WEBVTT - From the Vault: Bird Intelligence 0:00:05.800 --> 0:00:08.000 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:00:08.039 --> 0:00:11.160 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it's Saturday. 0:00:11.440 --> 0:00:16.560 The vault creeks open slowly. Will you walk in with us? 0:00:17.079 --> 0:00:19.680 You should walk in because this time the vault contains 0:00:19.920 --> 0:00:23.680 super intelligent birds. Funny thing about super intelligent birds is 0:00:23.960 --> 0:00:26.240 they're not the result of some kind of Dr Moreau, 0:00:26.480 --> 0:00:29.760 like a mad science experiment. They already exist in the 0:00:29.840 --> 0:00:33.599 natural world. Birds are scary smart and that's what our 0:00:33.600 --> 0:00:37.360 episode is about today. This originally aired on March thirty one, 0:00:37.600 --> 0:00:41.440 two thousand sixteen, and it was called The Unsettling Depths 0:00:41.440 --> 0:00:48.440 of Bird Intelligence. All right, let us enter in. Welcome 0:00:48.479 --> 0:00:51.120 to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works 0:00:51.120 --> 0:01:00.560 dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff all your mind. My 0:01:00.600 --> 0:01:03.200 name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And Robert 0:01:03.240 --> 0:01:05.200 I want to ask you to go with them on 0:01:05.280 --> 0:01:08.080 a mental journey through the past. Let's do it, okay. 0:01:08.120 --> 0:01:09.840 So I want to ask you to think about the 0:01:09.959 --> 0:01:15.600 evolution of technological civilization in terms of the human hand. Okay, Well, 0:01:15.600 --> 0:01:18.399 that is the not the only model we have for 0:01:18.520 --> 0:01:22.720 the evolution of technologically advanced civilizations. Yeah, so I'm totally 0:01:22.760 --> 0:01:25.920 down with it. Think about tool using intelligence, right, Yeah, 0:01:25.959 --> 0:01:29.720 So the earliest tools used by primates are primate ancestors 0:01:29.720 --> 0:01:33.559 that the apes we call our cousins. They're all things 0:01:33.600 --> 0:01:36.480 that can be manipulated by the fingers. You had the 0:01:36.600 --> 0:01:39.320 hand axes. I'm sure you've seen these things there, these 0:01:40.000 --> 0:01:42.760 carved down stones, and there are different theories about what 0:01:42.840 --> 0:01:45.840 exactly they were used for. Where they for processing carcasses, 0:01:45.880 --> 0:01:48.760 where they for throwing it prey or some combination, you know, 0:01:48.760 --> 0:01:52.400 where they just merely useless status items. But they were 0:01:52.400 --> 0:01:55.400 these chipped stone tools used in the hand. And then 0:01:55.480 --> 0:01:58.960 of course we had handheld and thrown weapons, handheld tools 0:01:59.000 --> 0:02:02.920 for processing the car rcases of prey like a stone cleavers, 0:02:03.280 --> 0:02:06.080 and then later on you had tools for cooking and 0:02:06.200 --> 0:02:09.800 tools for farming and all just kind of a spiral 0:02:09.960 --> 0:02:14.760 staircase of technology revolving around the solid core of the 0:02:14.800 --> 0:02:17.760 shape of the human hand. Everything was based on the 0:02:17.800 --> 0:02:21.240 assumption of thumbs, palms, fingers. Even if you look at 0:02:21.240 --> 0:02:23.320 the beginnings of human culture, like if we go to 0:02:23.400 --> 0:02:27.119 the oldest examples of art, we know cave paintings show 0:02:27.160 --> 0:02:30.680 the use of handprints, pigments, applied to cave walls by hand. 0:02:30.919 --> 0:02:32.360 And then I don't know if you've ever seen this, 0:02:32.440 --> 0:02:36.000 but finger fluting, where it's not painting, but where Stone 0:02:36.040 --> 0:02:39.680 Age artists would make patterns and cave walls and what 0:02:39.840 --> 0:02:42.720 used to be soft cave walls by dragging their fingers 0:02:42.720 --> 0:02:47.280 through the soft surfaces which later hardened. And then, of course, 0:02:47.280 --> 0:02:49.720 some of the oldest known musical instruments appear to be 0:02:50.120 --> 0:02:54.440 Paleolithic flutes made out of the bones of bears or vultures. 