Recent experiments show that crows use logic to solve problems, and that some of their abilities are similar to and even surpass those of apes.
Bernd Heinrich and Thomas Bognier Scientific American
A hunter in the forests of North America sees a black crow (Corvus corax) roll over on its back and lie down with its feet in the air next to a beaver carcass lying on the snow. A biologist climbs a rock cliff to drown crow chicks, and their parents drop rocks on him from above. A lone raven makes a great noise near a distant cabin and thereby arouses a man standing near the cabin to look around and see a cougar about to pounce on him from hiding.
Each of these three men thought they knew what the ravens intended by their actions. The hunter thought that the crow was feigning death, as if it had been poisoned, to discourage other crows from competing with it for the meat of the beaver carcass. The biologist thought that the pair of crows tried, on purpose, to hit him with stones so he would go away. The man in the remote cabin thought the crow had warned him to save his life.
These hypotheses cannot be ignored, but most people who have become closely acquainted with crows will perhaps offer other, more reasonable explanations. Crows are probably the most game-loving of birds, and more than once, they seem to roll over on their backs, just for fun. Many times they furiously strike the substrate below their perch when a predator approaches their nest. And it is known that sometimes they lead animals to possible prey because they cannot overcome the prey by themselves, meaning that it is possible that the bird actually led the cougar to the man.
Is intelligence conscious?
There are plenty of stories about crows, and from many of them it can be concluded that they are very intelligent, but there is nothing in the stories to prove that their intelligence is conscious. Even behaviors, the sophistication behind which is much more visible to the eye, such as the habit of crows to cut a lump of fat into pieces so that they can carry them more easily, the way they precisely stack acorns so that they can fly with the whole stack, the way they arrange two donuts so that they can carry them both at once , and the simulated caches of food they prepare to deceive robbers, even all these do not prove that the crows are able to consciously consider possible actions and choose the most appropriate among them.
Based on the observations alone, it is impossible to rule out other explanations, such as instincts or mechanical learning of certain actions. Indeed, until the 90s, there was probably only one careful scientific study that indicated rational judgment in crows, of the kind that is taken for granted in humans.
This is a series of experiments published by Otto Kohler from the Zoological Institute of Königsberg (which no longer exists) in 1943. He showed that his 10-year-old pet crow, Yakov, could count to seven by training him to fetch food from a certain vessel among several vessels whose lids were each marked with a different number of dots.
Research from the last few years, most of which we both did, finally provides some conclusive evidence that crows are indeed intelligent, in the sense that they are able to use logic to solve problems.
And we found to our astonishment, that they can even distinguish between one crow and another. And in this sense they are similar to humans: we would not be able to build societies (except for those similar to societies of insects) without this ability.
Proof of problem solving
The crow is not the only bird to which it is customary to attribute wisdom. In the last 20 years there has been a flood of research that has revealed that some of their relatives in the crow family (which includes crows smaller than the black crow as well as the raven, the crow, and the jackdaw) have surprising and complex mental abilities. In some species it seems that these abilities do not fall short of the abilities of great apes, and even exceed them. Cicadas, for example, have a wonderful memory that stores thousands of locations of food caches - a task that most humans would struggle to accomplish.
Studies have shown that the New Caledonian crow (Corvus moneduloides) makes tools from parts of the leaves of the pandanus plant and uses them to extract larvae from tree crevices. But what was not known was the extent to which these extraordinary feats involve built-in blind programming, or memorization and memory (based on past trial and error), or thinking (choosing between options represented and weighed in the mind).
We therefore designed experiments designed to isolate the roles and relative importance of each of these possibilities. In the first experiment we presented individual crows with food hanging on a wire. To get the delicacy they had to lean down from the pole they were standing on, grab the string with their beak, pull the string up, place the loop of string they pulled on the pole, step on it with enough pressure that it wouldn't slip, then let go of the beak's grip on the string and repeat this series of actions six times or more.
We found that at least some of the adult birds examined the situation for a few minutes and then performed this multi-step process in one attempt that lasted only about 30 seconds, without devoting any preliminary efforts to trial and error. In a classic design of a laboratory experiment examining the behavior of animals, each step in the desired action is rewarded with food, while incorrect steps are punished with an electric shock.
The connections between the steps in the series are apparently created without the animal having to understand how each of them contributes to the final result. However, it is not possible that the birds we tested have already encountered this task in the wild, and therefore it is not possible that they learned to perform it in the past through trial and error. Therefore, the simplest explanation is that they imagined options and deduced what steps they should take.
