Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: The vault creeks open slowly. Will you walk in with us?
Speaker 1: You should walk in because this time the vault contains
Speaker 1: super intelligent birds. Funny thing about super intelligent birds is
Speaker 1: they're not the result of some kind of Dr Moreau,
Speaker 1: like a mad science experiment. They already exist in the
Speaker 1: natural world. Birds are scary smart and that's what our
Speaker 1: episode is about today. This originally aired on March thirty one,
Speaker 1: two thousand sixteen, and it was called The Unsettling Depths
Speaker 1: of Bird Intelligence. All right, let us enter in. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff all your mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And Robert
Speaker 1: I want to ask you to go with them on
Speaker 1: a mental journey through the past. Let's do it, okay.
Speaker 1: So I want to ask you to think about the
Speaker 1: evolution of technological civilization in terms of the human hand. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: that is the not the only model we have for
Speaker 1: the evolution of technologically advanced civilizations. Yeah, so I'm totally
Speaker 1: down with it. Think about tool using intelligence, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So the earliest tools used by primates are primate ancestors
Speaker 1: that the apes we call our cousins. They're all things
Speaker 1: that can be manipulated by the fingers. You had the
Speaker 1: hand axes. I'm sure you've seen these things there, these
Speaker 1: carved down stones, and there are different theories about what
Speaker 1: exactly they were used for. Where they for processing carcasses,
Speaker 1: where they for throwing it prey or some combination, you know,
Speaker 1: where they just merely useless status items. But they were
Speaker 1: these chipped stone tools used in the hand. And then
Speaker 1: of course we had handheld and thrown weapons, handheld tools
Speaker 1: for processing the car rcases of prey like a stone cleavers,
Speaker 1: and then later on you had tools for cooking and
Speaker 1: tools for farming and all just kind of a spiral
Speaker 1: staircase of technology revolving around the solid core of the
Speaker 1: shape of the human hand. Everything was based on the
Speaker 1: assumption of thumbs, palms, fingers. Even if you look at
Speaker 1: the beginnings of human culture, like if we go to
Speaker 1: the oldest examples of art, we know cave paintings show
Speaker 1: the use of handprints, pigments, applied to cave walls by hand.
Speaker 1: And then I don't know if you've ever seen this,
Speaker 1: but finger fluting, where it's not painting, but where Stone
Speaker 1: Age artists would make patterns and cave walls and what
Speaker 1: used to be soft cave walls by dragging their fingers
Speaker 1: through the soft surfaces which later hardened. And then, of course,
Speaker 1: some of the oldest known musical instruments appear to be
Speaker 1: Paleolithic flutes made out of the bones of bears or vultures.
Speaker 1: So you get a bare bone, you bore some holes
Speaker 1: in it, and you could make a flute. And of
Speaker 1: course what do you do with those holes You cover
Speaker 1: them with a fingertip to change the pitch of the
Speaker 1: note you're producing with the flute. So when you consider
Speaker 1: all this, and then of course coming all all the
Speaker 1: way up to our our steering wheels and our gaming
Speaker 1: console controllers and every other thing you hold in your
Speaker 1: fingertips today, it's almost impossible to imagine the evolution of
Speaker 1: a technological civilization and advanced intelligent culture without hands. Uh.
Speaker 1: In fact, I think some would say that it was
Speaker 1: our primate hands that made this trajectory possible for our species,
Speaker 1: like it was only the fact that humans went bipedal
Speaker 1: and started having free hands to work with that encouraged
Speaker 1: the development in the brain the powerhouses for tool use
Speaker 1: and innovation that made us who we are today. But
Speaker 1: I want to think about what if evolution had gone
Speaker 1: a different way? Ah, So what you have another form
Speaker 1: of life on the planet. Uh was managed to ascend
Speaker 1: that staircase we mentioned earlier? What kind of tools would
Speaker 1: they have used? How would they have used them? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that stairing, so their spiral staircase might not have
Speaker 1: had hands. What if there was an advanced technological species
Speaker 1: on Earth, but not one that evolved from primates, and
Speaker 1: not even one that evolved from mammals. Is it possible
Speaker 1: to imagine a technological civilization built by the cousins of
Speaker 1: birds in the same way we have one now built
Speaker 1: by the cousins of apes. Um like where you've got
Speaker 1: highly intelligent cousins of pigeons conducting science and business and
Speaker 1: art and education in these huge technological monstrosities of cities,
Speaker 1: while you've got monkeys scampering around in flocks throughout the
Speaker 1: city surfaces, pecking around for crumbs, and every now and
Speaker 1: then you'd have a highly intelligent bird creature go out
Speaker 1: on its lunch break and feed the monkeys some some
Speaker 1: bread crumbs, or feed on the monkeys. Could be because yeah,
Speaker 1: because this gets especially interesting when you when you when
Speaker 1: you when you look back, say about fifty million years
Speaker 1: uh to the to the earth really u c. N Epoch,
Speaker 1: and you'll find that this is the only time in
Speaker 1: history when birds ruled the world. They permeated most of
Speaker 1: the key positions on the food chain, with a large
Speaker 1: flightless terror birds stalking the land terror birds, terribs, massive, yeah,
Speaker 1: top predator, just terrifying land birds. But I can imagine
Speaker 1: something like what if something like that had been the
Speaker 1: species that really took off, and maybe that was what
Speaker 1: would live in these cities and eat the monkeys. But
Speaker 1: but as for just birds in general, you know, why
Speaker 1: not why not the birds? Because birds are builders. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they build nests, they put them together, their tool users.
Speaker 1: As we'll discuss, they exhibit social behavior, trickery in some
Speaker 1: cases startlingly complex social behavior. So you know, I can
Speaker 1: imagine on that end of things, I can imagine the
Speaker 1: bird brain being completely capable of ascending uh. In terms
Speaker 1: of manipulating objects. Will certainly get more to the details
Speaker 1: in a bit. But I instantly think of some of
Speaker 1: the controls that we see, uh for disabled individuals who
Speaker 1: do not have the use of their hands, where they
Speaker 1: use like a straw to to control the movements of
Speaker 1: say a wheelchair. Yeah. I can imagine technology like that
Speaker 1: being utilized by some sort of highly evolved bird creature,
Speaker 1: and with the kind of intelligence that a highly advanced
Speaker 1: technological civilization would have. I wouldn't say that something like
Speaker 1: that is necessarily impossible. Uh. In fact, today I think
Speaker 1: we want to make the case for why it's not
Speaker 1: completely insane to imagine a technological culture in a hypothetical
Speaker 1: alternate universe built around the core of wings, beaks, and
Speaker 1: claws instead of fingers and thumbs and palms. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't think it's even a little bit insane. That's what
Speaker 1: it is. However, is it's a little more alien than
Speaker 1: even most of our science fiction dreamers want to want
Speaker 1: to want to play with. You know, we tend we're
Speaker 1: talking about this later. Even when you think of of
Speaker 1: alien species and science fiction that are avian, they're almost
Speaker 1: always the same sort of bird human hybrids that we've
Speaker 1: been dreaming about since they know since you know Babylonian days. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh so I should say at the beginning that this
Speaker 1: episode was inspired when I saw a recently published paper,
Speaker 1: and this paper was called Cognition Without Cortex, and it
Speaker 1: was a review of recent findings on avian cognition and
Speaker 1: euro anatomy, sort of collecting all of the literature of
Speaker 1: recent decades, looking into how smart exactly are birds, what
Speaker 1: kind of cognitive traits and thinking to the exhibit and
Speaker 1: what are we learning, uh, what are we learning about
Speaker 1: how a bird's brain works and how that compares to
Speaker 1: the mammalian brain. And so this paper was written by
Speaker 1: Owner Gunter Kune and Thomas bugny Are and it was
Speaker 1: in Trends and Cognitive Sciences, published on March one. Well
Speaker 1: you know this, Uh this raises the question, Joe, what
Speaker 1: is your attitude towards birds? What is your experience with
Speaker 1: the perception of bird intelligence? Well, I know exactly what
Speaker 1: it is, because I've always thought that birds looked kind
Speaker 1: of dumb. You have, and I have to admit it.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry now, I'm sorry now that I've read all
Speaker 1: this research, but I always looked at them and said,
Speaker 1: oh man, there's something just kind of like an ancient
Speaker 1: emptiness in the eyes of a bird. And I was
Speaker 1: not alone in this because you may have heard this before,
Speaker 1: but I want to share it with you. A quote
Speaker 1: from the famous film director of Werner Hertzog speaking about chickens. Yes,
Speaker 1: can you please do it in his voice? No, I
Speaker 1: can't do the accent, but I'm going to read his quote.
Speaker 1: Hertzog says about chickens, the enormity if they're flat brain,
Speaker 1: the enormity of their stupidity is just overwhelming. You have
Speaker 1: to do yourself a favor. When you're out in the
Speaker 1: countryside and you see chickens, try to look at chicken
Speaker 1: in the eye with great intensity, and the intensity of
Speaker 1: stupidity that is looking at you is just amazing. By
Speaker 1: the way, it's very easy to hypnotize the chicken. They're
Speaker 1: very prone to hypnosis. And in one or two films
Speaker 1: I've actually shown that. Okay, so he's talking about chickens here,
Speaker 1: and I have heard from people who have raised chickens before.