0:02:54.440 --> 0:02:56.720 So you get a bare bone, you bore some holes 0:02:56.760 --> 0:02:58.680 in it, and you could make a flute. And of 0:02:58.720 --> 0:03:00.359 course what do you do with those holes You cover 0:03:00.400 --> 0:03:03.200 them with a fingertip to change the pitch of the 0:03:03.240 --> 0:03:05.760 note you're producing with the flute. So when you consider 0:03:05.800 --> 0:03:07.639 all this, and then of course coming all all the 0:03:07.680 --> 0:03:10.480 way up to our our steering wheels and our gaming 0:03:10.480 --> 0:03:13.160 console controllers and every other thing you hold in your 0:03:13.160 --> 0:03:17.760 fingertips today, it's almost impossible to imagine the evolution of 0:03:17.800 --> 0:03:24.119 a technological civilization and advanced intelligent culture without hands. Uh. 0:03:24.320 --> 0:03:26.320 In fact, I think some would say that it was 0:03:26.360 --> 0:03:30.200 our primate hands that made this trajectory possible for our species, 0:03:30.240 --> 0:03:33.440 like it was only the fact that humans went bipedal 0:03:33.840 --> 0:03:37.360 and started having free hands to work with that encouraged 0:03:37.440 --> 0:03:40.880 the development in the brain the powerhouses for tool use 0:03:40.920 --> 0:03:44.480 and innovation that made us who we are today. But 0:03:44.560 --> 0:03:47.000 I want to think about what if evolution had gone 0:03:47.120 --> 0:03:51.360 a different way? Ah, So what you have another form 0:03:51.400 --> 0:03:54.480 of life on the planet. Uh was managed to ascend 0:03:54.520 --> 0:03:57.640 that staircase we mentioned earlier? What kind of tools would 0:03:57.640 --> 0:03:59.280 they have used? How would they have used them? Yeah, 0:03:59.320 --> 0:04:02.320 and that stairing, so their spiral staircase might not have 0:04:02.440 --> 0:04:05.600 had hands. What if there was an advanced technological species 0:04:05.640 --> 0:04:09.280 on Earth, but not one that evolved from primates, and 0:04:09.360 --> 0:04:13.480 not even one that evolved from mammals. Is it possible 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:18.960 to imagine a technological civilization built by the cousins of 0:04:19.080 --> 0:04:21.799 birds in the same way we have one now built 0:04:21.800 --> 0:04:25.600 by the cousins of apes. Um like where you've got 0:04:25.680 --> 0:04:30.599 highly intelligent cousins of pigeons conducting science and business and 0:04:30.800 --> 0:04:35.600 art and education in these huge technological monstrosities of cities, 0:04:35.839 --> 0:04:38.800 while you've got monkeys scampering around in flocks throughout the 0:04:39.160 --> 0:04:42.200 city surfaces, pecking around for crumbs, and every now and 0:04:42.200 --> 0:04:44.760 then you'd have a highly intelligent bird creature go out 0:04:44.800 --> 0:04:47.280 on its lunch break and feed the monkeys some some 0:04:47.320 --> 0:04:52.360 bread crumbs, or feed on the monkeys. Could be because yeah, 0:04:52.400 --> 0:04:55.440 because this gets especially interesting when you when you when 0:04:55.480 --> 0:04:58.159 you when you look back, say about fifty million years 0:04:58.800 --> 0:05:01.640 uh to the to the earth really u c. N Epoch, 0:05:01.720 --> 0:05:04.080 and you'll find that this is the only time in 0:05:04.160 --> 0:05:07.120 history when birds ruled the world. They permeated most of 0:05:07.120 --> 0:05:09.520 the key positions on the food chain, with a large 0:05:09.600 --> 0:05:15.400 flightless terror birds stalking the land terror birds, terribs, massive, yeah, 0:05:15.760 --> 0:05:20.120 top predator, just terrifying land birds. But I can imagine 0:05:20.240 --> 0:05:22.760 something like what if something like that had been the 0:05:23.360 --> 0:05:25.960 species that really took off, and maybe that was what 0:05:26.000 --> 0:05:29.960 would live in these cities and eat the monkeys. But 0:05:29.960 --> 0:05:32.440 but as for just birds in general, you know, why 0:05:32.480 --> 0:05:34.920 not why not the birds? Because birds are builders. Yeah, 0:05:34.920 --> 0:05:37.720 they build nests, they put them together, their tool users. 