Aug 20 2009
Birds, Behavioral Options, and the Brain
Is the brain the organ of behavioral options? If the best response to stimulus x was always behavior Y, what need would there be for a brain? Any creature with a brain is capable of learning. Learning better responses, learning to process more ambiguous stimuli, etc. Those with more elaborate cortexes are even capable of problem-solving.
Take birds. Their brains are relatively pea-sized. And yet they can learn. The more intelligent species can even problem-solve. A couple species have recently been found to use make-shift tools to problem solve.
That’s smart. In one piece of research, rooks (black birds in the crow family) placed stones in a vial of water to raise the fluid level and float a worm within reach. Impressive.
In another piece of research, crows engaged in more clever and complicated tool-use.
New experiments by Oxford University scientists reveal that New Caledonian crows can spontaneously use up to three tools in the correct sequence to achieve a goal, something never before observed in non-human animals without explicit training.
Wow. Some human beings would have difficulties with a three-step tool task.
It seems it is not the size of the brain that counts, but how you use it.
As a tangential matter, many cultures have been biased against black birds. Like crows and ravens. They are the harbingers of evil, etc. Is it in part because they are so clever and can quickly learn to be unafraid of our kind?
Lastly, would it be ornithologically-incorrect for me to point out that in the avian world blacks score higher than whites on tests of intelligence?