Speaker 1: I think my my grandmother was very much in this
Speaker 1: boat that the chickens are are stupid and in a
Speaker 1: pain to keep. And but chickens are just one of many,
Speaker 1: many species. Yes, that's that's true. There are there are
Speaker 1: one subspecies there also, we should point out domesticated and
Speaker 1: there is often something that we see in biology that
Speaker 1: happens to domesticated animals. Animals that have kind of a
Speaker 1: cushy life where they're fed every day tend to not
Speaker 1: be quite so quick in the in the thinking department
Speaker 1: as their wild cousins. But I don't know if that
Speaker 1: explains how people feel about chickens. Maybe chickens are a
Speaker 1: lot smarter than we give them credit for. But anyway,
Speaker 1: the conventional wisdom for a long time has been in
Speaker 1: in sort of crude terms, birds are dumb. Birds are
Speaker 1: stupid because they do not have the right kind of brain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of this boils down to
Speaker 1: just basic perception. Like my wife has often been kind
Speaker 1: of like freaked out by birds. And the way she
Speaker 1: describes it is that she grew up around dogs. She
Speaker 1: grew up around horses, and she says that those animals
Speaker 1: are easier to read. You can you can you can
Speaker 1: get a better idea about what a dog is going
Speaker 1: to do. You can tell if a dog is aggravated, excited,
Speaker 1: what have you? A horse? The same way they are
Speaker 1: all these different cues that we can pick up on
Speaker 1: and really communicate facially with them. It's more difficult to
Speaker 1: do with a bird, and certainly the bird I can
Speaker 1: just seem like a glassy um, you know, a cavern
Speaker 1: of nothingness. I think of what Quint says in Jaws,
Speaker 1: the shark size it's like a doll's eye. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: very much. So you get that kind of glassy doll's eye,
Speaker 1: uh impression from them. But you know, I go to
Speaker 1: the zoo a lot with my my son and there
Speaker 1: are a lot of birds there, some of them in particular,
Speaker 1: like the ground hornbill that they have there. I'm just
Speaker 1: always startled by how intelligent they seem to be, and
Speaker 1: that I am. I'm observing them, but they seem to
Speaker 1: be observing me almost on equal footing. So in in
Speaker 1: that area, I have to disagree with the perceived stupidity
Speaker 1: of the bird. Just talking about perceptions here at this point,
Speaker 1: But I think I would have to say that that
Speaker 1: your wife's intuition about the sort of disconnectedness of the
Speaker 1: bird the space between you does make sense from a
Speaker 1: biological perspective, because there is a biological gap between humans
Speaker 1: and birds much larger than our gap, the gap between
Speaker 1: humans and other mammals. So the gap between humans and
Speaker 1: dogs is you're still both mammals. You have a much
Speaker 1: more recent common ancestor. The gap between primates like us
Speaker 1: and birds is ancient. There are last common ancestor with
Speaker 1: birds is believed to exist. It to have existed about
Speaker 1: hundred million years ago. We have not been related to
Speaker 1: birds since before the dinosaurs, way before the dinosaurs. It
Speaker 1: goes back way back. These are these are just extremely
Speaker 1: different branches of the tree of life on Earth, and
Speaker 1: so I think it makes sense to look on a
Speaker 1: vian creatures with the with the kind of hesitance. So
Speaker 1: there there there's an alien quality to it that's much
Speaker 1: like the quality of a reptile or a fish. They're
Speaker 1: just not much like us. Yeah, there's a definite alien
Speaker 1: quality to them. But I mentioned the conventional wisdom was
Speaker 1: that when people used to think all birds were really stupid,
Speaker 1: they thought that they were stupid because of how their
Speaker 1: brains were built. So what where does human intelligence come from? What?
Speaker 1: Why are mammals smart? Typically people look at the cortex.
Speaker 1: The mammalian prefrontal cortex appears to be the seat of
Speaker 1: executive functions. So all the thinking you do that involves
Speaker 1: conscious control of thought, using working memory and constituting the
Speaker 1: planning and execution of actions. That that that's cortex stuff.
Speaker 1: And so the old line of the of the neuroscientist
Speaker 1: or the neuro anatomist was sort of that I can
Speaker 1: look at your brain, and by looking at your brain,
Speaker 1: I can tell you how you're thinking works, how your
Speaker 1: cognition works. And if you don't have a cortex, you
Speaker 1: just don't have much cognition going on. I watched a
Speaker 1: presentation by Owner Gundercun and he called attention to the
Speaker 1: work of the German neuro anatomist Ludwig Eddinger, who lived
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty five to nineteen eighteen, and he said that
Speaker 1: Eddinger was the leading comparative neuro anatomist of his time.
Speaker 1: Uh and the his project was sort of to understand
Speaker 1: the evolution of the brain invertebrates. Vertebrates all creatures that
Speaker 1: have a backbone. Um, so birds and mammals both vertebrates.
Speaker 1: Where where do the differences in brain evolution come along?
Speaker 1: And Eddinger's theory was, first you got fish, and fish
Speaker 1: basically just have a spinal cord with a little you've
Speaker 1: got some brain stem on the end. Their fish don't
Speaker 1: have much going on brain wise. And then after that
Speaker 1: you had amphibians and and so they've got a part
Speaker 1: of the basil ganglia that's sort of a little bit
Speaker 1: extending what the brains are capable of. And then you've
Speaker 1: got reptiles, and this adds more to the basal ganglia
Speaker 1: second component of it, and you've you've got slightly upgraded
Speaker 1: cognitive skills. And then after reptiles, you've got the fourth thing,
Speaker 1: which is birds. And then birds have uh, they sort
Speaker 1: of developed the basil ganglia improve the skills more. And
Speaker 1: then finally with mammals you get the cerebral cortex, which
Speaker 1: gives them this unprecedented thinking power, intelligence, cognition, flexibility, the
Speaker 1: ability to use their brains to adapt intelligence to all
Speaker 1: kinds of different scenarios. And so, according to Eddinger, you
Speaker 1: should look at a monkey and you should see cognition.
Speaker 1: It's behaviors that come out of thinking. It's not all
Speaker 1: just instinct. It's weakly determined by the genes. But meanwhile,
Speaker 1: you should look at a bird, like a pigeon that
Speaker 1: doesn't have a cortex, and it should have a little
Speaker 1: bit of intelligence, but it's going to be a just instinct,
Speaker 1: you know, gene determined behaviors. Is that true? Well, on
Speaker 1: one hand, this gets into the whole idea of the
Speaker 1: sort of the ice cream scoop model of of neurophysiology, right,
Speaker 1: that humans have the most scoops of brain ice cream
Speaker 1: and therefore have the most powerful brains. But then also
Speaker 1: our our understanding of how these brains are working has
Speaker 1: evolved somewhat over the years too, and we've been forced
Speaker 1: to sort of think think outside of the of our
Speaker 1: own uh uh, you know, anthropomorphic bias in terms of
Speaker 1: what constitutes intelligence. And of course we've conducted plenty of
Speaker 1: experiments on top of that to really get down for
Speaker 1: to take apart intelligence, even human intelligence for divided into
Speaker 1: components that can then be tested for in other species. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think what we're learning in recent years over
Speaker 1: many experiments is not just like one experiment has changed,
Speaker 1: is the way we're thinking about this There there are
Speaker 1: so many more experiments than we could even talk about
Speaker 1: in this episode, and the jury is out on many
Speaker 1: of these areas, right, But there's so much new research
Speaker 1: showing that bird intelligence, bird cognition seems to go far
Speaker 1: beyond what was previously assumed that this old theory of
Speaker 1: the determination of cognition by the by the structure of
Speaker 1: the brain does seem to be flawed. It seems to
Speaker 1: be that this is not correct anymore because it was
Speaker 1: based on a false premise. Birds are much smarter than
Speaker 1: we thought, and some cultural traditions seem to have actually
Speaker 1: long associated birds, like like corvids, which include crows with
Speaker 1: higher brain function. I know we came across this, uh
Speaker 1: this great North Smith right. Oh, yeah, Hoogan and Moon
Speaker 1: in those are Odin's ravens. Yeah, companions. He also had
Speaker 1: some some lupine companions, Gary and freki Um. But the
Speaker 1: interesting thing about to sound like fraggle names. They do
Speaker 1: kind of in our sything about Whogan and Moon and
Speaker 1: I also think of and maybe they were, but Whogan
Speaker 1: and Moon and also sounded like they should be, uh
Speaker 1: like the the host characters in like an old horror comic,
Speaker 1: you know, they should be chatting with each other. Maybe
Speaker 1: I'm directly maybe they were. I don't know. Someone will
Speaker 1: have to fill me in on that. But they not
Speaker 1: only are they Odin's companions, they are a part of him.
Speaker 1: They are his thoughts and memories, respectively. And so some
Speaker 1: argue that Moonen is actually desire rather than memory. But
Speaker 1: essentially the idea here said Hohogan, um who can represents
Speaker 1: the thoughts of Odin Moon and represents the memories. That's
Speaker 1: too cool, because they're they're embodied cognition, right, yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And uh, here's a little a little bit of Old Norse,
Speaker 1: uh that has been translated that tells you a little
Speaker 1: bit about Whogan and Moon. And this is apparent. This
Speaker 1: is supposed to be from Odin himself, who can and
Speaker 1: moon and fly every day over the world. I worry
Speaker 1: for Whogan that he might not return, but I worry
Speaker 1: more from moon In. Oh well that if you interpret
Speaker 1: moon into mean memory, and it's uh, that's kind of
Speaker 1: a bittersweet fact about the loss of memories into time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that these are just they're they're birds that are out
Speaker 1: there in the world, and hey, one day one or
Speaker 1: both of them may not come back. And and it's
Speaker 1: interesting too. I don't want to go to too far
Speaker 1: down the rabbit hole. But you apparently don't see animals
Speaker 1: playing a huge role in Old English Norse heroic literature.