0:05:37.720 --> 0:05:41.440 As we'll discuss, they exhibit social behavior, trickery in some 0:05:41.520 --> 0:05:46.520 cases startlingly complex social behavior. So you know, I can 0:05:46.560 --> 0:05:49.200 imagine on that end of things, I can imagine the 0:05:49.279 --> 0:05:53.400 bird brain being completely capable of ascending uh. In terms 0:05:53.400 --> 0:05:56.679 of manipulating objects. Will certainly get more to the details 0:05:56.680 --> 0:06:00.400 in a bit. But I instantly think of some of 0:06:00.440 --> 0:06:04.760 the controls that we see, uh for disabled individuals who 0:06:04.839 --> 0:06:07.680 do not have the use of their hands, where they 0:06:07.800 --> 0:06:12.120 use like a straw to to control the movements of 0:06:12.120 --> 0:06:16.240 say a wheelchair. Yeah. I can imagine technology like that 0:06:16.279 --> 0:06:19.080 being utilized by some sort of highly evolved bird creature, 0:06:19.440 --> 0:06:21.880 and with the kind of intelligence that a highly advanced 0:06:21.920 --> 0:06:25.120 technological civilization would have. I wouldn't say that something like 0:06:25.160 --> 0:06:29.200 that is necessarily impossible. Uh. In fact, today I think 0:06:29.279 --> 0:06:32.040 we want to make the case for why it's not 0:06:32.279 --> 0:06:38.280 completely insane to imagine a technological culture in a hypothetical 0:06:38.320 --> 0:06:43.000 alternate universe built around the core of wings, beaks, and 0:06:43.080 --> 0:06:47.400 claws instead of fingers and thumbs and palms. Yeah, I 0:06:47.440 --> 0:06:49.240 don't think it's even a little bit insane. That's what 0:06:49.320 --> 0:06:52.640 it is. However, is it's a little more alien than 0:06:52.720 --> 0:06:56.800 even most of our science fiction dreamers want to want 0:06:56.839 --> 0:06:59.360 to want to play with. You know, we tend we're 0:06:59.360 --> 0:07:01.479 talking about this later. Even when you think of of 0:07:01.600 --> 0:07:05.400 alien species and science fiction that are avian, they're almost 0:07:05.440 --> 0:07:09.040 always the same sort of bird human hybrids that we've 0:07:09.040 --> 0:07:13.480 been dreaming about since they know since you know Babylonian days. Yeah. 0:07:13.800 --> 0:07:15.800 Uh so I should say at the beginning that this 0:07:15.840 --> 0:07:19.360 episode was inspired when I saw a recently published paper, 0:07:19.400 --> 0:07:23.040 and this paper was called Cognition Without Cortex, and it 0:07:23.120 --> 0:07:26.240 was a review of recent findings on avian cognition and 0:07:26.280 --> 0:07:29.800 euro anatomy, sort of collecting all of the literature of 0:07:29.840 --> 0:07:33.760 recent decades, looking into how smart exactly are birds, what 0:07:33.920 --> 0:07:37.920 kind of cognitive traits and thinking to the exhibit and 0:07:38.000 --> 0:07:40.600 what are we learning, uh, what are we learning about 0:07:40.640 --> 0:07:43.640 how a bird's brain works and how that compares to 0:07:43.680 --> 0:07:46.960 the mammalian brain. And so this paper was written by 0:07:47.000 --> 0:07:50.680 Owner Gunter Kune and Thomas bugny Are and it was 0:07:50.720 --> 0:07:55.400 in Trends and Cognitive Sciences, published on March one. Well 0:07:55.400 --> 0:07:58.480 you know this, Uh this raises the question, Joe, what 0:07:58.640 --> 0:08:02.760 is your attitude towards birds? What is your experience with 0:08:02.960 --> 0:08:06.680 the perception of bird intelligence? Well, I know exactly what 0:08:06.720 --> 0:08:09.920 it is, because I've always thought that birds looked kind 0:08:10.000 --> 0:08:12.920 of dumb. You have, and I have to admit it. 0:08:12.960 --> 0:08:15.080 I'm sorry now, I'm sorry now that I've read all 0:08:15.080 --> 0:08:17.120 this research, but I always looked at them and said, 0:08:17.160 --> 0:08:19.720 oh man, there's something just kind of like an ancient 0:08:19.880 --> 0:08:22.760 emptiness in the eyes of a bird. And I was 0:08:22.880 --> 0:08:26.400 not alone in this because you may have heard this before, 0:08:26.400 --> 0:08:27.800 but I want to share it with you. A quote 0:08:27.800 --> 0:08:33.480 from the famous film director of Werner Hertzog speaking about chickens. Yes, 0:08:33.520 --> 0:08:35.360 can you please do it in his voice? No, I 0:08:35.400 --> 0:08:38.160 can't do the accent, but I'm going to read his quote. 