WEBVTT - The Unsettling Depths of Bird Intelligence 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:05.800 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stop 0:00:05.880 --> 0:00:15.480 Work dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:15.520 --> 0:00:17.880 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And 0:00:17.960 --> 0:00:20.000 Robert I want to ask you to go with them 0:00:20.160 --> 0:00:23.119 on a mental durance to the pats. Let's do it, okay. 0:00:23.160 --> 0:00:24.880 So I want to ask you to think about the 0:00:25.000 --> 0:00:30.400 evolution of technological civilization in terms of the human hand. Okay, 0:00:30.440 --> 0:00:33.159 well that is the not the only model we have 0:00:33.320 --> 0:00:37.319 for the evolution of technologically advanced civilization. Yeah, so I'm 0:00:37.440 --> 0:00:40.920 totally down with it. Think about tool using intelligence, right, Yeah. 0:00:40.960 --> 0:00:44.640 So the earliest tools used by primates are primate ancestors 0:00:44.760 --> 0:00:48.560 that the apes we call our cousins. They're all things 0:00:48.600 --> 0:00:51.479 that can be manipulated by the fingers. You had, the 0:00:51.600 --> 0:00:54.320 hand axes. I'm sure you've seen these things there, these 0:00:55.000 --> 0:00:57.760 carved down stones, and there are different theories about what 0:00:57.880 --> 0:01:00.840 exactly they were used for. Were they for process and carcasses, 0:01:00.920 --> 0:01:03.760 where they for throwing it prey or some combination, you know, 0:01:03.800 --> 0:01:07.400 where they just merely useless status items. But they were 0:01:07.440 --> 0:01:10.399 these chipped stone tools used in the hand. And then 0:01:10.480 --> 0:01:13.960 of course we had handheld and thrown weapons, handheld tools 0:01:14.040 --> 0:01:17.679 for processing the carcasses of prey, like a stone cleavers, 0:01:18.280 --> 0:01:21.080 and then later on you had tools for cooking and 0:01:21.200 --> 0:01:24.800 tools for farming, and all just kind of a spiral 0:01:25.000 --> 0:01:29.760 staircase of technology revolving around the solid core of the 0:01:29.800 --> 0:01:32.800 shape of the human hand. Everything was based on the 0:01:32.800 --> 0:01:36.240 assumption of thumbs, palms, fingers, even if you look at 0:01:36.240 --> 0:01:38.320 the beginnings of human culture, like if we go to 0:01:38.400 --> 0:01:42.160 the oldest examples of art, we know cave paintings show 0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:45.679 the use of handprints, pigments applied to cave walls by hand. 0:01:45.920 --> 0:01:47.360 And then I don't know if you've ever seen this, 0:01:47.440 --> 0:01:51.040 but finger fluting, where it's not painting, but where Stone 0:01:51.040 --> 0:01:54.680 age artists would make patterns and cave walls and what 0:01:54.840 --> 0:01:57.720 used to be soft cave walls by dragging their fingers 0:01:57.760 --> 0:02:01.920 through the soft surfaces which lay or hardened. And then, 0:02:01.960 --> 0:02:04.480 of course some of the oldest known musical instruments appear 0:02:04.520 --> 0:02:07.960 to be Paleolithic flutes made out of the bones of 0:02:08.160 --> 0:02:10.600 bears or vultures. So you get a bare bone, you 0:02:10.760 --> 0:02:13.440 bore some holes in it, and you could make a flute. 0:02:13.520 --> 0:02:15.000 And of course what do you do with those holes? 0:02:15.040 --> 0:02:17.840 You cover them with a fingertip to change the pitch 0:02:17.960 --> 0:02:20.080 of the note you're producing with the flute. So when 0:02:20.160 --> 0:02:22.359 you consider all this and then of course coming all 0:02:22.400 --> 0:02:24.680 all the way up to our our steering wheels and 0:02:24.720 --> 0:02:27.919 our gaming console controllers and every other thing you hold 0:02:27.919 --> 0:02:31.680 in your fingertips today, it's almost impossible to imagine the 0:02:31.760 --> 0:02:39.120 evolution of a technological civilization and advanced intelligent culture without hands. Uh. 0:02:39.320 --> 0:02:41.320 In fact, I think some would say that it was 0:02:41.360 --> 0:02:45.239 our primate hands that made this trajectory possible for our species, 0:02:45.240 --> 0:02:48.000 Like it was only the fact that humans went by 0:02:48.120 --> 0:02:51.720 peedle and started having free hands to work with that 0:02:51.919 --> 0:02:55.560 encouraged the development in the brain the powerhouses for tool 0:02:55.720 --> 0:02:58.880 use and innovation that made us who we are today. 