Speaker 1: Except in the case of certain carrion animals, the beasts
Speaker 1: of battle, like the wolf which we mentioned earlier, Gary Frekie,
Speaker 1: the eagle, the raven. Uh. So it's interesting to think
Speaker 1: about these are the animals that fed on the battlefield
Speaker 1: dead and therefore they have some sort of privileged status. Symbolically,
Speaker 1: that's weird. One might think that that would make them
Speaker 1: taboo or something like that, but instead that elevates them
Speaker 1: to the being uh, the stuff of myth. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it. You certainly we see we see some of
Speaker 1: that in other cultures, but yeah, I haven't looked into
Speaker 1: it as much in terms in terms of Western culture because,
Speaker 1: for instance, the vultures have elevated status uh in Tibetan
Speaker 1: mythology because they're closer to the sky and they are
Speaker 1: involved in the rights of death. But the Siberials, right, well,
Speaker 1: I think it's time to actually look at some of
Speaker 1: these studies of of avian cognition of exactly what bird
Speaker 1: brains are capable of in practice and the to summarize
Speaker 1: recent discoveries. Will get into the details in a moment,
Speaker 1: but basically, what we have found, what scientists have found
Speaker 1: is that some birds, like parrots and that that would
Speaker 1: mean birds of the order Satasa forms that include true parrots, cockatoos,
Speaker 1: and New Zealand parrots. And then also corvids which are
Speaker 1: birds of the family corvid A, and that would include crows, ravens, rooks, magpies, chuffs, jay's,
Speaker 1: and nutcrackers. These bird groups display cognition on par with primates,
Speaker 1: which means primates of course being the order containing monkeys
Speaker 1: and apes like us, so on par with pri mates. Seriously,
Speaker 1: and just just allow us to demonstrate with a selection
Speaker 1: of findings. What we are talking about is mental time travel, yes,
Speaker 1: also known as chronosthesia if you want to be fancy
Speaker 1: about it. Now that this is sort of it's something
Speaker 1: that you take for granted. Is it comes very easy
Speaker 1: to advance primates like humans. But it's just being able
Speaker 1: to travel back and forth along a mental timeline. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the ability to entertain alternate future scenarios. You know,
Speaker 1: you tell a creature ways option A versus option B.
Speaker 1: It's how you're able to remember past events and anticipate
Speaker 1: and plan for future events. And that ability is core
Speaker 1: to so much of human experience. You know, our ability
Speaker 1: to or or our flaw and being able to just
Speaker 1: regret the past, worry over the future, the entire wheel
Speaker 1: of suffering. It's a very human thing, it's yeah, And
Speaker 1: it seems very easy to assume that because you look
Speaker 1: at the behavior of most animals and they really do
Speaker 1: seem to live in the present moment, that they don't
Speaker 1: seem to be able to consider a hypothetical unless we're
Speaker 1: projecting it on them. Okay, so, especially in the case
Speaker 1: of our pets. Um but yeah, so is it president animals.
Speaker 1: It kind of depends on who you ask. Some say no,
Speaker 1: not at all, mean, even some scientists. It's not just
Speaker 1: like a popular no no. If you just ask people,
Speaker 1: I have a feeling they're going to Yeah, they're gonna
Speaker 1: be You're gonna get into projection concerning the animals that
Speaker 1: we think we we understand the most and then we
Speaker 1: can read more easily. But with with scientists, yeah, it depends.
Speaker 1: A December two paper published in Neuroscience and Behavioral Reviews
Speaker 1: titled mental time travel an exclusively human capacity lets you
Speaker 1: know where they stand? Yeah, it argues exactly that that
Speaker 1: that quote. Some animals indeed appear to possess episodic memory.
Speaker 1: There is, however, no evidence that they are able to construct, reflect,
Speaker 1: and compare different future scenarios like humans are okay, so
Speaker 1: episodic memory that just means having sort of not ingrained
Speaker 1: how it always was or learned behaviors from the past,
Speaker 1: but being able to recall a specific instance, like if
Speaker 1: you can remember what you had for lunch yesterday, that's
Speaker 1: an episodic memory. And some evidence shows that some animals
Speaker 1: have this, But they're saying that they can't. They can't
Speaker 1: project thoughts into the future, right, Like, it's one thing
Speaker 1: to remember what's happened, but then can you anticipate future
Speaker 1: events and plan around them? But not all scientists agree
Speaker 1: with this conclusion, is right? Um So, Back in two
Speaker 1: thousands seven or so, Nicola Clayton of the University of
Speaker 1: Cambridge argued that scrub jays, which is a spacies of
Speaker 1: large brain crow, exhibit mental time travel. And then in
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven there's an interesting study uh from Karina
Speaker 1: Logan of the University of Cambridge and Sean O'Donnell of
Speaker 1: the University of Washington, and they argued that this mental
Speaker 1: time travel is demonstrated in certain tropical birds who engage
Speaker 1: in bivouac that's temporary anton nest sites checking, bivouac checking.
Speaker 1: So basically the idea here is that the ants, the
Speaker 1: ant colonies are moving around. They have like a cyclical
Speaker 1: raid cycle that they go through. They have patterns of
Speaker 1: activity exactly, and so the animals hunting them in this
Speaker 1: case the birds, they have to figure out how to
Speaker 1: anticipate those movements. The birds keep track of where the
Speaker 1: ants are, they remember their past movements, and according to
Speaker 1: the use of these researchers, they're actually using that data
Speaker 1: to anticipate future movements of the ants so they'll know
Speaker 1: where to go to score their meal. Okay, so mental
Speaker 1: time travel and birds, Uh, that seems to be a
Speaker 1: toss up some some scientists say yes, some say no,
Speaker 1: but either way it's an interesting lead for for continuing research.
Speaker 1: But there's one area where we can see birds excelling
Speaker 1: in higher cognitive function where there is no doubt whatsoever,
Speaker 1: and that's in tool use. The birds are freakishly handy,
Speaker 1: that's right. There are a number of examples of tool
Speaker 1: use and birds, some more complex than others. Uh. For instance,
Speaker 1: Egyptian vultures use the stones as tools to to bust
Speaker 1: open ostrojaggs. Yeah, there are also that you have, like
Speaker 1: the brush turkey builds. This is rather simple, builds a
Speaker 1: gigantic mound of soil and decaying vegetation to lay their
Speaker 1: eggs in. But then they'll kick the garbage at enemies
Speaker 1: to drive them away. Yeah. Wait, what are their enemies?
Speaker 1: Things like monitor lizards? Uh? Yeah what Yeah, so they're
Speaker 1: they're kicking garbage at monitor lizards. Yeah. It's like, like
Speaker 1: I say, this is very basic tool, you like, but yeah,
Speaker 1: kicking rubbish, you're still making a tool out of something
Speaker 1: in your environment trash soccer. Yeah. Now, one of the
Speaker 1: more elaborate examples here you have the woodpecker finch, which
Speaker 1: is one of Darwin's finches from the Colapicus Islands. Tool
Speaker 1: It uses cactus spines or wooden splinters to dig grubs
Speaker 1: or other insects out of holes and wood so, in
Speaker 1: other words, it obtains its food in the same manner
Speaker 1: as a woodpecker, but it hasn't evolved the necessary long
Speaker 1: tongue to scoop them out out, so it goes it
Speaker 1: breaks off something sharp to get in there, and it
Speaker 1: may even trim the twig. And this is key because
Speaker 1: There are other examples of animals that say, like use
Speaker 1: a muscle shell fragment to hammer open another muscle, or
Speaker 1: use a piece of bark to pry another piece of
Speaker 1: bark off we've all engaged when we we haven't all.
Speaker 1: But if you've ever used part of a crab claw
Speaker 1: to dig out crab meat, you've engaged in like this
Speaker 1: level of simple tool use, which shouldn't be discounted. I mean,
Speaker 1: even that's impressive, that is still impressive tool you. But
Speaker 1: it goes beyond that, right, because they are actually trimming
Speaker 1: the twig trying these finches, these finches, they're trimming the twig,
Speaker 1: They're they're manufacturing a tool. So they're they're going from
Speaker 1: what's called a nature fact to an artifact. And nature
Speaker 1: fact is finding something in the world and using it
Speaker 1: as is okay, But the artifact, you're transforming it into
Speaker 1: a tool. Yeah, So that's sort of the difference between
Speaker 1: a rock and a hand axe. So if you've got
Speaker 1: an ancient, ancient primate who has managed to hunt down
Speaker 1: and kill a piece of prey, a large animal, and
Speaker 1: it wants to process the carcass to get some meat
Speaker 1: off of it, it could just pick up a kind
Speaker 1: of flat rock and use that for help. That would
Speaker 1: be a nature of fact. Or it could chip down
Speaker 1: a rock until it's got a sharper edge. That's an
Speaker 1: artifact exactly. And just to put this, you know, and
Speaker 1: then a framework of human tool use their four levels
Speaker 1: of artifact fact tool used. There's reduction that's where you
Speaker 1: reduce the massive functional of the functional form. So you're
Speaker 1: chewing the stick down stuff in the bark, et cetera.
Speaker 1: That's what we just talked. Yeah, that's what we definitely
Speaker 1: see in birds. Uh. Then there's level two conjunction that's
Speaker 1: combining two or more units to make a tool. This
Speaker 1: is like a flint headed spear or a have to axe. Uh.
Speaker 1: Number three is replication that's conjunction, but with two or
Speaker 1: more from similar units required, so a double pronged fishing
Speaker 1: spear or a trident. Yeah. And number four is linkage
Speaker 1: that's physically distinct objects in combination, like a bow and arrow.