0:08:38.480 --> 0:08:43.640 Hertzog says about chickens, the enormity if they're flat brain, 0:08:44.080 --> 0:08:48.600 the enormity of their stupidity is just overwhelming. You have 0:08:48.720 --> 0:08:50.840 to do yourself a favor. When you're out in the 0:08:50.880 --> 0:08:54.240 countryside and you see chickens, try to look at chicken 0:08:54.280 --> 0:08:58.120 in the eye with great intensity, and the intensity of 0:08:58.240 --> 0:09:02.520 stupidity that is looking at you is just amazing. By 0:09:02.520 --> 0:09:05.200 the way, it's very easy to hypnotize the chicken. They're 0:09:05.280 --> 0:09:07.960 very prone to hypnosis. And in one or two films 0:09:07.960 --> 0:09:12.679 I've actually shown that. Okay, so he's talking about chickens here, 0:09:12.679 --> 0:09:15.240 and I have heard from people who have raised chickens before. 0:09:15.440 --> 0:09:17.520 I think my my grandmother was very much in this 0:09:17.600 --> 0:09:21.280 boat that the chickens are are stupid and in a 0:09:21.320 --> 0:09:27.240 pain to keep. And but chickens are just one of many, 0:09:27.320 --> 0:09:30.679 many species. Yes, that's that's true. There are there are 0:09:30.720 --> 0:09:34.960 one subspecies there also, we should point out domesticated and 0:09:35.000 --> 0:09:37.560 there is often something that we see in biology that 0:09:37.600 --> 0:09:40.480 happens to domesticated animals. Animals that have kind of a 0:09:40.520 --> 0:09:43.600 cushy life where they're fed every day tend to not 0:09:43.800 --> 0:09:47.520 be quite so quick in the in the thinking department 0:09:47.600 --> 0:09:50.440 as their wild cousins. But I don't know if that 0:09:50.520 --> 0:09:53.280 explains how people feel about chickens. Maybe chickens are a 0:09:53.360 --> 0:09:56.000 lot smarter than we give them credit for. But anyway, 0:09:56.040 --> 0:09:58.760 the conventional wisdom for a long time has been in 0:09:58.760 --> 0:10:01.600 in sort of crude terms, birds are dumb. Birds are 0:10:01.640 --> 0:10:05.720 stupid because they do not have the right kind of brain. Yeah, 0:10:05.720 --> 0:10:07.120 And I think a lot of this boils down to 0:10:07.200 --> 0:10:09.720 just basic perception. Like my wife has often been kind 0:10:09.720 --> 0:10:12.240 of like freaked out by birds. And the way she 0:10:13.200 --> 0:10:16.000 describes it is that she grew up around dogs. She 0:10:16.040 --> 0:10:19.640 grew up around horses, and she says that those animals 0:10:19.640 --> 0:10:22.200 are easier to read. You can you can you can 0:10:22.240 --> 0:10:23.959 get a better idea about what a dog is going 0:10:24.000 --> 0:10:26.559 to do. You can tell if a dog is aggravated, excited, 0:10:27.040 --> 0:10:29.560 what have you? A horse? The same way they are 0:10:29.559 --> 0:10:32.000 all these different cues that we can pick up on 0:10:32.280 --> 0:10:35.840 and really communicate facially with them. It's more difficult to 0:10:35.840 --> 0:10:38.079 do with a bird, and certainly the bird I can 0:10:38.120 --> 0:10:41.680 just seem like a glassy um, you know, a cavern 0:10:41.840 --> 0:10:44.760 of nothingness. I think of what Quint says in Jaws, 0:10:45.320 --> 0:10:49.040 the shark size it's like a doll's eye. Yeah, yeah, 0:10:49.400 --> 0:10:51.880 very much. So you get that kind of glassy doll's eye, 0:10:52.840 --> 0:10:56.160 uh impression from them. But you know, I go to 0:10:56.160 --> 0:10:58.880 the zoo a lot with my my son and there 0:10:58.880 --> 0:11:01.120 are a lot of birds there, some of them in particular, 0:11:01.200 --> 0:11:04.600 like the ground hornbill that they have there. I'm just 0:11:04.679 --> 0:11:08.520 always startled by how intelligent they seem to be, and 0:11:08.559 --> 0:11:11.160 that I am. I'm observing them, but they seem to 0:11:11.160 --> 0:11:15.439 be observing me almost on equal footing. So in in 0:11:15.640 --> 0:11:19.800 that area, I have to disagree with the perceived stupidity 0:11:19.800 --> 0:11:21.959 of the bird. Just talking about perceptions here at this point, 0:11:22.200 --> 0:11:24.120 But I think I would have to say that that 0:11:24.200 --> 0:11:27.520 your wife's intuition about the sort of disconnectedness of the 0:11:27.600 --> 0:11:31.040 bird the space between you does make sense from a 0:11:31.040 --> 0:11:37.439 biological