0:02:59.400 --> 0:03:01.680 But I want to think about what if evolution had 0:03:01.720 --> 0:03:05.520 gone a different way? Ah, So what you have another 0:03:06.120 --> 0:03:09.600 form of life on the planet managed to ascend that 0:03:09.720 --> 0:03:12.639 staircase we've mentioned earlier. What kind of the tools would 0:03:12.680 --> 0:03:14.320 they have used? How would they have used them? Yeah, 0:03:14.360 --> 0:03:17.320 and that's stairs, So their spiral staircase might not have 0:03:17.440 --> 0:03:20.640 had hands. What if there was an advanced technological species 0:03:20.639 --> 0:03:24.320 on Earth, but not one that evolved from primates, and 0:03:24.360 --> 0:03:28.440 not even one that evolved from mammals. Is it possible 0:03:28.720 --> 0:03:33.960 to imagine a technological civilization built by the cousins of 0:03:34.080 --> 0:03:36.800 birds in the same way we have one now built 0:03:36.840 --> 0:03:40.640 by the cousins of apes. Um like where you've got 0:03:40.720 --> 0:03:45.680 highly intelligent cousins of pigeons conducting science and business and 0:03:45.800 --> 0:03:50.680 art and education in these huge technological monstrosities of cities, 0:03:50.880 --> 0:03:53.800 while you've got monkeys scampering around in flocks throughout the 0:03:54.160 --> 0:03:57.200 city surfaces, pecking around for crumbs. And every now and 0:03:57.240 --> 0:03:59.760 then you'd have a highly intelligent bird creature go out 0:03:59.800 --> 0:04:03.040 on a slunch break and feed the monkeys some some breadcrumbs, 0:04:03.160 --> 0:04:07.680 or feed on the monkeys. Could be because yeah, because 0:04:07.680 --> 0:04:10.480 this is it's especially interesting when you when you when 0:04:10.520 --> 0:04:13.160 you when you look back, say about fifty million years 0:04:13.800 --> 0:04:16.680 uh to the to the early EO c. N Epoch, 0:04:16.760 --> 0:04:19.120 and you'll find that this is the only time in 0:04:19.160 --> 0:04:22.159 history when birds ruled the world. They permeated most of 0:04:22.160 --> 0:04:24.560 the key positions on the food chain with a large 0:04:24.640 --> 0:04:30.400 flightless terror birds stalking the land terror birds, terrib birds, massive, yeah, 0:04:30.760 --> 0:04:35.120 top predator, just terrifying land birds. But I can imagine 0:04:35.279 --> 0:04:37.760 something like what if something like that had been the 0:04:38.400 --> 0:04:40.960 species that really took off, and maybe that was what 0:04:41.000 --> 0:04:44.960 would live in these cities and eat the monkeys. But 0:04:44.960 --> 0:04:47.440 but as for just birds in general, you know, why 0:04:47.480 --> 0:04:50.080 not why not the birds? Because birds are builders, They 0:04:50.080 --> 0:04:52.840 build nests, they put them together, their tool users, as 0:04:52.880 --> 0:04:56.919 will discuss, they exhibit social behavior, trickery, in some cases 0:04:56.960 --> 0:05:02.040 startlingly complex social behavior. So you know, I can imagine 0:05:02.160 --> 0:05:04.520 on that end of things, I can imagine the bird 0:05:04.560 --> 0:05:08.600 brain being completely capable of ascending, uh, in terms of 0:05:08.760 --> 0:05:11.720 manipulating objects. Will certainly get more to the details in 0:05:11.800 --> 0:05:15.520 a bit, but I instantly think of some of the 0:05:15.560 --> 0:05:19.919 controls that we see, uh for disabled individuals who do 0:05:20.000 --> 0:05:23.000 not have the use of their hands, where they use 0:05:23.279 --> 0:05:27.400 like a straw to to control the movements of say 0:05:27.520 --> 0:05:31.440 a wheelchair. Yeah, I can imagine technology like that being 0:05:31.560 --> 0:05:34.560 utilized by some sort of highly evolved bird creature, and 0:05:34.560 --> 0:05:37.560 with the kind of intelligence that a highly advanced technological 0:05:37.600 --> 0:05:40.280 civilization would have. I wouldn't say that something like that 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:44.479 is necessarily impossible. Uh. In fact, today I think we 0:05:44.560 --> 0:05:47.960 want to make the case for why it's not completely 0:05:48.080 --> 0:05:54.279 insane to imagine a technological culture in a hypothetical alternate universe. 