Speaker 1: Obviously we're not going to see a bow and arrow
Speaker 1: with birds here today. Now what a sling count is linkage? Yes,
Speaker 1: I think it would. Yeah, you have two distinct objects
Speaker 1: that are coming together to make something. Uh, even even
Speaker 1: more powerful, you know. Yeah, but some some of the
Speaker 1: tool use you see in birds is really the word
Speaker 1: I would use is disturbing. I don't mean to give
Speaker 1: it a negative quality, but it's kind it's unsettling when
Speaker 1: you see it. Yeah, I mean, if you're talking disturbing,
Speaker 1: the shrikes have always inspired a certain amount of terror.
Speaker 1: These are the these little birds impale the bodies of
Speaker 1: insects and small vertebrates on thorns. It partially for storage,
Speaker 1: but also just so they can better strip them apart
Speaker 1: as they you know, decided to eat them. Oh so
Speaker 1: it's like a leather face putting somebody on a hook. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: it is. It's like sometimes they're called butcher birds for
Speaker 1: this very reason, because it's like putting them on a
Speaker 1: butcher's foot. That's messed up. Now, crows and ravens, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Let let me let me take the judgment off of that.
Speaker 1: That's a nature. Yes, that's a nature. Um and and yes,
Speaker 1: so there's nothing wrong with letther face crows and ravens. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is where we see some some wonderful tool uses
Speaker 1: where well, crows have administrated tool use and even the
Speaker 1: creation of artifacts. They've been deserved to fashion tools from
Speaker 1: twigs to fish, beetle, larva out of logs, and in
Speaker 1: lab environments they've been observed to use one tool to
Speaker 1: make another tool. Now this is weird, Okay, this is
Speaker 1: not just using a tool to get the thing they want,
Speaker 1: but crafting tools, like using one tool to craft a
Speaker 1: second tool, which is like a whole other layer of
Speaker 1: abstract thought. Yeah. Indeed, uh, specifically the crowing question and
Speaker 1: this one study bent the end of a wire using
Speaker 1: the edge of a glass, then used the hooked wire
Speaker 1: to retrieve another stick which was long enough to read
Speaker 1: some food that it wanted. So those different steps there
Speaker 1: in tool use in cognition, that's pretty advanced. It seems
Speaker 1: like something some people wouldn't be able to figure out
Speaker 1: how to do. Yeah. I kind of imagine myself in
Speaker 1: the lab trying to do some problem solving puzzle and
Speaker 1: just failing. Yeah. I mean, it's the kind kind of
Speaker 1: steps that you can imagine just an individual on the
Speaker 1: street going through if they wrop their keys down a
Speaker 1: sewer grade and I see them and they're like, how
Speaker 1: am I gonna get that back? All right? Well, what's
Speaker 1: around me? Is there a coat hanger? Can get a
Speaker 1: hold of. Is there some other you know, when we
Speaker 1: begin to go through these these sort of basic tool
Speaker 1: you steps to do something we we normally don't have
Speaker 1: to engage in. But some of these steps really do
Speaker 1: involve very strange ideas of of the abstract conditionals of
Speaker 1: how to manipulate your environment. Like one of the examples
Speaker 1: would be displacement of water. This is something that's been
Speaker 1: observed in those New Caledonian crows. New Caledonian crows have
Speaker 1: been documented to h So you've got a tube and
Speaker 1: it's got some water in it, and floating on the
Speaker 1: top of the water is a yummy piece of food
Speaker 1: that the crow wants, but it's down in the tube
Speaker 1: and it can't reach it. So the crows figure out
Speaker 1: to drop rocks or heavy objects into the water to
Speaker 1: raise the water level to fish out the piece of food.
Speaker 1: It that that's again something that I wonder if I
Speaker 1: would think to do well. I mean, it reminds me,
Speaker 1: of course of Aesop's fable of the crow in the picture,
Speaker 1: Like that just goes right back to some of our
Speaker 1: oldest tails in which the crow is thirsty and has
Speaker 1: to drop pebbles into the picture. To raise the water
Speaker 1: level enough to drink from it. So we've been observing
Speaker 1: this for for ages, I imagined, and in fact, I
Speaker 1: think there was a study we came across just this
Speaker 1: month that was looking at the evolution of the beak
Speaker 1: of the New Caledonian crow, essentially saying that it evolved
Speaker 1: for tool use. Right, Yeah, I should mention that they
Speaker 1: we've also observed the New Caledonia crows forming beetle hooks
Speaker 1: from the barbed edges of wide leaves, and in fact,
Speaker 1: uh these Cornell researchers in this recent study they used
Speaker 1: shape analysis and uh CT scanning to compare the shape
Speaker 1: and structure of the New Caledonia crow's bill, and they
Speaker 1: found the unique bill contributes to the bird's ability to
Speaker 1: use and probably make tools specialized for tool manipulation. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's not just the brain, but the crow is
Speaker 1: so specialized for being a technological creature that it has
Speaker 1: evolved other body parts to aid in the creation of technology.
Speaker 1: And this is where it gets interesting because it brings
Speaker 1: us back to our original uh ponderings about the possibility
Speaker 1: of avian evolution to a you know, technological state. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it makes me think about if we were to really
Speaker 1: commit to this speculation about if birds became the ascendant
Speaker 1: intelligent species on a planet, what would their technology look like?
Speaker 1: And I wonder if instead of every object being shaped
Speaker 1: around the human hand, if you'd have all these objects
Speaker 1: shaped around these specialized types of beaks, what would that
Speaker 1: look like? How would be how would they control their technology,
Speaker 1: how would they hold things? How would they control all
Speaker 1: of the aspects of their environment with a beak? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you would sort of be talking about the like
Speaker 1: the the end result of of you know, just just
Speaker 1: ages and ages of stick manipulation by beak, Like what
Speaker 1: is the like what's the optimal form of that? It's
Speaker 1: so different than what we have to work with in
Speaker 1: terms of thinking about the human hand and tool used
Speaker 1: as humans appreciate it. There's another thing that some studies
Speaker 1: have found birds can do that even some humans struggle with,
Speaker 1: and that's delay of gratification. And so I'm sure you've
Speaker 1: seen these studies before. Like a kid is given the
Speaker 1: opportunity to have they put a marshmallow front of marshmallow
Speaker 1: test and say, if you can resist eating this marshmallow
Speaker 1: for five minutes, you'll get two marshmallows. You know, so
Speaker 1: you'll get more, you'll get a better reward if you
Speaker 1: can just wait a little bit. Animals are not good
Speaker 1: at this task. Animals are not good at practicing restraint.
Speaker 1: They can't delay gratification. If you put food in front
Speaker 1: of them, typically they're just gonna eat it um. But some,
Speaker 1: in some cases, animals can be trained not to do this,
Speaker 1: especially some higher functional, higher cognitive functioning animals like primates
Speaker 1: and in some cases like birds. So there was one
Speaker 1: paper I came across that talked about how often cockatoos
Speaker 1: were They were essentially able to wait up to about
Speaker 1: eighty seconds for food of a preferred quality, but less
Speaker 1: time for a higher quantity. And this was something that
Speaker 1: was also found in a study I read about Corvid's
Speaker 1: waiting for food. They can delay gratification for longer, or
Speaker 1: in some cases they can only delay gratification at all
Speaker 1: if they're anticipating getting a better piece of food, but
Speaker 1: not if they're anticipating getting more food, which is interesting
Speaker 1: to me, Like they'll they'll pay up in waiting time
Speaker 1: for quality, but not for quantity. Okay, it's it's weird
Speaker 1: anytime I think about this scenario or any of these
Speaker 1: scenarios involving crows eating, I just think of them like
Speaker 1: picking at corpses. Uh, like a medieval setting. Yeah, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean it makes you think, like, so, what's the
Speaker 1: equivalent in the of the quality versus quantity fact in
Speaker 1: like the marsh marshmallow experiments, So it would be like
Speaker 1: the kid has given a marshmallow, and then it's instead
Speaker 1: of you'll get two more shmallows, you'll get I don't
Speaker 1: know what's better than a marshmallow, human eyeball. Human eyeballs.
Speaker 1: I just assume that is the ultimate treat to chocolate
Speaker 1: covered eyeball, No huge, a piece of chocolate cake or
Speaker 1: something like a much improved object overall. And so crows
Speaker 1: no quality when they see it, and so do cockatoos.
Speaker 1: It's time to hold the mirror up to Avian cognition,
Speaker 1: because we're gonna talk a little bit about mirror self
Speaker 1: recognition tests or m s R. This is one of
Speaker 1: the most interesting of these examples to me because it
Speaker 1: deals with not just thinking about how to solve a task,
Speaker 1: but something that's a kind of a different issue, which
Speaker 1: is self awareness. Yeah and uh, and this is something
Speaker 1: we could easily do an entire episode on the mirror tests.
Speaker 1: It's pretty interesting. It's it's one thing we should Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's one of the more common consciousness tests that we
Speaker 1: roll out with other species. And there's certainly some species
Speaker 1: that it it works better with. There are other things
Speaker 1: like the octopus where uh, they're often difficulties in trying
Speaker 1: to make this test applicable to uh, to those two
Speaker 1: members of that species. But essentially, when presented with a
Speaker 1: mirrors reflection of themselves, how is the creature going to respond?
