BBC - Crows Can Reason About Cause and Effect

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Originally Posted by Marvo

Birds are fucking dumb.

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No not really, at all. Magpies have the ability to count up to 7 humans in one space, they know exactly when we are out of the house so they can eat the chickens eggs. We once tried placing a trap over the door and they didn't come in for an entire week.
Twice we owned a crow, it was able to learn tricks, recognize colours. It even formed bonds with particular humans not just based on who gave it food. Lastly everynight it used to dream and would chirp and twitch.
Therefore your argument is invalid.

Magpies Challenge Bird Brain Myth – Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)

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Originally Posted by dutchraptor

No not really, at all. Magpies have the ability to count up to 7 humans in one space, they know exactly when we are out of the house so they can eat the chickens eggs. We once tried placing a trap over the door and they didn't come in for an entire week.
Twice we owned a crow, it was able to learn tricks, recognize colours. It even formed bonds with particular humans not just based on who gave it food. Lastly everynight it used to dream and would chirp and twitch.
Therefore your argument is invalid.

Magpies Challenge Bird Brain Myth – Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)

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Birds are still dumb. All animals are, compared to us.

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Originally Posted by Marvo

Birds are still dumb. All animals are, compared to us.

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“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

― Albert Einstein


Honestly that kind of attitude is dumb.

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Originally Posted by DeathCell

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

― Albert Einstein


Honestly that kind of attitude is dumb.

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That analogy very quickly falls apart when put into the context at hand.

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Originally Posted by Marvo

Birds are still dumb. All animals are, compared to us.

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Frankly, I don't think most humans are much smarter than a bird. Most people go their whole lives without once thinkin an original thought. We simply need to imitate that which has already been done.

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Originally Posted by Marvo

That analogy very quickly falls apart when put into the context at hand.

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Why would anyone call animals dumb? My cats smarter than half the people I meet.

Ahemm.

About the study:

I watched the video at the link and am puzzled.

In both cases, with or without the human agent, crows did the very same thing. Yeah, with delay the second time, but it could be attribuited to anything. Maybe that crow was being lazy! So how it can be proof of anything is beyond me, maybe the article didn't do the study justice.

And I didn't understand which precautions they took to make sure that crows couldn't hear them. Sure, they couldn't see, but if in both cases they heard a human being nearby the stick when it moved, it would be quite revealing to the crows.

About my cat:

That said, my cat surely could understand cause and effect. When she wanted to open the door, she jumped and hung on its doorknob. I always thought it quite impressive that she could draw a connection between me grabbing the doorknob and the door opening. You know how cats normally just push the door to open it: she did the same, but whenever the door was closed really tight, she jumped on the doorknob. She always failed to open doors this way, but that never stopped her from trying.

Edit: I didn't want to say that my cat understood cause and effect correctly! But she surely drew cause and effect connections, as well as she could.

Maybe the crows just got nervous when people were in the room and didn't want to do the stick thing. EDIT: It would be ironic if they were doing a study on the subject of cause-and-effect and confused the cause-and-effect relationships among the experimental variables themselves.

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Originally Posted by mcwillis

How? And please answer my questions. Did snakes a long time ago rally around and have a survival conference with each other? Lets say there is a King Snake and he addresses the local population, 'Hey guys, you know as a species we aren't doing so well. We aren't very well protected as a species, we keep getting eaten by the other critters that live in this neck of the woods. We need to find a way of defending ourselves or the children or our children will never see the wonderful world and life that we live today. These other critters have bodily functions that are disimillar to ours but we could develop a poison to inject into these other creatures that will disable them or kill them so that we can slither away. As we don't have any limbs I propose we grow a set of long teeth to inject a liquid form of poison that would be quick acting. I propose that we delegate who is going to study the physiology of the other creatures locally; who is going to study their biochemistry so that we can create a liquid that will attack their bodies from within; who is going to design the injection sytem so that we don't poison ourselves; who is going to figure out the complex process of synthesisng new protiens. Now, we know nothing about proteins or neurochemistry or hematology and they are words that none of you have ever heard before but as your loyal King Snake you don't have to worry about a thing. We will work it out. We don't have the luxury of having pharmaceutical grade chemicals to work with and we don't have a laboratory and we don't have a lovely grant from those really wealthy dinosaurs over there that seem to take all of the bounty of our wondrous world but we will work it out. We have tiny little brains but we are clever enough to get the job done, trust me. It may take us many millenia but we must survive so lets get too it and start studying. We will eat as much as we can and we will turn our digestive sytems into laboratories to work out how to synthesise these complex protiens and we will re-code our DNA over time so that our offspring will slowly but surely put my clever little idea into practice. I am such a wonderful King Snake to have the genius to get you all started. Now go forth and become venomous snakes, may the force of evolution be with us. Oh I'd better retract that as evolution will get us nowhere as evolution has no intelligence and knowledge of what we must achieve. We are clever snakes and we will succeed.'

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Can't. Stop. Laughing. At that and the first couple replies.

I really thought that you were going to admit at the end of that that you had been joking before, because obviously that conscious intent thing is so stupid. But then you pretty much go on to say that you think that is what happened, only at a subconscious level. That joke was so awesome because you made fun of your own belief without even realizing it.

Even if you were right about Lamarckism (it seems that's what you're advocating), that still wouldn't mean that snakes are intelligent. As you said, they have tiny brains. We don't define intelligence as what our bodies are capable of doing without any bit of conscious knowledge. I really have no idea how my liver works, yet it still does its thing, and that ability adds no points at all to my level of intelligence.