0:05:54.400 --> 0:05:59.360 Built around the core of wings, beaks, and claws instead 0:05:59.400 --> 0:06:02.760 of fingers and thumbs and palms. Yeah, I don't think 0:06:02.760 --> 0:06:05.200 it's even a little bit insane. That's what it is. However, 0:06:05.680 --> 0:06:08.359 is it's a little more alien than even most of 0:06:08.400 --> 0:06:12.240 our science fiction dreamers want to want to want to 0:06:12.320 --> 0:06:15.240 play with. You know, we tend we're talking about this earlier. 0:06:15.240 --> 0:06:18.040 Even when you think of of alien species and science 0:06:18.080 --> 0:06:22.280 fiction that are avian, they're almost always the same sort 0:06:22.360 --> 0:06:25.360 of bird human hybrids that we've been dreaming about since 0:06:25.400 --> 0:06:29.200 they know, since you know, Babylonian days. Yeah. Uh so 0:06:29.480 --> 0:06:31.560 I should say at the beginning that this episode was 0:06:31.640 --> 0:06:34.599 inspired when I saw a recently published paper. And this 0:06:34.640 --> 0:06:38.320 paper was called Cognition Without Cortex, and it was a 0:06:38.360 --> 0:06:42.040 review of recent findings on avian cognition and neuro anatomy, 0:06:42.120 --> 0:06:45.640 sort of collecting all of the literature of recent decades 0:06:45.960 --> 0:06:49.280 looking into how smart exactly are birds, what kind of 0:06:49.320 --> 0:06:53.360 cognitive traits and thinking to the exhibit and what are 0:06:53.360 --> 0:06:56.039 we learning, uh, what are we learning about how a 0:06:56.240 --> 0:06:59.920 bird's brain works and how that compares to the mammalian brain. 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:03.160 And and so this paper was written by owner Gunterkun 0:07:03.600 --> 0:07:07.680 and Thomas Bugnier, and it was in Trends and Cognitive Sciences, 0:07:07.680 --> 0:07:11.440 published on March on. Well you know this, Uh, this 0:07:11.520 --> 0:07:16.320 raises the question of Joe, what is your attitude towards birds? 0:07:16.360 --> 0:07:20.640 What is your experience with the perception of bird intelligence? Well, 0:07:20.680 --> 0:07:23.400 I know exactly what it is, because I've always thought 0:07:23.640 --> 0:07:27.520 that birds looked kind of dumb, and I have to 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:29.760 admit it. I'm sorry now, I'm sorry now that I've 0:07:29.760 --> 0:07:31.800 read all this research. But I always looked at them 0:07:31.800 --> 0:07:34.040 and said, oh man, there's something just kind of like 0:07:34.080 --> 0:07:37.280 an ancient emptiness in the eyes of a bird. And 0:07:37.440 --> 0:07:40.640 I was not alone in this. Because you may have 0:07:40.720 --> 0:07:42.400 heard this before, but I want to share it with you. 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:45.680 A quote from the famous film director of Werner Hertzog 0:07:46.720 --> 0:07:49.480 speaking about chickens. Yes, can you please do it in 0:07:49.520 --> 0:07:51.880 his voice? No, I can't do the accent, but I'm 0:07:51.880 --> 0:07:56.600 going to read his quote. Hertzog says about chickens, the 0:07:56.800 --> 0:08:01.320 enormity if they're flat brain, the enormity of their stupidity 0:08:01.360 --> 0:08:04.960 is just overwhelming. You have to do yourself a favor. 0:08:05.200 --> 0:08:07.720 When you're out in the countryside and you see chickens, 0:08:08.080 --> 0:08:11.760 Try to look at chicken in the eye with great intensity, 0:08:11.840 --> 0:08:15.280 and the intensity of stupidity that is looking back at 0:08:15.320 --> 0:08:18.480 you is just amazing. By the way, it's very easy 0:08:18.520 --> 0:08:21.920 to hypnotize the chicken. They're very prone to hypnosis, and 0:08:21.960 --> 0:08:25.400 in one or two films I've actually shown that. Okay, 0:08:25.480 --> 0:08:28.280 so he's talking about chickens here, and I have heard 0:08:28.360 --> 0:08:31.000 from people who have raised chickens before. I think my 0:08:31.000 --> 0:08:34.200 my grandmother was very much in this boat that the 0:08:34.280 --> 0:08:37.280 chickens are are stupid and in a pain to keep. 0:08:37.640 --> 0:08:44.120 And but chickens are just one of many many species. Yes, 0:08:44.200 --> 0:08:47.280 that's that's true. There are there are one subspecies there also, 0:08:47.760 --> 0:08:51.080 we should point out domesticated and there is often something 0:08:51.160 --> 0:08:54.400 that we see in biology that happens to domesticated animals. 