However, success in the test required maturity. Young birds (one or two months after learning to fly) are unable to perform this complex operation. And a one-year-old bird needs an average of six minutes to solve the problem. In those six minutes, they openly try different options (for example, fly to the food, try to tear the string, peck it or pull and twist it).
No step in the series of tug-of-wars of the crows will be rewarded with food. They had to complete the whole long series to get something to eat. One could perhaps argue that on the side of each stage there is a "mental" reward that acts as a simple positive reinforcement, because a crow sees the food approaching it, without realizing that each stage in the series brings it closer to its goal. But this explanation stands on chicken knees. If each step was learned by trial and error, many, many attempts would be needed, and learning the entire series would certainly require months of training. But it was not so. The birds seemed to know what they were doing.
Did they understand?
However, it is impossible to know that they know unless they behave according to certain predictions. For example, if the crows knew what they were doing, they should also know what they had already done. They should have known, for example, that after raising the prize tied by the string, it was still attached to the pole. To check if they understood, we chased them off the pole after they brought up a piece of meat. If they dropped the meat, it means they knew it was attached to the pole. If they fly away with the meat (and cause it to tear from their beak), it means that they did not know. Most of them dropped the meat. On the other hand, if meat was placed on the pole to which a string was attached, which was not tied to the pole, the crows would always take it in their flight.
When you understand, there is no need, or almost no need, to conduct experiments. Learning by trial and error, on the other hand, does not require logic. We therefore asked to do another experiment to find out if the birds faced the challenge of pulling the meat through random movements that happened to have a reward on their side, but there was no logic behind them. This time we presented inexperienced birds with the same practical options, but in a situation that we hoped would make no sense to them. That is, the wire was placed so that they had to pull it down to bring the food up.
Even in this situation the crows showed interest in the food. They explored the device and poked and pulled the string and thus sometimes brought it a little closer to them. But they soon gave up, and no bird learned to get the food, although the same pull-step-release sequence that had previously enabled them to get the food easily could have made it possible again.
We therefore believe that pulling straight up was learned quickly and sometimes almost "immediately" just because it was based on logic. The crows are apparently able to examine actions in their heads and imagine their results. It seems that most animals do not have such an ability, or it exists in them only to a small extent, and there is a good adaptive reason for this.
What are the crows thinking about?
Studying the mental states of animals, who cannot tell us what they are thinking, is fraught with difficulties. And in practice we do not know, and perhaps we will not be able to know, what is going on in the mind of another animal, and perhaps not in the minds of other individuals of our species. But if we adopt the principle of Occam's razor and adopt the simplest explanation, according to the best scientific tradition, we can conclude that the experiments we conducted provide consistent confirmation of the hypothesis that crows use some mental representation that guides their actions.
The results of the tug-of-war experiments require the use of logic. And the tactics of robbery and guarding against it show that the crows remember the things that their competitors noticed and they estimate the expected threat as a result. They attribute to their competitors the ability to know, and combine this knowledge with the dominance status, to make strategic decisions about establishing food caches and emptying them.
Learning does exist, but it cannot explain all the observed behavior, because this behavior is manifested very quickly, almost immediately, without trial and error at all. We therefore hypothesize that the crows start with a game behavior pattern inherent in them from birth that produces the experience that is a necessary condition for learning. The learning may then be translated into conscious awareness, that is, the ability to use logic. Such an ability is useful in the highly unpredictable social environment of predators and competitors, and it can also be transferred and applied to any other state of affairs, such as pulling up food hanging on a string.
We don't know how unusual behavior like that of the crows is among animals.
About the authorsBernd Heinrich (Heinrich) and Thomas Bugnyar (Bugnyar) are fascinated by the intellectual skills of crows. They studied the birds together when Bognier was a research associate at the University of Vermont where Heinrich has been a professor of biology since 1980. Heinrich received his doctorate at UCLA and spent 10 years in the Department of Entomology at UC Berkeley before moving to Vermont. He authored several well-known books, including "Crows in Winter" (Simon & Schuster, 1989) and "The Mind of the Crow" (Harper-Collins, 1999), which will be re-released in the summer of 2007. Bognier received a doctorate from the University of Vienna for his research on crows At the Konrad Lorenz Research Station in Gronau, Austria. Today he is a lecturer at the School of Psychology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
But we hypothesize that, although it is probably not rare, it is usually limited to certain types of tasks, because there is a rich variety of basic instincts and learning tendencies that are precisely adapted to the animal's living environment. However, in crows it may be more general than in most other animals.