perspective, because there is a biological gap between humans 0:11:37.440 --> 0:11:40.080 and birds much larger than our gap, the gap between 0:11:40.120 --> 0:11:44.080 humans and other mammals. So the gap between humans and 0:11:44.240 --> 0:11:47.120 dogs is you're still both mammals. You have a much 0:11:47.160 --> 0:11:52.440 more recent common ancestor. The gap between primates like us 0:11:52.520 --> 0:11:56.880 and birds is ancient. There are last common ancestor with 0:11:56.960 --> 0:11:59.720 birds is believed to exist. It to have existed about 0:12:00.280 --> 0:12:05.160 hundred million years ago. We have not been related to 0:12:05.200 --> 0:12:09.480 birds since before the dinosaurs, way before the dinosaurs. It 0:12:09.520 --> 0:12:14.720 goes back way back. These are these are just extremely 0:12:14.880 --> 0:12:18.320 different branches of the tree of life on Earth, and 0:12:18.400 --> 0:12:20.320 so I think it makes sense to look on a 0:12:20.440 --> 0:12:23.240 vian creatures with the with the kind of hesitance. So 0:12:23.520 --> 0:12:26.640 there there there's an alien quality to it that's much 0:12:26.679 --> 0:12:29.800 like the quality of a reptile or a fish. They're 0:12:29.840 --> 0:12:32.440 just not much like us. Yeah, there's a definite alien 0:12:32.520 --> 0:12:35.720 quality to them. But I mentioned the conventional wisdom was 0:12:35.840 --> 0:12:39.520 that when people used to think all birds were really stupid, 0:12:39.559 --> 0:12:42.360 they thought that they were stupid because of how their 0:12:42.400 --> 0:12:46.720 brains were built. So what where does human intelligence come from? What? 0:12:46.840 --> 0:12:51.360 Why are mammals smart? Typically people look at the cortex. 0:12:51.480 --> 0:12:54.720 The mammalian prefrontal cortex appears to be the seat of 0:12:54.880 --> 0:12:58.319 executive functions. So all the thinking you do that involves 0:12:58.360 --> 0:13:02.880 conscious control of thought, using working memory and constituting the 0:13:02.960 --> 0:13:06.840 planning and execution of actions. That that that's cortex stuff. 0:13:07.280 --> 0:13:09.880 And so the old line of the of the neuroscientist 0:13:10.040 --> 0:13:12.679 or the neuro anatomist was sort of that I can 0:13:12.679 --> 0:13:14.760 look at your brain, and by looking at your brain, 0:13:14.840 --> 0:13:17.319 I can tell you how you're thinking works, how your 0:13:17.320 --> 0:13:20.560 cognition works. And if you don't have a cortex, you 0:13:20.640 --> 0:13:23.599 just don't have much cognition going on. I watched a 0:13:23.640 --> 0:13:27.160 presentation by Owner Gundercun and he called attention to the 0:13:27.160 --> 0:13:31.280 work of the German neuro anatomist Ludwig Eddinger, who lived 0:13:31.440 --> 0:13:34.160 eighteen fifty five to nineteen eighteen, and he said that 0:13:34.280 --> 0:13:38.120 Eddinger was the leading comparative neuro anatomist of his time. 0:13:38.600 --> 0:13:41.600 Uh and the his project was sort of to understand 0:13:41.600 --> 0:13:45.040 the evolution of the brain invertebrates. Vertebrates all creatures that 0:13:45.120 --> 0:13:48.880 have a backbone. Um, so birds and mammals both vertebrates. 0:13:48.960 --> 0:13:51.840 Where where do the differences in brain evolution come along? 0:13:52.200 --> 0:13:54.920 And Eddinger's theory was, first you got fish, and fish 0:13:55.000 --> 0:13:57.360 basically just have a spinal cord with a little you've 0:13:57.360 --> 0:13:59.320 got some brain stem on the end. Their fish don't 0:13:59.320 --> 0:14:02.360 have much going on brain wise. And then after that 0:14:02.400 --> 0:14:06.080 you had amphibians and and so they've got a part 0:14:06.120 --> 0:14:08.760 of the basil ganglia that's sort of a little bit 0:14:08.800 --> 0:14:12.360 extending what the brains are capable of. And then you've 0:14:12.400 --> 0:14:15.200 got reptiles, and this adds more to the basal ganglia 0:14:15.400 --> 0:14:18.720 second component of it, and you've you've got slightly upgraded 0:14:18.760 --> 0:14:21.960 cognitive skills. And then after reptiles, you've got the fourth thing, 0:14:22.000 --> 0:14:25.640 which is birds. And then birds have uh, they sort 0:14:25.680 --> 0:14:28.440 of developed the basil ganglia improve the skills more. And 0:14:28.440 --> 0:14:32.320 then finally with mammals you get the cerebral cortex, which 0:14:32.400 --> 0:14:38.160 gives them this unprecedented thinking power, intelligence, cognition, flexibility, the 0:14:38.240 --> 0:14:41.520 ability to use their brains to adapt intelligence to all 0:14:41.600 --> 0:14:44.960 kinds of different scenarios. And so, according to Eddinger, you 0:14:44.960 --> 0:14:48.280 should look at a monkey and you should see cognition. 