0:08:54.400 --> 0:08:56.720 Animals that have kind of a cushy life where they're 0:08:56.720 --> 0:08:59.960 fed every day tend to not be quite so quick 0:09:00.640 --> 0:09:03.960 in the in the thinking department as their wild cousins. 0:09:04.040 --> 0:09:07.000 But I don't know if that explains how people feel 0:09:07.000 --> 0:09:09.000 about chickens. Maybe chickens are a lot smarter than we 0:09:09.040 --> 0:09:12.360 give them credit for. But anyway, the conventional wisdom for 0:09:12.360 --> 0:09:14.920 a long time has been in in sort of crude terms, 0:09:14.960 --> 0:09:18.400 birds are dumb, birds are stupid because they do not 0:09:18.600 --> 0:09:21.120 have the right kind of brain. Yeah, And I think 0:09:21.120 --> 0:09:23.400 a lot of this boils down to just basic perception. 0:09:23.480 --> 0:09:25.240 Like my wife has often been kind of like freaked 0:09:25.240 --> 0:09:29.120 out by birds, and the way she describes it is 0:09:29.160 --> 0:09:32.120 that she grew up around dogs. She grew up around horses, 0:09:32.800 --> 0:09:35.800 and she says that those animals are easier to read. 0:09:36.320 --> 0:09:37.920 You can you can you can get a better idea 0:09:37.920 --> 0:09:39.480 about what a dog is going to do. You can 0:09:39.480 --> 0:09:42.679 tell if a dog is aggravated, excited, what have you? 0:09:42.920 --> 0:09:45.319 A horse the same way. They are all these different 0:09:45.559 --> 0:09:48.439 cues that we can pick up on and really communicate 0:09:48.440 --> 0:09:51.480 facially with them. It's more difficult to do with a bird. 0:09:51.559 --> 0:09:53.720 And certainly the bird I can just seem like a 0:09:53.800 --> 0:09:58.120 glassy um, you know, a cavern of nothingness. I think 0:09:58.120 --> 0:10:01.520 of what Quint says in Jaws, the shark side. It's 0:10:01.520 --> 0:10:05.160 like a doll's eyes. Yeah, yeah, very much. Though you 0:10:05.200 --> 0:10:09.439 get that kind of glassy dolls, I uh impression from them. 0:10:09.480 --> 0:10:11.760 But you know, I go to the zoo a lot 0:10:11.800 --> 0:10:14.320 with my my son, and there are a lot of 0:10:14.320 --> 0:10:16.440 birds there, and some of them, in particular, like the 0:10:16.480 --> 0:10:20.640 ground hornbill that they have there. I'm just always startled 0:10:20.640 --> 0:10:24.280 by how intelligent they seem to be, and that I am. 0:10:24.320 --> 0:10:26.720 I am observing them, but they seem to be observing 0:10:26.720 --> 0:10:31.320 me almost on equal footing. So in in in that area, 0:10:31.400 --> 0:10:35.200 I have to disagree with the perceived stupidity of the bird. 0:10:35.240 --> 0:10:37.520 Just talking about perceptions here at this point, But I 0:10:37.559 --> 0:10:39.720 think I would have to say that that your wife's 0:10:39.720 --> 0:10:43.079 intuition about the sort of disconnectedness of the bird. The 0:10:43.920 --> 0:10:47.319 space between you does make sense from a biological perspective, 0:10:48.160 --> 0:10:52.920 because there is a biological gap between humans and birds 0:10:53.040 --> 0:10:55.520 much larger than our gap, the gap between humans and 0:10:55.559 --> 0:10:59.880 other mammals. So the gap between humans and dogs is 0:11:00.200 --> 0:11:02.920 you're still both mammals. You have a much more recent 0:11:03.080 --> 0:11:08.439 common ancestor. The gap between primates like us and birds 0:11:08.760 --> 0:11:12.440 is ancient. There are last common ancestor with birds is 0:11:12.480 --> 0:11:15.760 believed to exist. It to have existed about three hundred 0:11:16.000 --> 0:11:20.640 million years ago. We have not been related to birds 0:11:20.840 --> 0:11:24.800 since before the dinosaurs, way before the dinosaurs. It goes 0:11:25.160 --> 0:11:30.320 back way back. These are these are just extremely different 0:11:30.480 --> 0:11:33.520 branches of the tree of life on Earth, and