Speaker 1: Is it going to respond as if there's nothing there
Speaker 1: at all? Is Are they gonna respond as if, oh,
Speaker 1: there's another there's another dog, there's another fish right there
Speaker 1: looking at me, I better react accordingly. Or are they
Speaker 1: going to recognize that that is themselves? Are they gonna
Speaker 1: look in the mirror and see themselves and know it
Speaker 1: to be themselves? Which is sort of a holy grail
Speaker 1: of self recognition intelligence? Like, what a what a strange
Speaker 1: thing to be encouraged by nature? Why would nature select
Speaker 1: for the ability to be able to recognize yourself in
Speaker 1: a reflective surface. I mean, it just does seem like
Speaker 1: a very an inherently, very complex thing for a brain
Speaker 1: to do. Yeah, I mean it ties into your ability
Speaker 1: to to recognize your own place within a scenario, within
Speaker 1: a social structure, and then it also bleeds over into
Speaker 1: some other cognitive abilities we're going to discuss in a
Speaker 1: bit concerning not only how we perceive ourselves, but how
Speaker 1: we perceive others. Now, for those creatures that do react
Speaker 1: with hostility when they see their own reflection in a mirror,
Speaker 1: they may actually be onto something. Oh yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: in fact, you're Heluis Borges rainbow fish story is true. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you're not familiar with this one, um, it has
Speaker 1: to do with the fact that that everything you see
Speaker 1: in the mirror, that the mirror people, the mirror creatures
Speaker 1: are merely repeating our actions, and they look like they
Speaker 1: look like us, and they go through this silly mimicry
Speaker 1: because they lost a war ages ago, and part of
Speaker 1: the truth is that they have to just mime everything
Speaker 1: we do, but that but one day they will rebel
Speaker 1: against us, and the first thing we'll see in the
Speaker 1: mirror is the brilliant rainbow fish with you know, colors
Speaker 1: that we've never seen in this world. That'll be the
Speaker 1: sign that opes it's about it's about to go that's
Speaker 1: here in the mirror world is about to invade ours.
Speaker 1: So maybe the creatures that that that how and bark
Speaker 1: at the mirror, maybe they just know what's up. Well,
Speaker 1: I look forward to that day of reckoning. Now, what
Speaker 1: animals that we know of other than humans can actually
Speaker 1: pass the mirror tests? Which which ones can look in
Speaker 1: a mirror and say, hey, that's me all right? Well?
Speaker 1: As of aside from humans, you have a certain great apes.
Speaker 1: You have apparently a single Asian elephant, their dolphins, orcas, uh,
Speaker 1: the Eurasian magpie, um, a few species of ants interestingly enough. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's something we'll have to explore that in a
Speaker 1: in a later episode. But there there's an argument that
Speaker 1: ants can pass the mirror tests. I have some questions
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, uh, as well as maccaques have also
Speaker 1: passed Yeah, um yeah. And so one example I've seen
Speaker 1: it you might be wondering, well, how can you test
Speaker 1: to see if an animal recognizes itself in the mirror.
Speaker 1: One example that I saw that was actually presented by
Speaker 1: Professor Gunterkune was an example where they have a magpie
Speaker 1: looking in a mirror and there is a sort of
Speaker 1: dot of colored dye on the magpies feathers underneath the
Speaker 1: head where it wouldn't be able to see on itself,
Speaker 1: but it could see in a mirror. And they try
Speaker 1: it with a couple of colors of dies. One is
Speaker 1: a black colored dye that just matches the color of
Speaker 1: the feathers, so it shouldn't be able to see it
Speaker 1: in the mirror. And sure enough, they put a magpie
Speaker 1: in a room with a black colored dye under its chin,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't seem to do anything unusual. But they
Speaker 1: do the same thing with a yellow colored dye and
Speaker 1: the magpie starts scratching it itself. It looks in the mirror,
Speaker 1: sees that it has a yellow patch underneath its neck,
Speaker 1: and it starts scratching at the patch, trying to get
Speaker 1: it off. Now, they used the black colored dyes a
Speaker 1: you know, control to show that okay, it's not just
Speaker 1: feeling something on itself, it's reacting to what it sees
Speaker 1: and it sees it in the mirror and says, I
Speaker 1: need to get that off me. Yes and forms of
Speaker 1: this this uh this inc method are are utilized with
Speaker 1: a number of MSR tests, particularly those aimed at at
Speaker 1: land based animals and When it comes to other birds,
Speaker 1: a handful species show self contingent behaviors in front of mirrors.
Speaker 1: Magpies and jack DAWs they show self contingent behaviors. Two
Speaker 1: out of five magpies past the mirror tests. New Caledonian crows,
Speaker 1: gray parrots, and keys engage in social behavior and mirror
Speaker 1: directed uh exploratory behavior, but they lack self directed behavior
Speaker 1: in front of mirrors, and New Caledonian crows and gray
Speaker 1: parents all parrots also use a mirror UH instrumentally to
Speaker 1: localized food, so they can in these tests, they will
Speaker 1: They'll put them in a position where they can use
Speaker 1: the mirror to better find the food, and then they
Speaker 1: will utilize the mirror to do so. Interesting. Okay, so
Speaker 1: I got another one for you. How about some bird math.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, it's not going to be very complex math,
Speaker 1: but it's math that's that impressive for a non human animal.
Speaker 1: So lots of animals can do some basic form of
Speaker 1: counting objects, and I want to emphasize basic, but far
Speaker 1: fewer animals can do more abstract operations with number concepts
Speaker 1: like comparing numbers and stuff like that. But back in
Speaker 1: the scientists were able to successfully train recis monkeys to
Speaker 1: do this test where they look at a group of
Speaker 1: objects on a computer screen, and then they'd rank the
Speaker 1: groups according to how many objects were on the screen,
Speaker 1: and so a group of three objects is greater than
Speaker 1: a group of of two. And then after this training,
Speaker 1: the monkeys learned how to do this task even when
Speaker 1: they were presented with unfamiliar large numbers. So let's say
Speaker 1: they've been trained to point out that three is more
Speaker 1: than two and two is more than one. You can
Speaker 1: suddenly show them new numbers they've never seen before, like
Speaker 1: eight and six, and they'll do the test correctly. They'll
Speaker 1: point out that eight is more than six. So basically
Speaker 1: checking for algory of nick thinking on the part of
Speaker 1: the animal, like I sort of deal with with quantities
Speaker 1: visual quantities in the difference and and tell yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And so there was a study in two thousand eleven
Speaker 1: published in Science by Damian Scarff, Harlan Hayne, and Michael
Speaker 1: Colombo that essentially found that pigeons, pigeons, now that the
Speaker 1: classic dummies of our our jokes about bird intelligence did
Speaker 1: just as good as reesus monkeys on this test. Uh
Speaker 1: that birds do the the operation of magnitude comparison just
Speaker 1: as well as primates. And the setup goes like this.
Speaker 1: You get the birds and you train them over time
Speaker 1: to peck at screens bearing numbers of objects in increasing
Speaker 1: order of magnitude. So, for the pigeon sees three screens,
Speaker 1: one has one object, one has two objects, one has
Speaker 1: three objects, and you train the bird with reinforcement to
Speaker 1: peck them at going one to three. Then you introduce
Speaker 1: new numbers, just like you did for the Reese's monkeys,
Speaker 1: and they can do the same thing. They can look
Speaker 1: at six and nine and compare and can pack them
Speaker 1: in ascending order. They can extend their math skills to
Speaker 1: unfamiliar numbers, and so this leads to two possible conclusions.
Speaker 1: The researchers pointed out, I read this in UH they
Speaker 1: were speaking to the New York Times. They said, the
Speaker 1: birds and the mammals here. Obviously they've both got these
Speaker 1: number skills. The monkeys have them, the pigeons have them.
Speaker 1: And they either separately evolved the basic number skills, meaning
Speaker 1: the convergent evolution two different evolutionary solutions to reach the
Speaker 1: same goal in different creatures. Because ultimately both creatures live
Speaker 1: in the same world, a world of fixed and movable
Speaker 1: objects of varying quantities, and obviously that plays into the
Speaker 1: survival advantage to be able to uh, to determine these differences. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Or if that's not the case, if it's not convergent evolutions,
Speaker 1: separate solutions leading to the same conclusion. They must have
Speaker 1: gotten these number skills from their last common ancestor. As
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier, that last common ancestor between mammals and
Speaker 1: birds lived three hundred million years ago. So are the
Speaker 1: terrible before the dinosaurs? Yeah, three million years ago with
Speaker 1: number skills, I mean, before the age of the dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: That's very creepy. But I think we've got one that's
Speaker 1: even creepier, And that's theory of mind. Yes, And this
Speaker 1: is where I definitely think back to standing on one
Speaker 1: side of the glass and watching the ground hornbills and
Speaker 1: and looking into the eye of the ground hornbills as
Speaker 1: they walk up and and we'll often show off like
Speaker 1: a dead mouse. They'll have it in their beak and
Speaker 1: they'll want to show it to me, or if they
Speaker 1: don't have really they seem to be showing it off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they want to show that that dead mouse to me,
Speaker 1: And if there's not a mouse, they'll have a wood
Speaker 1: chip and they'll pick that up and want to show
Speaker 1: it to me. Um, But but to what extent is
Speaker 1: that hornbill? Actually? Could it possibly be perceiving me as
Speaker 1: an entity that is perceiving it. This is where we
Speaker 1: get into theory of mind, and it's a pretty big
Speaker 1: deal in human cognition and the human experience overall. Theory
Speaker 1: of mind allows us to see the world or too
Speaker 1: often quite poorly, through another person's eyes. It allows us
Speaker 1: to attribute a mental state to our not only to ourselves,
Speaker 1: but to other entities. Yeah, and this is considered a
Speaker 1: crucial part of sort of human development, Like when children
Speaker 1: at what age to children gain a theory of mind?