0:14:48.480 --> 0:14:51.440 It's behaviors that come out of thinking. It's not all 0:14:51.520 --> 0:14:55.720 just instinct. It's weakly determined by the genes. But meanwhile, 0:14:55.720 --> 0:14:57.800 you should look at a bird, like a pigeon that 0:14:57.920 --> 0:15:00.600 doesn't have a cortex, and it should have a little 0:15:00.640 --> 0:15:03.800 bit of intelligence, but it's going to be a just instinct, 0:15:03.840 --> 0:15:10.480 you know, gene determined behaviors. Is that true? Well, on 0:15:10.480 --> 0:15:12.560 one hand, this gets into the whole idea of the 0:15:12.600 --> 0:15:17.440 sort of the ice cream scoop model of of neurophysiology, right, 0:15:17.600 --> 0:15:20.560 that humans have the most scoops of brain ice cream 0:15:20.600 --> 0:15:23.440 and therefore have the most powerful brains. But then also 0:15:23.480 --> 0:15:27.000 our our understanding of how these brains are working has 0:15:27.080 --> 0:15:29.960 evolved somewhat over the years too, and we've been forced 0:15:29.960 --> 0:15:33.800 to sort of think think outside of the of our 0:15:33.840 --> 0:15:38.240 own uh uh, you know, anthropomorphic bias in terms of 0:15:38.280 --> 0:15:42.000 what constitutes intelligence. And of course we've conducted plenty of 0:15:42.040 --> 0:15:44.760 experiments on top of that to really get down for 0:15:44.880 --> 0:15:50.360 to take apart intelligence, even human intelligence for divided into 0:15:50.440 --> 0:15:54.040 components that can then be tested for in other species. Yeah, 0:15:54.080 --> 0:15:56.640 and I think what we're learning in recent years over 0:15:56.840 --> 0:16:00.000 many experiments is not just like one experiment has changed, 0:16:00.080 --> 0:16:02.080 is the way we're thinking about this There there are 0:16:02.160 --> 0:16:04.960 so many more experiments than we could even talk about 0:16:05.040 --> 0:16:07.200 in this episode, and the jury is out on many 0:16:07.240 --> 0:16:10.520 of these areas, right, But there's so much new research 0:16:10.560 --> 0:16:15.360 showing that bird intelligence, bird cognition seems to go far 0:16:15.480 --> 0:16:19.120 beyond what was previously assumed that this old theory of 0:16:19.200 --> 0:16:23.600 the determination of cognition by the by the structure of 0:16:23.640 --> 0:16:26.840 the brain does seem to be flawed. It seems to 0:16:26.840 --> 0:16:29.480 be that this is not correct anymore because it was 0:16:29.520 --> 0:16:32.680 based on a false premise. Birds are much smarter than 0:16:32.720 --> 0:16:35.960 we thought, and some cultural traditions seem to have actually 0:16:36.000 --> 0:16:40.480 long associated birds, like like corvids, which include crows with 0:16:40.640 --> 0:16:43.560 higher brain function. I know we came across this, uh 0:16:43.640 --> 0:16:47.320 this great North Smith right. Oh, yeah, Hoogan and Moon 0:16:47.440 --> 0:16:51.000 in those are Odin's ravens. Yeah, companions. He also had 0:16:51.040 --> 0:16:55.640 some some lupine companions, Gary and freki Um. But the 0:16:55.880 --> 0:16:58.480 interesting thing about to sound like fraggle names. They do 0:16:58.640 --> 0:17:01.160 kind of in our sything about Whogan and Moon and 0:17:01.200 --> 0:17:03.240 I also think of and maybe they were, but Whogan 0:17:03.280 --> 0:17:05.439 and Moon and also sounded like they should be, uh 0:17:05.560 --> 0:17:09.720 like the the host characters in like an old horror comic, 0:17:09.840 --> 0:17:12.520 you know, they should be chatting with each other. Maybe 0:17:12.560 --> 0:17:15.000 I'm directly maybe they were. I don't know. Someone will 0:17:15.040 --> 0:17:17.919 have to fill me in on that. But they not 0:17:17.960 --> 0:17:21.480 only