so 0:11:33.600 --> 0:11:35.720 I think it makes sense to look on a vian 0:11:35.840 --> 0:11:38.800 creatures with the with the kind of hesitance. So there 0:11:38.840 --> 0:11:41.800 there there's an alien quality to it that's much like 0:11:41.880 --> 0:11:44.960 the quality of a reptile or a fish. They're just 0:11:45.040 --> 0:11:47.920 not much like us. Yeah, there's a definite alien quality 0:11:47.960 --> 0:11:51.040 to them. But I mentioned the conventional wisdom was that 0:11:51.600 --> 0:11:54.520 when people used to think all birds were really stupid, 0:11:54.559 --> 0:11:57.360 they thought that they were stupid because of how their 0:11:57.400 --> 0:12:01.719 brains were built. So where does human intelligence come from? What? 0:12:01.840 --> 0:12:06.360 Why are mammals smart? Typically people look at the cortex. 0:12:06.520 --> 0:12:09.720 The mammalian prefrontal cortex appears to be the seat of 0:12:09.880 --> 0:12:13.319 executive functions. So all the thinking you do that involves 0:12:13.360 --> 0:12:17.760 conscious control of thought, like using working memory and constituting 0:12:17.800 --> 0:12:21.880 the planning and execution of actions. That that that's cortex stuff. 0:12:22.280 --> 0:12:24.959 And so the old line of the of the neuroscientist 0:12:25.040 --> 0:12:27.679 or the nero anatomist was sort of that I can 0:12:27.720 --> 0:12:29.800 look at your brain, and by looking at your brain, 0:12:29.880 --> 0:12:32.319 I can tell you how you're thinking works, how your 0:12:32.320 --> 0:12:35.560 cognition works. And if you don't have a cortex, you 0:12:35.640 --> 0:12:38.599 just don't have much cognition going on. I watched a 0:12:38.679 --> 0:12:42.160 presentation by Owner Gunderkun, and he called attention to the 0:12:42.160 --> 0:12:46.320 work of the German neuro anatomist Ludwig Eddinger who lived 0:12:46.480 --> 0:12:49.160 eighteen fifty five to nineteen eighteen, and he said that 0:12:49.280 --> 0:12:53.120 Eddinger was the leading comparative neuro anatomist of his time. 0:12:53.600 --> 0:12:56.720 UH and his project was sort of to understand the 0:12:56.720 --> 0:13:00.200 evolution of the brain invertebrates. Vertebrates all creatures to have 0:13:00.240 --> 0:13:04.240 a backbone. UM, so birds and mammals both vertebrates. Where 0:13:04.240 --> 0:13:07.280 where do the differences in brain evolution come along? And 0:13:07.480 --> 0:13:10.440 Eddinger's theory was, first you got fish, and fish basically 0:13:10.480 --> 0:13:12.559 just have a spinal cord with a little you've got 0:13:12.559 --> 0:13:14.440 some brain stem on the end. Their fish don't have 0:13:14.520 --> 0:13:17.480 much going on brain wise. And then after that you 0:13:17.559 --> 0:13:21.200 had amphibians and and so they've got a part of 0:13:21.200 --> 0:13:24.319 the basal ganglia that's sort of a little bit extending 0:13:24.360 --> 0:13:27.559 what the brains are capable of. And then you've got 0:13:27.559 --> 0:13:30.800 reptiles and this adds more to the basal ganglia second 0:13:30.840 --> 0:13:34.679 component of it, and you've you've got slightly upgraded cognitive skills. 0:13:34.960 --> 0:13:37.240 And then after reptiles, you've got the fourth thing, which 0:13:37.280 --> 0:13:40.800 is birds. And then birds have uh, they sort of 0:13:40.840 --> 0:13:43.720 developed the basal ganglia improve the skills more. And then 0:13:43.800 --> 0:13:47.720 finally with mammals, you get the cerebral cortex, which gives 0:13:47.760 --> 0:13:53.720 them this unprecedented thinking power, intelligence, cognition, flexibility, the ability 0:13:53.760 --> 0:13:56.840 to use their brains to adapt intelligence to all kinds 0:13:56.880 --> 0:14:00.280 of different scenarios. And so, according to Edinger, you should 0:14:00.280 --> 0:14:03.720 look at a monkey and you should see cognition. It's 0:14:03.960 --> 0:14:07.319 behaviors that come out of thinking. It's not all just instinct. 