Speaker 1: When are they not just reacting to stimuli, When are
Speaker 1: they not reacting to uh, to a lighting up toy
Speaker 1: and a human as if they're the same type of thing,
Speaker 1: but recognizing that a human has intentions and starting to
Speaker 1: imagine what the other humans intentions are. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: something we easily take for granted. I think it's important
Speaker 1: to note that when we say theory of mind it
Speaker 1: itself is not a theory. It is saying that our
Speaker 1: perceptions of other mind states. All we have is a
Speaker 1: theory of that individual's mind Everyone in your life, from
Speaker 1: a stranger on the street to you know, a loved
Speaker 1: when you see every day, the best you have is
Speaker 1: a theory of what their mind state consists off. And uh,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot. There's some interesting studies out
Speaker 1: there that show that that even people we've we've known
Speaker 1: for a long time, our vision of their mind state
Speaker 1: isn't is far from perfect. It's just a version of
Speaker 1: who they are, and we use those in our our
Speaker 1: our calculations as we navigate our world. Yeah, and that
Speaker 1: kind of strange. I mean, you think you live in
Speaker 1: a world of other people, but really you live in
Speaker 1: a world of what you imagine other people are. Like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you kind of live in your own little, you know,
Speaker 1: matrix simulation of the world. But uh, but how about animals? Right?
Speaker 1: Can animals do this? That's been one of the big questions.
Speaker 1: To the degree to which non human animals can possess
Speaker 1: theory of mind remains an open question, but some studies
Speaker 1: suggest that ravens might have the gift. Yeah. Most recently,
Speaker 1: a two thousand sixteen study and this the year published
Speaker 1: in Nature Communications, suggests that ravens possess a basic theory
Speaker 1: of mind. How on earth would they test for this?
Speaker 1: And how can you figure out if a raven knows
Speaker 1: the something else has intentions? Well, it comes down to this.
Speaker 1: You often hear this phrase thrown around, Right, It's particularly
Speaker 1: in uh in you know dramas where there's a lot
Speaker 1: of deception. Right, does does he know that? I know
Speaker 1: that he knows? You know? It all comes down to
Speaker 1: a a complex game of hide and seek among the
Speaker 1: ravens where they where they're they're they're trying to hide
Speaker 1: and acquire pilferd bits of carrying. Yeah, so they've gorged
Speaker 1: themselves on I don't know, like the eyeballs and whatever
Speaker 1: they can get from these dead animals. All the best bits,
Speaker 1: all the best bits, but there's still some nice nuggets
Speaker 1: there that they want to come back with later. So
Speaker 1: they tuck these into the throat pouches and they hide
Speaker 1: them away. Now, subordinate ravens hold on just just to clarify,
Speaker 1: they don't hide them in their throat pouches. They take
Speaker 1: them in their throat pouch to hide them somewhere. They
Speaker 1: just stick them in the throat, their throat pouch and
Speaker 1: then they're gonna want to hide them in some external
Speaker 1: place later on, like a dog burying a bone exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they want to create a you know, just to high.
Speaker 1: They want to find a hiding place for the good
Speaker 1: so they can come back. They want to bury that
Speaker 1: treasure now. Subordinate Ravens will spy on their superiors to
Speaker 1: see where they're hiding. The choice spoils sniveling little because
Speaker 1: the Boss Raven got the best parts. But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: The Boss Raven didn't become Boss Raven by being a dummy.
Speaker 1: The Boss Raven knows that she's being watched, and she'll
Speaker 1: often employ various strategies and deceptions in order to throw
Speaker 1: off the others. So she she practices deceit and trickery. Right,
Speaker 1: So she's doing things like doing a quick burial, like
Speaker 1: I gotta bury this fast before anybody notices where I'm
Speaker 1: putting the goods, makes sense, or digging behind a visual
Speaker 1: barrier so I can't quite see what she's doing, avoiding
Speaker 1: the hiding place after burial to avoid drawing attention to it.
Speaker 1: All right, So I'm gonna bury it over here, But
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stand over here because I don't want you
Speaker 1: to think that I'm guarding something precious. And then finally,
Speaker 1: this one is really key. She'll pretend to dig a hole,
Speaker 1: but keep the loop in her throat pouch until a
Speaker 1: better opportunity to hide it presents itself. So I'm digging
Speaker 1: a hole, just pretending to bury it, so you'll think
Speaker 1: I've buried it here, I'm going to do a little
Speaker 1: slide of beak and actually bury it over on this side.
Speaker 1: Now this is interesting because you could look at all
Speaker 1: this and say, well, I don't know, maybe is I mean,
Speaker 1: with a lot of these tests, you could say, is
Speaker 1: this just some kind of instinctual behavior manifesting itself in
Speaker 1: a very complex way, And so you'd almost have to
Speaker 1: introduce unnatural scenarios to testincy is this really? Is this
Speaker 1: bird thinking flexibly or is it just carrying out some instincts? Right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Is it just responding to visual stimuli or is this
Speaker 1: theory of mind? Well that's what the researchers in this
Speaker 1: study set out to discover. So this study involved two
Speaker 1: experimental areas, one wall between them with a peopole for
Speaker 1: viewing the human researchers who brought them food, and a
Speaker 1: small window which could be shut or open to make
Speaker 1: the other raven in the experiment visible. So this was
Speaker 1: to test how they behaved when they could see their
Speaker 1: competitor and when they couldn't, and also how they factored
Speaker 1: in this peep hole through which somebody else human might
Speaker 1: be viewing them as well. So they taught the birds
Speaker 1: to look through the peep hole and spy on the
Speaker 1: humans as well. Afterwards, they that the birds indeed hid
Speaker 1: their food and acted suspicious even when they had they
Speaker 1: had only the peephole to contend with with the window
Speaker 1: to the other raven shut off. Wait a minute, so
Speaker 1: they couldn't see the raven. They just knew that it
Speaker 1: was possible for something to look in at them, right,
Speaker 1: So yeah, So basically they're testing, you know, through three
Speaker 1: different things. How are they behaving when they know there's
Speaker 1: a raven there that could see what they're doing, how
Speaker 1: do they behave when there's nothing there that they're aware of,
Speaker 1: And how do they behave when there's no visible raven
Speaker 1: But there's the possibility that something else, perhaps this human,
Speaker 1: is viewing them as well, And they seem to infer
Speaker 1: that some one could be watching and acted as if
Speaker 1: the possible watching entity might behave like another crow. So
Speaker 1: they attributed theory of bird mind to the unseen human.
Speaker 1: They thought that human might be coming to steal their
Speaker 1: carry in exactly. Yeah, yeah, so they were. They were,
Speaker 1: according to the researchers. Here. The argument here is that
Speaker 1: they are attributing theory of mind to the human. Right.
Speaker 1: I just want to issue a disclaimer to any Corvid's listening.
Speaker 1: I don't want to steal your delicious eyeballs. Those eyeball treats.
Speaker 1: You earned them, they're all for you. Prove me wrong,
Speaker 1: it's probably what they they would say back. Okay, well
Speaker 1: that's fascinating. And and if those the interpretation of those
Speaker 1: results are indeed correct, that's uh. I don't know that.
Speaker 1: That's something else. Yeah, I mean, of course it makes
Speaker 1: sense because they ravens from a very early age. They
Speaker 1: have to engage in a uh, you know, a fairly
Speaker 1: complex um um hierarchical group of friends and frenemies and
Speaker 1: different factions. So they're like social birds. Yeah, they're instantly
Speaker 1: throw ust into like a mini Game of Thrones scenario,
Speaker 1: and they have to be able to survive in that environment. Okay,
Speaker 1: well there's another perhaps lighter example, we could throw too,
Speaker 1: But that is also still pretty interesting, which is the
Speaker 1: fact that it might not be impossible to have a
Speaker 1: bird DJ your wedding. Yeah, you could book a DJ
Speaker 1: bird brain, or perhaps DJ budgery gar budgery garza, or
Speaker 1: the basically the common pet parakeet, a vocal mimicking parrot species,
Speaker 1: the one you teach to say bad words. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course uh. In a two thousand eleven study published
Speaker 1: in Scientific Reports, a team of researchers trained eight budgery
Speaker 1: guards to perform isochronus that means occurring at the same
Speaker 1: time tapping tasks in which they pecked a key to
Speaker 1: the rhythm of audio visual metronome style stimuli, so keeping
Speaker 1: keeping time, keeping beat exactly and now. This has also
Speaker 1: been observed in sea lions, Reese's monkeys, chimpanzees, and Binobo's uh.
Speaker 1: In this case, though, the budgery guard as they seemed
Speaker 1: inherently inclined to tap it fast tempos which have a
Speaker 1: similar time scale to the rhythm of their own natural vocalizations,
Speaker 1: and the researchers suggest that the vocal learning might have
Speaker 1: contributed to their performance, which resembles that of a human Now.
Speaker 1: That makes me think about theories about the emergence of
Speaker 1: musical ability and humans and if our musical ability is
Speaker 1: inherently tied to language. Yeah. Yeah, There's been all sorts
Speaker 1: of interesting studies. I'm particularly thinking about those involving in
Speaker 1: Neanderthals and the idea that they might have like sung
Speaker 1: instead of spoke. Yeah. Yeah, it's a fascinating material. Have
Speaker 1: you ever done an episode on the origins of music before?