are they Odin's companions, they are a part of him. 0:17:21.520 --> 0:17:25.040 They are his thoughts and memories, respectively. And so some 0:17:25.160 --> 0:17:27.800 argue that Moonen is actually desire rather than memory. But 0:17:27.920 --> 0:17:32.000 essentially the idea here said Hohogan, um who can represents 0:17:32.080 --> 0:17:35.720 the thoughts of Odin Moon and represents the memories. That's 0:17:35.760 --> 0:17:40.000 too cool, because they're they're embodied cognition, right, yeah. Yeah, 0:17:40.119 --> 0:17:44.159 And uh, here's a little a little bit of Old Norse, 0:17:44.359 --> 0:17:47.160 uh that has been translated that tells you a little 0:17:47.160 --> 0:17:49.119 bit about Whogan and Moon. And this is apparent. This 0:17:49.160 --> 0:17:51.520 is supposed to be from Odin himself, who can and 0:17:51.600 --> 0:17:54.600 moon and fly every day over the world. I worry 0:17:54.640 --> 0:17:57.439 for Whogan that he might not return, but I worry 0:17:57.480 --> 0:18:00.880 more from moon In. Oh well that if you interpret 0:18:00.880 --> 0:18:03.679 moon into mean memory, and it's uh, that's kind of 0:18:03.720 --> 0:18:07.160 a bittersweet fact about the loss of memories into time. Yeah, 0:18:07.200 --> 0:18:09.640 that these are just they're they're birds that are out 0:18:09.640 --> 0:18:12.040 there in the world, and hey, one day one or 0:18:12.080 --> 0:18:14.480 both of them may not come back. And and it's 0:18:14.480 --> 0:18:16.320 interesting too. I don't want to go to too far 0:18:16.359 --> 0:18:20.120 down the rabbit hole. But you apparently don't see animals 0:18:20.119 --> 0:18:24.160 playing a huge role in Old English Norse heroic literature. 0:18:24.480 --> 0:18:27.280 Except in the case of certain carrion animals, the beasts 0:18:27.320 --> 0:18:30.640 of battle, like the wolf which we mentioned earlier, Gary Frekie, 0:18:31.000 --> 0:18:34.160 the eagle, the raven. Uh. So it's interesting to think 0:18:34.160 --> 0:18:36.440 about these are the animals that fed on the battlefield 0:18:36.480 --> 0:18:40.720 dead and therefore they have some sort of privileged status. Symbolically, 0:18:41.000 --> 0:18:43.080 that's weird. One might think that that would make them 0:18:43.080 --> 0:18:46.520 taboo or something like that, but instead that elevates them 0:18:46.560 --> 0:18:50.000 to the being uh, the stuff of myth. Yeah, I 0:18:50.040 --> 0:18:52.320 mean it. You certainly we see we see some of 0:18:52.320 --> 0:18:54.880 that in other cultures, but yeah, I haven't looked into 0:18:54.880 --> 0:18:57.800 it as much in terms in terms of Western culture because, 0:18:58.160 --> 0:19:01.920 for instance, the vultures have elevated status uh in Tibetan 0:19:01.920 --> 0:19:04.920 mythology because they're closer to the sky and they are 0:19:05.000 --> 0:19:09.840 involved in the rights of death. But the Siberials, right, well, 0:19:09.880 --> 0:19:11.719 I think it's time to actually look at some of 0:19:11.720 --> 0:19:16.159 these studies of of avian cognition of exactly what bird 0:19:16.200 --> 0:19:20.840 brains are capable of in practice and the to summarize 0:19:20.880 --> 0:19:23.320 recent discoveries. Will get into the details in a moment, 0:19:23.359 --> 0:19:27.080 but basically, what we have found, what scientists have found 0:19:27.119 --> 0:19:30.080 is that some birds, like parrots and that that would 0:19:30.080 --> 0:19:35.080 mean birds of the order Satasa forms that include true parrots, cockatoos, 0:19:35.080 --> 0:19:38.840 and New Zealand parrots. And then also corvids which are 0:19:38.920 --> 0:19:46.160 birds of the family corvid A, and that would include crows, ravens, rooks, magpies, chuffs, jay's, 0:19:46.160 --> 0:19:51.959 and nutcrackers. These bird groups display cognition on par with primates, 0:19:53.240 --> 0:19:56.240 which means primates of course being the order containing monkeys 0:19:56.240 --> 0:20:01.280 and apes like us, so on par with pri mates. Seriously, 0:20:02.320 --> 0:20:06.359 and just just allow us to demonstrate with a selection 0:20:06.400 --> 0:20:10.760 of findings. What we are talking about is mental time travel, yes, 0:20:10.840 --> 0:20:13.679 also known as chronosthesia if