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