
Speaker 1: for this episode. All right, so there you have it,

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Speaker 1: Avian Intelligence. We would love to hear from our listeners

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Speaker 1: about this topic. Um, how do you feel about the

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Speaker 1: mind of a bird? Do you have birds in your life,

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Speaker 1: and if so, how do you objectively and subjectively um

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01:11:15,320 --> 01:11:18,200
Speaker 1: view their intelligence? And if you're a science fiction fan

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Speaker 1: or a fantasy fan, you have you come across any

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Speaker 1: models of of of fictional Avian intelligence, particularly Avian intelligence,

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Speaker 1: uh Ben, you know involves the use of technology is

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Speaker 1: so share those with us. We would love to hear

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Speaker 1: about them. And if you want to get in touch

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01:11:33,520 --> 01:11:35,840
Speaker 1: with us with feedback about this episode or any other

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01:11:35,880 --> 01:11:38,360
Speaker 1: recent episodes, you can always email us that blow the

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Speaker 1: mind at how stuff works dot com. Well more on

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01:11:50,760 --> 01:11:53,240
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics because it how stuff

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Speaker 1: works dot Com. The list four foot