We think so because we don't know of any game-loving bird like the crow that is exposed to such a wide variety of unexpected scenarios. Perhaps thanks to these tendencies, the crows became the bird whose natural distribution is the largest in the world, a bird that inhabits the same continents as humans, and integrates easily, like them, in many different habitats.
From the August-September issue of Scientific American Israel
15 תגובות
I've heard of crows in Tokyo dropping nuts into a crosswalk, letting cars run over the nuts, waiting for a green light for pedestrians, and then taking the cracked nuts.
How beautiful it is like Rashomon
Hi, what's up? I'm so excited, I've never been asked to testify, wow. In short, I don't understand what the commotion is about, you know, as they say, girls just want to have a father, like... so in short, I once met with the rabbit to roll something in his den and we pretended that we were not in each other's section but a girl I've had a crush on him for a long time now, so after we drank a bit, he wanted me to wear the United uniform and play for him a bit, and I was like, what is Stella, so I agreed. From there I'm totally into experiencing things and such, so when my friend came to pay a surprise visit to the lair, I went with him to another room and he was wearing the United outfit and I was already hot, so we gave a high initial number that wouldn't embarrass any encryption algorithm. After that we went to the park and my friend said he wasn't feeling well so he moved and we'll be in touch, so I told him ok and we'll talk. I haven't seen him for a few months, I was told that he was hospitalized peacefully and I got a shank, like, he doesn't look like that, and what did I lose from him, and then I also just met Alferon who treated me nicely and brought me nuts that he broke on the road Alone, just him and his intelligent bird brain and that's what pissed me off so we came to the garden at night and wanted to do it on the bench and suddenly who comes? My friend the hospitalized Stalin. What turns out? that he and Alferon are friends from the neighborhood and that they used to play soccer together, so they hugged and kissed and then they started calling me a whore and that I'm trying to quarrel between friends and that they're going to call me a slut and it's a shame for my time and whatnot they didn't speak well, so I grabbed this maniac crow and pushed him to my friend to the ass So if you see a Caucasian maniac with a crow in his ass, you'll know it's him. What sections?
Alice tells a completely different story
Some time ago, I don't remember how long because I have the brain of a bird (life), we met some guys to play football in the hope that Abergil the son of a bitch knocked on a faucet for us so there were only 9 guys. Because I'm the youngest, the bastards sent me to find a tenth player. Now I've been walking around for about twenty-five minutes and there's not a single maniac crow who wants to come and complete our number except Ohanina who plays in KPS but the way his team looks, he'd better go make pickles. Here and there I see a bunch of overgrown human puppies with a piece of paper burning in their mouths and bottles thrown on the floor sitting and tearing themselves up laughing so I come to them with the United shirt and the ball and ask if anyone wants to come and stand at the gate? Some kid jumps up with some Caucasian name like that, I don't remember exactly, and tries to touch my bulbul, I smacked him in the head and told him that this is the last time he shakes hands because next time I will take the spleen out of his ass with the beak. In the end he came to stand in the goal but we didn't have time to play much because five dental assistants came and the whole team went with them to a hotel. Now here the opinions are divided, because my girlfriend was accused of rape and we claimed that everything was consensual, in any case we got six months in a rehabilitation prison so I got a bus license and went to work at Faisal Transport in Jericho. One of the times when I drive children to school, some maniac stands in the middle of the road, now I tell myself that I don't care, I run over a maniac on my balls and then I see that it's the one who played football with us so I stopped him and we chatted a bit and in the end I brought him home. After that I saw him one more time when he surprised me and my Yiziza on a bench in the garden he made us movies so I had to beat him up and hospitalize him peacefully. Little trash!
Guys, things are out of control.
A. The president sexually harassed me.
A. The second me too.
Captain Cook must have branched out too much because he got a completely distorted picture of reality. I'm not a crow at all, and Alferon the crow is also a very good friend of mine (at least he was until the part he did with Alice and the silence is nice for that), I'm just a guy who hopefully lives not far from the market and I met Alferon in football as I already told.
Chaim is also probably a type of footballer of the type of Alon Mizrahi who wants to play either in Spain or in Europe... otherwise I don't understand his comment about a bird's brain and not a crow's because it is known that crows are a type of highly developed mammals like Chaim who apparently likes to suckle!