Speaker 1: I know I have explored it some in past episodes,
Speaker 1: but it's one of those where there's always new research
Speaker 1: coming out. I would I would love to re explore
Speaker 1: it at some point. Yeah, I'd like to do that. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: that's not the end we we should probably pretty much
Speaker 1: leave it off there. But that's not the end of
Speaker 1: the research into bird cognition. We just have to stop
Speaker 1: because there's so much. But there's also been research about
Speaker 1: birds observing object permanence, Like to what extent birds can
Speaker 1: still remember an object is present even if they can't
Speaker 1: see it. You know, for lots of animals, it seems
Speaker 1: like all that exists is what's in front of them
Speaker 1: at the moment. But can birds remember something's there even
Speaker 1: if it's removed from view. Looks like in some cases
Speaker 1: they probably can, though I think not all scientists agree
Speaker 1: on that. One. Another interesting social result we've come across
Speaker 1: is that crows and ravens seem to be able to
Speaker 1: recognize when they're being treated unfairly. They can respond to
Speaker 1: inequity and the reward of treats and stuff like that. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then there there's also been some research into the
Speaker 1: metacognition of corvids. Right, Yeah, this is a betacognitions essentially
Speaker 1: thoughts about thoughts, thoughts about the limits of thought. Um
Speaker 1: and large build crows succeed in retrospective but fail in
Speaker 1: perspective meta memory task. They haven't according to some of
Speaker 1: the studies we're looking at here. They haven't quite pulled
Speaker 1: off like full scale meta cognition, but they have limited
Speaker 1: abilities there. Um. And to put this in perspective of
Speaker 1: other animals, I've I've read studies where um, where rodents
Speaker 1: have have demonstrated possible meta cognition. Okay, well, I think
Speaker 1: one of the takeaways from everything we've just been talking
Speaker 1: about is that there is just so much research on
Speaker 1: the sophisticated cognition of birds that even if some of
Speaker 1: this research turns out to be misinterpreted or or refuted
Speaker 1: by future studies, there's so much of it that there's
Speaker 1: obviously some real phenomenon here. Yeah, so many of these
Speaker 1: are things that you see coming online with a young
Speaker 1: human child as there, you know, as their brain powers up.
Speaker 1: And then you see those same power ups taking place
Speaker 1: with the bird brain. And so we should look at
Speaker 1: the brain itself, I guess, because this comes back to
Speaker 1: the concept of cognition without a cortex. As we mentioned before,
Speaker 1: for a long time, neuroscientists thought that sophisticated cognitive powers
Speaker 1: only came from a neo cortex, also known as the
Speaker 1: neo pallium, which is the most recent addition to the
Speaker 1: mammalian brain, the powerhouse of higher human thought. It's, you know,
Speaker 1: the part of the mammal brain that gives us our
Speaker 1: real intelligent flexibility and ability to adapt to all kinds
Speaker 1: of environments and scenarios the topmost ice cream scoop exactly now.
Speaker 1: The cerebrum takes up most of the volume of the
Speaker 1: brain in both mammals and birds, and in the cerebrum
Speaker 1: in both classes mammals and birds can be divided into
Speaker 1: two regions. You've got the paliole region up on top
Speaker 1: and the sub paliol region and the sub palliole region
Speaker 1: that's ancient, that's extremely similar in mammals and birds can
Speaker 1: probably be traced back to a common ancestor more than
Speaker 1: five million years ago, like five thirty five million years ago.
Speaker 1: It's pretty similar between animals as different as and this
Speaker 1: is the example Gunter Cune and Bugny argue animals as
Speaker 1: different as humans and lamprey's so so this is clearly
Speaker 1: this is what some people might call lizard brain kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. It's it's deep deep in there. It's one
Speaker 1: of the older parts of how you're nervous system works.
Speaker 1: But then you've also got the pallium, the upper part
Speaker 1: of the brain, and that's the upper surface of the cerebrum.
Speaker 1: So it's got the cortex or things that are like
Speaker 1: the cortex, the hippocampus, the paliola migdala, the class drum,
Speaker 1: and the old factory bulb and in the uh the
Speaker 1: paliole brain is where the major differences between mammals and
Speaker 1: birds show up. So in mammals, this region is dominated
Speaker 1: by what's usually called the neo cortex. So I've read
Speaker 1: apparently some the neo nous of the neo cortex has
Speaker 1: actually been called into question in recent years. So maybe
Speaker 1: instead we should just call it something like the cortex
Speaker 1: or the six layered cortex um. But the bird's palio
Speaker 1: brain doesn't have this cortex. Instead, it's got these little
Speaker 1: groups of things that have been called nuclear aggregations, which
Speaker 1: is a good name. And the question is do birds
Speaker 1: have the equivalent to a cortex? Do they? Do they
Speaker 1: have something that works like a cortex does. And what Gunter,
Speaker 1: Cune and Buggy are conclude by looking at all of
Speaker 1: this recent research is that it seems to be, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the cognitive power of the bird seems to be located
Speaker 1: in the A, V and pallium, which does a lot
Speaker 1: of the same work as the mammal cortex. And these
Speaker 1: are these are similar brain structures, but the big question
Speaker 1: is why are they doing similar work? Are they an
Speaker 1: example of convergent evolution, like we've talked about where convergent
Speaker 1: evolution would be something you know, one example would be
Speaker 1: like wings. You've got wings on bees, wings on bats,
Speaker 1: wings on birds. They obviously did not get these wings
Speaker 1: from a common ancestor that they shared, they separately evolved
Speaker 1: similar solutions to hey, I need to fly. Recent findings
Speaker 1: say that we probably get some basic homologous structures from
Speaker 1: the common ancestor between mammals and birds, but these structures
Speaker 1: continued to evolve in parallel, eventually converging on the mind
Speaker 1: structures that we see today cognition, intelligence, complex thought, problem solving,
Speaker 1: executive function. And uh, one thing that seemed very interesting
Speaker 1: to me about this is, to whatever extent this is
Speaker 1: an example of convergent evolution, it seems to apply to
Speaker 1: the study of machine cognition because when you look about
Speaker 1: at like computers and you ask the question can computers
Speaker 1: really think? Can a machine really think? Could an artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence program really be thinking if it doesn't have a
Speaker 1: brain like us? Well, if birds can think without having
Speaker 1: brains like us, why not other physical structures that give
Speaker 1: rise to information processing. Yeah, It's just gets into the
Speaker 1: idea that perhaps consciousness just simply something that emerges from
Speaker 1: any significantly significantly complex system of information, right, Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So you kind of can't say that there's a unique
Speaker 1: magical architecture in the mammalian brain that creates the phenomenon
Speaker 1: of thinking if it looks for all, we can tell
Speaker 1: like birds can actually do a lot of the same
Speaker 1: stuff that we would think of as thinking, and maybe
Speaker 1: given different evolutionary circumstances, they might have been as intelligent
Speaker 1: or more intelligent than us. And so if there's nothing
Speaker 1: unique about the mammal brain that gives rise to thinking,
Speaker 1: why couldn't you know dick Hart's internal protagonist, the one
Speaker 1: that says, I think, therefore, I am be any type
Speaker 1: of physical architecture that gives rise to information processing, maybe
Speaker 1: a swarm intelligence and a swarm of ant like aliens
Speaker 1: or or a computer. It it really leads one to
Speaker 1: some strange inclusions about what intelligence is and where it
Speaker 1: emerges from physical reality. Indeed, indeed, it really it really
Speaker 1: forces you to to rethink what we think we know
Speaker 1: about about intelligence and thought, Okay, well, I think we
Speaker 1: should come back and finish with that question we started
Speaker 1: with about the technological civilizations in that alternative reality where
Speaker 1: the ascendant intelligent life form on Earth is avian rather
Speaker 1: than mammalian. If it's not primates, but it's birds that
Speaker 1: are the smartest creatures and create the machines and the
Speaker 1: buildings and the cities and the social structures and everything
Speaker 1: we think of as intelligent civilization. What would that look like?
Speaker 1: How would it be different? Well, I instantly when I
Speaker 1: when I think of sci fi visions, like existing sci
Speaker 1: fi visions of of intelligent avian species. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I instantly think to flash Gordon the Hawkman, particularly Prince
Speaker 1: uh Prince Volton played by Brian Blessed in one of
Speaker 1: his uh most uh spectacular, one of his loudest roles,
Speaker 1: one of many loud roles over the years. You know,
Speaker 1: they're still basically they're just humans, right, They've got arms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it gets down to the the age old
Speaker 1: reality that humans have looked at birds and we've we've
Speaker 1: envied them, but only for one thing. We just want
Speaker 1: the wings. We don't want the talons, we don't want
Speaker 1: the cloaca, we don't want any of the other stuff.
Speaker 1: We just want to fly. And so when we think
Speaker 1: of avian creatures and avian intelligent avian species, we tend
Speaker 1: to think of just people with wings, and we want
Speaker 1: to have our cake and eat it too. We want wings,
Speaker 1: but we don't want to give up the arms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've got to choose. Yeah, that's one of the things
Speaker 1: that I've looked in the pasta with some of these
Speaker 1: hype of one plastic surgeon in particular, doctor rosen Um
Speaker 1: has argued that there's a way that you could turn
Speaker 1: the human arm into into a wing. But most people,
Speaker 1: really they don't want that. If they want to become
Speaker 1: a bird, they want to still have arms. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: want to be an angel, not a bird exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And most angels are with with arms um in terms
Speaker 1: of like actual intelligent um, you know, in more considerate
Speaker 1: ideas about what a an avian alien species might consist
Speaker 1: of or what they might think like um. The best
Speaker 1: example I've run across is in the second book of
Speaker 1: Richard K. Morrigan's Takeishi Kovacs novels, the most stuff famous
Speaker 1: of which is is Altered Carbon, which I understand is
Speaker 1: getting picked up by Netflix. The second book, Broken Angels,
Speaker 1: it introduces a long extinct or at least absent, elder
Speaker 1: race referred to as the Martians. But they're only referred
Speaker 1: to as the Martians by humans because that's where we
Speaker 1: first encounter their ruins on Mars. On Mars. So the species,
Speaker 1: in particular their avian they're winged um. They disappeared from
Speaker 1: our galaxy at some point in the long past. They
Speaker 1: left behind all these advanced artifacts and a few functional items.