0:14:07.360 --> 0:14:11.079 It's weakly determined by the genes. But meanwhile, you should 0:14:11.080 --> 0:14:13.440 look at a bird, like a pigeon, that doesn't have 0:14:13.480 --> 0:14:16.680 a cortex, and it should have a little bit of intelligence, 0:14:16.720 --> 0:14:19.040 but it's going to be a just instinct, you know, 0:14:19.160 --> 0:14:25.960 gene determined behaviors. Is that true? Well, on one hand, 0:14:26.080 --> 0:14:27.880 this gets into the whole idea of the sort of 0:14:27.880 --> 0:14:32.760 the ice cream scoop model of of neurophysiology, right, that 0:14:33.040 --> 0:14:35.680 humans have the most scoops of brain ice cream and 0:14:35.720 --> 0:14:38.680 therefore have the most powerful brains. But then also our 0:14:38.720 --> 0:14:42.560 our understanding of how these brains are working has evolved 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:45.040 somewhat over the years too, and we've been forced to 0:14:45.080 --> 0:14:49.040 sort of think think outside of the of our own 0:14:49.240 --> 0:14:53.480 uh uh, you know, anthropomorphic bias in terms of what 0:14:53.560 --> 0:14:57.040 constitutes intelligence. Yeah, And of course We've conducted plenty of 0:14:57.080 --> 0:14:59.760 experiments on top of that to really get down for 0:14:59.800 --> 0:15:05.400 its to take apart intelligence, even human intelligence divided into 0:15:05.440 --> 0:15:09.080 components that can then be tested for in other species. Yeah, 0:15:09.080 --> 0:15:11.640 and I think what we're learning in recent years, over 0:15:11.880 --> 0:15:15.080 many experiments is not just like one experiment has changed 0:15:15.120 --> 0:15:17.320 the way we're thinking about this. There there are so 0:15:17.360 --> 0:15:20.120 many more experiments than we could even talk about in 0:15:20.160 --> 0:15:23.400 this episode and out on many of these areas. Right, 0:15:23.480 --> 0:15:27.440 But there's so much new research showing that bird intelligence, 0:15:27.480 --> 0:15:32.240 bird cognition seems to go far beyond what was previously assumed. 0:15:32.280 --> 0:15:36.600 That this old theory of the determination of cognition by 0:15:36.880 --> 0:15:40.320 the by the structure of the brain does seem to 0:15:40.320 --> 0:15:42.920 be flawed. It seems to be that this is not 0:15:43.000 --> 0:15:45.800 correct anymore because it was based on a false premise. 0:15:46.160 --> 0:15:49.520 Birds are much smarter than we thought, and some cultural 0:15:49.520 --> 0:15:53.560 traditions seem to have actually long associated birds like like corvids, 0:15:53.600 --> 0:15:57.360 which include crows with higher brain function. I know we 0:15:57.440 --> 0:16:01.360 came across this, uh this great north Smith right, Oh yeah, 0:16:01.360 --> 0:16:05.320 Hohogan and moon in those are Odin's ravens, Yeah, companions. 0:16:05.480 --> 0:16:08.880 He also had some of some lupine companions Gary and 0:16:08.920 --> 0:16:12.280 freki Um. But the interesting thing about to sound like 0:16:12.320 --> 0:16:15.400 fraggle names. They do kind of the interesting thing about 0:16:15.400 --> 0:16:17.480 Whogan and Moon, and I also think of and maybe 0:16:17.480 --> 0:16:19.320 they were, but Whogan and moon and also sound like 0:16:19.360 --> 0:16:23.440 they should be like the the host characters in like 0:16:23.480 --> 0:16:26.680 an old horror comic. You know, they should be chatting 0:16:26.680 --> 0:16:29.000 with each other. Maybe i'm directly maybe they were. I 0:16:29.000 --> 0:16:31.360 don't know. Someone will have to fill me in on that. 0:16:31.640 --> 0:16:35.360 But they not only are they Odin's companions, they are 0:16:35.360 --> 0:16:39.280 a part of him. They are his thoughts and memories, respectively. 0:16:39.560 --> 0:16:42.240 And so some argue that Moonen is actually desire rather 0:16:42.280 --> 0:16:46.400 than memory. But essentially the idea, here's that Hohoganum who 0:16:46.400 --> 0:16:50.200 can represents the thoughts of Odin Moon and represents the memories. Man, 0:16:50.520 --> 0:16:55.040 that's too cool, because they're they're embodied cognition, right yeah, yeah, 0:16:55.120 --> 0:16:59.160 And uh, here's a little little bit of old Norse, 0:16:59.400 --> 0:17:01.920 uh that has been a translated that tells you a 0:17:01.960 --> 0:17:03.760 little bit about Hoogan and Moon. And this is a 0:17:03.840 --> 0:17:06.320 parent This is supposed to be from Odin himself, who 0:17:06.320 --> 0:17:08.800 can and moon and fly every day over the world. 