you want to be fancy 0:20:13.720 --> 0:20:16.640 about it. Now that this is sort of it's something 0:20:16.680 --> 0:20:18.919 that you take for granted. Is it comes very easy 0:20:19.000 --> 0:20:23.359 to advance primates like humans. But it's just being able 0:20:23.400 --> 0:20:26.560 to travel back and forth along a mental timeline. Yeah, 0:20:26.560 --> 0:20:30.040 it's the ability to entertain alternate future scenarios. You know, 0:20:30.080 --> 0:20:32.960 you tell a creature ways option A versus option B. 0:20:33.440 --> 0:20:36.000 It's how you're able to remember past events and anticipate 0:20:36.080 --> 0:20:39.280 and plan for future events. And that ability is core 0:20:39.359 --> 0:20:41.800 to so much of human experience. You know, our ability 0:20:41.840 --> 0:20:45.320 to or or our flaw and being able to just 0:20:45.800 --> 0:20:48.760 regret the past, worry over the future, the entire wheel 0:20:48.760 --> 0:20:52.040 of suffering. It's a very human thing, it's yeah, And 0:20:52.080 --> 0:20:54.640 it seems very easy to assume that because you look 0:20:54.680 --> 0:20:57.080 at the behavior of most animals and they really do 0:20:57.200 --> 0:20:59.320 seem to live in the present moment, that they don't 0:20:59.359 --> 0:21:04.160 seem to be able to consider a hypothetical unless we're 0:21:04.160 --> 0:21:06.400 projecting it on them. Okay, so, especially in the case 0:21:06.440 --> 0:21:11.080 of our pets. Um but yeah, so is it president animals. 0:21:11.280 --> 0:21:14.840 It kind of depends on who you ask. Some say no, 0:21:14.880 --> 0:21:17.280 not at all, mean, even some scientists. It's not just 0:21:17.320 --> 0:21:19.320 like a popular no no. If you just ask people, 0:21:19.680 --> 0:21:21.760 I have a feeling they're going to Yeah, they're gonna 0:21:21.760 --> 0:21:24.960 be You're gonna get into projection concerning the animals that 0:21:25.040 --> 0:21:27.080 we think we we understand the most and then we 0:21:27.119 --> 0:21:31.200 can read more easily. But with with scientists, yeah, it depends. 0:21:31.800 --> 0:21:35.920 A December two paper published in Neuroscience and Behavioral Reviews 0:21:35.960 --> 0:21:40.639 titled mental time travel an exclusively human capacity lets you 0:21:40.680 --> 0:21:43.920 know where they stand? Yeah, it argues exactly that that 0:21:43.920 --> 0:21:47.439 that quote. Some animals indeed appear to possess episodic memory. 0:21:47.720 --> 0:21:51.840 There is, however, no evidence that they are able to construct, reflect, 0:21:51.920 --> 0:21:55.919 and compare different future scenarios like humans are okay, so 0:21:55.960 --> 0:22:00.120 episodic memory that just means having sort of not ingrained 0:22:00.320 --> 0:22:03.480 how it always was or learned behaviors from the past, 0:22:03.480 --> 0:22:06.960 but being able to recall a specific instance, like if 0:22:07.000 --> 0:22:10.040 you can remember what you had for lunch yesterday, that's 0:22:10.080 --> 0:22:14.680 an episodic memory. And some evidence shows that some animals 0:22:14.680 --> 0:22:18.000 have this, But they're saying that they can't. They can't 0:22:18.000 --> 0:22:20.520 project thoughts into the future, right, Like, it's one thing 0:22:20.520 --> 0:22:24.000 to remember what's happened, but then can you anticipate future 0:22:24.040 --> 0:22:27.520 events and plan around them? But not all scientists agree 0:22:27.520 --> 0:22:30.400 with this conclusion, is right? Um So, Back in two 0:22:30.400 --> 0:22:33.399 thousands seven or so, Nicola Clayton of the University of 0:22:33.440 --> 0:22:36.919 Cambridge argued that scrub jays, which is a spacies of 0:22:37.000 --> 0:22:39.879 large brain crow, exhibit mental time travel. And then in 0:22:39.920 --> 0:22:43.920 two thousand eleven there's an interesting study uh from Karina 0:22:44.000 --> 0:22:48.080 Logan of the University of Cambridge and Sean O'Donnell of 0:22:48.119 --> 0:22:51.119 the University of Washington, and they argued that this mental 0:22:51.200 --> 0:22:55.000 time travel is demonstrated in certain tropical birds who engage 0:22:55.280 --> 0:23:00.479 in bivouac that's temporary anton nest sites checking, bivouac checking. 0:23:00.840 --> 0:23:04.600