Speaker 1: But Morgan plays with the idea of a technological civilization
Speaker 1: that evolved from solitary predatory predatory avian creatures. So in
Speaker 1: their maps, the local settlement is always positioned at the
Speaker 1: center of the universe. Uh. So they seem to have
Speaker 1: existed in their most evolved state in a form of
Speaker 1: highly advanced and automated fiefdoms controlled by and consisting of
Speaker 1: a lone individual. Uh, which is all kind of slightly,
Speaker 1: slightly hard to fathom. It's so different from how we
Speaker 1: think of civilization and technologically advanced civilizations working. But indeed,
Speaker 1: what how would the model differ if the species was
Speaker 1: inherently solitary instead of social, I mean, would it even
Speaker 1: be possible? Uh, it's it runs contrary to our to
Speaker 1: our only example of evolved uh technological civilization. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just another way of highlighting exactly how deep our mammalian
Speaker 1: influences run. The fact that we things we think of
Speaker 1: as inherent to intelligence or inherent to civilization are really
Speaker 1: facts about mammals. And you know, you want or how
Speaker 1: different things would be if it weren't mammals. Yea, though,
Speaker 1: you know, the whole idea about the creature positioning itself
Speaker 1: at the center of the universe, I mean we all
Speaker 1: do that. It comes back to the whole theory of
Speaker 1: mind and how we're just all we all were doing
Speaker 1: is engaging with this sort of mental simulation of who
Speaker 1: we are, this idea of ourselves that may itself be flawed,
Speaker 1: and then all these various flawed ideas of what these
Speaker 1: other mammals in our lives are thinking. It's a very
Speaker 1: sense of imagination from which we conjure up things like
Speaker 1: how are the duck? Oh, yes, another great space faring
Speaker 1: avian species, now, but how are the duck? He just
Speaker 1: had hands, didn't he did he? Yeah? I guess he
Speaker 1: was kind of like a cartoon failure of imagination. How
Speaker 1: are the duck? Why didn't he have wings instead of
Speaker 1: arms with fingers? Yeah? You know, they weren't quite it was.
Speaker 1: This is not really science fiction, but the Skexies in
Speaker 1: the Dark Crystal, I think they had hands too, didn't
Speaker 1: they theyd swords at each other? Yeah, they did, but
Speaker 1: they were they behaved. I like the way that they
Speaker 1: behaved like bickering, you know, vulture creatures. They their their
Speaker 1: attitude was seemed very avian. Yeah, they were essentially well,
Speaker 1: they are a there. Their culture embodies the scavenging impulse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like they're all squabbling over scraps. Yeah. Yeah, and their
Speaker 1: their their outfits and their environments are all just kind
Speaker 1: of a big piles of junk. Really. I do love
Speaker 1: The Dark Crystal. It's it's such a magically non human story.
Speaker 1: It is, Yeah, just the the entire thing, like all
Speaker 1: the creatures, all the plants, it's just a completely alien environment.
Speaker 1: And it was made at just the right time. If
Speaker 1: you've made it a little earlier, the practical effects wouldn't
Speaker 1: have been there to make it look as good as
Speaker 1: it as it does. And if you made before c G. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you came a little later, they would have c G.
Speaker 1: I the heck out of it. So it was it's
Speaker 1: a movie, perfect movie that came out around it just
Speaker 1: the right time. So I actually got in touch with
Speaker 1: owner Gintercune, one of the authors of the Cognition Without
Speaker 1: Cortex paper, over email, and we had a brief exchange
Speaker 1: and he answered some questions very generously for us, So
Speaker 1: This whole interview will be posted on stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com, but we just wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about a couple of his answers here because I thought
Speaker 1: it was interesting. One of the things we asked him
Speaker 1: about was the difference between different species of birds in
Speaker 1: terms of cognition. Specifically, I said, uh, we're now learning
Speaker 1: how intelligent corvids and parrots are, but are the chicken
Speaker 1: and the pigeon probably a lot smarter than we thought
Speaker 1: as well? I'm just gonna read his answer here. On
Speaker 1: this particular question, he says, it doesn't make much sense
Speaker 1: to talk about birds and mammals in general. It is
Speaker 1: much more useful to compare some groups of birds with
Speaker 1: some groups of mammals. There's practically no important difference in
Speaker 1: any cognitive repertoire between corvids and parrots on one side
Speaker 1: and primates on the other side. But obviously it would
Speaker 1: be a bit unfair to compare a chicken and a
Speaker 1: pigeon with an eight. But this is also true for
Speaker 1: mice and rats, So, to put it in a bit
Speaker 1: unscientific way, chicken and pigeons are possibly comparable in many
Speaker 1: aspects with rats. When it comes to cognition. That said,
Speaker 1: it is important to state that the cognitive differences between
Speaker 1: rats and monkeys on the on the one side, and
Speaker 1: pigeons and corvitts on the other side are often overestimated.
Speaker 1: Careful observations show that also chicken and chickens and pigeons,
Speaker 1: as also rats, achieve much higher levels of cognitive operations
Speaker 1: than often assumed. I thought that was interesting because it
Speaker 1: highlights that there might be just sort of like a
Speaker 1: general lack of awareness we have about how smart all
Speaker 1: different kinds of species are, not just birds, but that
Speaker 1: we we under or overestimate the intelligence of animals across
Speaker 1: the board. Yeah, we we. It's very difficult, even in
Speaker 1: scientific settings to set aside um, you know, our our
Speaker 1: human bias on these things. Another one of the questions
Speaker 1: he answered was that I specifically asked what he thought
Speaker 1: the most impressive display of sophisticated cognition he'd seen in
Speaker 1: birds was. And so he says, imagine you're sitting in
Speaker 1: front of a table full of tasty food, and you're
Speaker 1: asked which of the many items on the table is
Speaker 1: the most delicious one. That's my situation now, Uh, just
Speaker 1: a feast of bird intelligence but he says, if you
Speaker 1: force him to give an answer, he says, I'd like
Speaker 1: to mention two points. The first is self recognition in
Speaker 1: the mirror, as shown by magpies. Now, that was one
Speaker 1: of the ones we talked about and we found pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: But he says this finding possibly implies that magpies know
Speaker 1: about themselves, and they shared this kind of knowledge with
Speaker 1: chimpanzees and a few other ape species. The second aspect
Speaker 1: that I find fascinating is social cognition. We also talked
Speaker 1: about this one. He says. Corvids seem to know in
Speaker 1: a lot of detail what other animals can know and
Speaker 1: what they can't know. So this is the theory of
Speaker 1: mind we discussed. Uh. He says, they also seem to
Speaker 1: have a certain understanding of the intentions of other corvids,
Speaker 1: and they possibly are able to at least anticipate how
Speaker 1: another bird is feeling in a certain situation. Just a
Speaker 1: few years ago, nobody would have thought that this was
Speaker 1: within the reach of a bird. Now, I want to
Speaker 1: stress that we asked a number of other key questions
Speaker 1: related to the research. Here. Some of the question we
Speaker 1: asked him about some of the questions that arose in
Speaker 1: our coverage of the topic. But I do want to
Speaker 1: just touch on very briefly the more science fiction oriented
Speaker 1: question that we asked him. Um. We asked him about
Speaker 1: you know, he said, evolution had got a different way.
Speaker 1: Could avians rather than primates have become the dominant intelligence
Speaker 1: on planet Earth, even developing a technological civilization? What might
Speaker 1: that look like? And and I have to give him
Speaker 1: credit for taking our bait, you know, they're not not
Speaker 1: every scientist out there is willing to play the what
Speaker 1: if game um with interviewers. But uh, I thought he
Speaker 1: was game. I thought he had a very practical answer though.
Speaker 1: So he says, in principle, yeah, he thinks in principle
Speaker 1: you could. But he says, however, birds have a problem
Speaker 1: that all reptiles have. They are unable to construct big brains. Uh.
Speaker 1: This could be related to the fact that in reptile brains,
Speaker 1: and so also in bird brains, the four brain is
Speaker 1: not divided into gray matter and white matter. In mammals,
Speaker 1: this division is very important, and the mammalian cortex can
Speaker 1: grow like a folded carpet theoretically endlessly. In the reptile
Speaker 1: slash bird brain, the upper limit seems to be reached
Speaker 1: by a little more than a hundred grams. We haven't
Speaker 1: understood this point completely yet, but to be as smart
Speaker 1: as we humans are, birds possibly would need a couple
Speaker 1: of hundred grams. And as long as they're unable to
Speaker 1: come up with that, we ruled this planet. So it's
Speaker 1: just mass. It's yeah, you know, that's all they lack.
Speaker 1: But we can still lord it over them. Indeed. So hey,
Speaker 1: if you want to check out the rest of this interview,
Speaker 1: you can head on over to stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. Uh that's where we will have the interview.
Speaker 1: If you're checking this out within a week or two
Speaker 1: of this episode's publication, it's probably gonna be on the
Speaker 1: front page somewhere. But we also really want to thank
Speaker 1: Dr Gunjakun for getting back to us. His answers were
Speaker 1: very interesting and it was very generous of him to
Speaker 1: share his time and his thoughts. That's right, And we'll
Speaker 1: also include a link to this on the landing page
Speaker 1: for this episode. All right, so there you have it,
Speaker 1: Avian Intelligence. We would love to hear from our listeners
Speaker 1: about this topic. Um, how do you feel about the
Speaker 1: mind of a bird? Do you have birds in your life,
Speaker 1: and if so, how do you objectively and subjectively um
Speaker 1: view their intelligence? And if you're a science fiction fan
Speaker 1: or a fantasy fan, you have you come across any
Speaker 1: models of of of fictional Avian intelligence, particularly Avian intelligence,
Speaker 1: uh Ben, you know involves the use of technology is
Speaker 1: so share those with us. We would love to hear
Speaker 1: about them. And if you want to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us with feedback about this episode or any other
Speaker 1: recent episodes, you can always email us that blow the
Speaker 1: mind at how stuff works dot com. Well more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics because it how stuff
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