0:17:09.119 --> 0:17:11.879 I worry for Hohogan that he might not return, But 0:17:11.960 --> 0:17:15.280 I worry more from moon in oh, well that if 0:17:15.320 --> 0:17:18.440 you interpret moon into mean memory, and it's uh, that's 0:17:18.480 --> 0:17:21.120 kind of a bittersweet fact about the loss of memories 0:17:21.119 --> 0:17:24.080 into time. Yeah, that these are just they're they're birds 0:17:24.080 --> 0:17:26.040 that are out there in the world and hey, one 0:17:26.119 --> 0:17:28.520 day one or both of them may not come back. 0:17:29.080 --> 0:17:30.760 And and it's interesting too. I don't want to go 0:17:30.800 --> 0:17:34.320 too far down the rabbit hole, but you apparently don't 0:17:34.359 --> 0:17:37.879 see animals playing a huge role in Old English Norse 0:17:38.200 --> 0:17:41.760 heroic literature, except in the case of certain carrion animals, 0:17:41.800 --> 0:17:44.879 the beasts of battle, like the wolf which we mentioned earlier, 0:17:44.920 --> 0:17:48.880 Gary Frekie, the eagle, the raven. Uh. So it's interesting 0:17:48.920 --> 0:17:50.679 to think about these are the animals that fed on 0:17:50.680 --> 0:17:53.600 the battlefield dead, and therefore they have some sort of 0:17:53.640 --> 0:17:57.359 privileged status symbolically. That's weird. One might think that that 0:17:57.400 --> 0:18:00.440 would make them taboo or something like that, but instead 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:04.879 that elevates them to the being, uh the stuff of myth. Yeah, 0:18:04.960 --> 0:18:07.199 I mean it. You certainly we see we see some 0:18:07.240 --> 0:18:09.680 of that in other cultures, but yeah, I haven't looked 0:18:09.720 --> 0:18:12.800 into it as much in terms in terms of Western culture, because, 0:18:13.160 --> 0:18:16.920 for instance, the vultures have elevated status uh in Tibetan 0:18:16.960 --> 0:18:19.600 mythology because they're closer to the sky and they are 0:18:20.000 --> 0:18:24.880 involved in the rights of death. But the iberials right, well, 0:18:24.880 --> 0:18:26.720 I think it's time to actually look at some of 0:18:26.760 --> 0:18:31.160 these studies of of avian cognition, of exactly what bird 0:18:31.200 --> 0:18:35.840 brains are capable of in practice, and the to summarize 0:18:35.880 --> 0:18:38.359 recent discoveries. We'll get into the details in a moment, 0:18:38.400 --> 0:18:42.080 but basically what we have found, what scientists have found 0:18:42.119 --> 0:18:44.840 is that some birds like parrots uh, and that that 0:18:44.840 --> 0:18:48.320 would mean birds of the order Sa Taciforms that include 0:18:48.400 --> 0:18:52.280 true parrots, cockatoos, and New Zealand parrots uh. And then 0:18:52.359 --> 0:18:55.399 also Corvid's which are birds of the family corvid A, 0:18:55.520 --> 0:19:01.040 and that would include crows, ravens, rooks, magpies, cuffs, jay's, 0:19:01.200 --> 0:19:07.000 and nutcrackers. These bird groups display cognition on par with primates, 0:19:08.280 --> 0:19:11.240 which means primates of course being the order containing monkeys 0:19:11.240 --> 0:19:16.280 and apes like us, so on par with primates seriously, 0:19:17.320 --> 0:19:21.359 and just just allow us to demonstrate with a selection 0:19:21.440 --> 0:19:25.760 of findings what we are talking about is mental time travel. Yes, 0:19:25.840 --> 0:19:28.679 also known as chronosthesia. If you want to be fancy 0:19:28.720 --> 0:19:31.680 about it now that this is sort of it's something 0:19:31.680 --> 0:19:34.080 that you take for granted. It comes very easy to 0:19:34.520 --> 0:19:38.480 advance primates like humans. But it's just being able to 0:19:38.560 --> 0:19:41.720 travel back and forth along a mental timeline. Yeah, it's 0:19:41.720 --> 0:19:45.199 the ability to entertain alternate future scenarios, you know. You 0:19:45.320 --> 0:19:48.000 that's how a creature ways option A versus option B. 0:19:48.440 --> 0:19:51.000 It's how you're able to remember past events and anticipate 0:19:51.080 --> 0:19:54.320 and plan for future events. And that ability is core 0:19:54.400 --> 0:19:56.800 to so much of human experience, you know, our ability 0:19:56.880 --> 0:20:00.359 to or our our flaw and being able to just 0:20:00.840 --> 0:20:03.760 regret the past, worry over the future, the entire wheel 0:20:03.800 --> 0:20:07.040 of suffering. It's a very human thing, it's yeah, And 0:20:07.080 --> 0:20:09.680 it seems very easy to assume that because you look 0:20:09.680 --> 0:20:12.080 at the behavior of most animals and they really do 0:20:12.200 --> 0:20:14.359 seem to live in the present moment, that they don't 0:20:14.359 --> 0:20:19.160 seem to be able to consider a hypothetical unless we're 0:20:19.160 --> 0:20:21.400 projecting it on them. Okay, so, especially in the case 0:20:21.480 --> 0:20:26.080 of our pets. Um. But yeah, so is it president animals. 0:20:26.280 --> 0:20:29.840 It kind of depends on who you ask. Some say no, 0:20:29.920 --> 0:20:32.439 not at all, even some scientists. It's not just like 0:20:32.440 --> 0:20:34.760 a popular no no. If you just ask people. I 0:20:34.800 --> 0:20:36.879 have a feeling they're going to Yeah, they're gonna be. 0:20:36.880 --> 0:20:39.959 It's you're gonna get into projection concerning the animals that 0:20:40.040 --> 0:20:42.119 we think we we understand the most and that we 0:20:42.119 --> 0:20:46.200 can read more easily. But with with scientists. Yeah, it depends. 0:20:46.800 --> 0:20:50.920 A December two paper published in Neuroscience and Behavioral Reviews 0:20:50.960 --> 0:20:55.639 titled mental time travel an exclusively human capacity lets you 0:20:55.680 --> 0:20:58.920 know where they stand. Yeah, it argues exactly that that 0:20:58.920 --> 0:21:02.479 that quote. Some animals indeed appear to possess episodic memory. 0:21:02.720 --> 0:21:06.840 There is, however, no evidence that they are able to construct, reflect, 0:21:06.960 --> 0:21:10.919 and compare different future scenarios like humans are okay, So 0:21:10.960 --> 0:21:15.040 episodic memory that just means having sort of not ingrained 0:21:15.359 --> 0:21:18.480 how it always was or learned behaviors from the past, 0:21:18.520 --> 0:21:21.959 but being able to recall a specific instance, like if 0:21:22.000 --> 0:21:25.080 you can remember what you had for lunch yesterday, that's 0:21:25.080 --> 0:21:29.680 an episodic memory. And some evidence shows that some animals 0:21:29.720 --> 0:21:33.000 have this, but they're saying that they can't. They can't 0:21:33.000 --> 0:21:35.520 project thoughts into the future, right, Like, it's one thing 0:21:35.560 --> 0:21:39.040 to remember what's happened, but then can you anticipate future 0:21:39.040 --> 0:21:42.520 events and plan around them? But not all scientists agree 0:21:42.560 --> 0:21:45.359 with this conclusion is right. Um. So, back in two 0:21:45.400 --> 0:21:48.399 thousands seven or so, Nicola Clayton of the University of 0:21:48.440 --> 0:21:51.920 Cambridge argued that scrub jays, which is a spacies of 0:21:52.040 --> 0:21:54.879 large brain crow, exhibit mental time travel. And then in 0:21:54.920 --> 0:21:59.399 two thousand eleven there's an interesting study from Karina Logan 0:21:59.480 --> 0:22:03.199 of the Universe of Cambridge and Sean O'Donnell of the 0:22:03.240 --> 0:22:06.440 University of Washington, and they argue that this mental time 0:22:06.480 --> 0:22:10.399 travel is demonstrated in certain tropical birds who engage in 0:22:10.600 --> 0:22:16.000 bivouac that's temporary ant nest sites checking, bivouac checking. So 0:22:16.080 --> 0:22:19.880 basically the idea here is that the ants, the ant 0:22:19.880 --> 0:22:24.280 colonies are moving around. They have like a cyclical raid 0:22:24.400 --> 0:22:27.720 cycle that they go through. They have patterns of activity exactly, 0:22:27.760 --> 0:22:30.360 and so the animals hunting them in this case the birds, 0:22:30.480 --> 0:22:33.600 they have to figure out how to anticipate those movements. 0:22:33.720 --> 0:22:35.959 The birds keep track of where the ants are, they 0:22:36.000 --> 0:22:38.840 remember their past movements, and according to the these researchers, 0:22:39.040 --> 0:22:43.000 they're actually using that data to anticipate future movements of 0:22:43.040 --> 0:22:45.359 the ants so they'll know where to go to score 0:22:45.400 --> 0:22:48.560 their meal. Okay, so mental time travel and birds. Uh, 0:22:48.720 --> 0:22:51.160 that seems to be a toss up some some scientists 0:22:51.200 --> 0:22:54.400