This whole thing with smart crows isn't it a flower crow, the most I've seen from them is throwing nuts on the road (and the fact that they lost at chess to Yuval the idiot). Go Beitar.
Ashton!!! I will catch you and I am on my way to you Captain Cook delivers my word!
Hello captains! what's happening today? Listen, I know Alferon personally, he is my best friend. Such a lovable crow, but what, when his friendship is stolen like this maniac crow Ashton Grunman II he gets very angry and usually takes revenge. You don't know what a bully he is, so listen sir you don't want to get into a fight with Alferon the vengeful crow because he just got out of the cage yesterday and he's angry. very angry.
So listen, I'm not suggesting that you spread your wings and fly to the Day of Peace Hospital, lest the raven Alferon grabs you by the beak and flips you, pulls off your tail feathers and shoves you into the garbage grinder at the Hiria dump.
Well, I'm just being neutral here, but, my dear, listen, he didn't take pills today and if he catches you... you're doomed.
Praying for your safety, Alferon's friend, Captain Cook.
Haim, I didn't mean to make fun of the article at all. My response is completely serious and genuine. There really was such a crow.
From time to time I come here to see new articles, especially regarding neurology, this is a good site in my opinion.
They are not that smart at all... I once had a crow who always lost to me in checkmate, he was so stupid...
Ishtavan, what's up with you? The Crow Man? Just...a great piece!!
A year plus ago I wanted to use crows to present my idea to potential investors... I thought it would be special if twenty crows stood on a branch above and screamed together as soon as I gave a signal! Except that it was a problem to get close to them not to mention preparing exercises with them for different situations including acrobatic exercises because of their high ability in aviation... these were my thoughts then!
A crow like Elfron (from Yael's response) could help me get closer to all the members of the group! By the way, I used to hate crows...but that has changed, of course!
This was a time when I became aware of dark matter and when I wanted to build a sculpted model that would explain the development of physics as well as build the Einstein Rosen Bridge (on truth) because reading about it brought me.. ideas flew in my head!
My hope was that the model, which in the meantime has grown to dimensions of 20 by 30 meters and about 10 meters high (there is a lot of "theoretical" material) would interest Tel Aviv University, who would agree to place it next to the Institute of Exact Sciences..and as a result, universities from all over the world would order similar models in accordance with the time and place! And together with them educational bridges that draw inspiration from the idea of the Einstein Rosen Bridge.. that's how I sailed through my thoughts and temporarily solved for myself the employment problems for the next twenty years and.. then came the student strike that went on and on.. and on.. which broke me! Because I wanted to participate in it but I thought how long would it last? week? I broke down because I had a special opportunity to go inside to participate in a university activity and to be in a comfortable place to propose the idea of a model model sculpture !! Who imagined such a long strike?
I could no longer concentrate on the model.. staying out of the strike took me out of focus and weakened my will.. because a huge door opened and I didn't know how to enter! But from experience, opportunities arise all the time, you just have to prepare for them!
Today I returned to old and more commercial ideas and I'm on my way to find investors..and if it succeeds, maybe I'll return to the idea of the model if it was even worth it in the first place! What's more interesting in this story is that I found a tune on YouTube (and I wasn't even looking! But the way I heard it, I knew that a tune was needed for removing the lot) for removing the lot from the model!! I always find myself at the end of my (imaginary) projects..it has happened to me a lot that within a short time (a day) I see the "successful of course" ending..in reality the phone is busy! And sometimes the brain too!
And how did we get it from the crows? Good question ! Maybe she should be referred to the wise crows?
You probably have the brain of a bird, not a crow.
To remind you, stupid answers and comments are not on this site.
So fly away from here fast. Psychos like you have other sites that fit your level on the internet.
Ah! I know Elfron! I also once sat smoking with the guys and then he came dressed in a Manchester United uniform with a soccer ball under his wing and asked who wanted to come and stand in the goal because he and his guys were playing five on five and they lacked a goalkeeper so I went to play with them and suddenly 5 friends arrived in white coats and yelled at us that we were not allowed to play ball between two and four and that we were disturbing and that we should fly away so everyone flew away and only I went and then I fell into the rabbit hole and I saw Alice and she was also wearing a Manchester United uniform but she didn't have a ball, my luck There was a small blue ball with a drawing of Donald the duck so we divided it half and got into bed the daughter who knows how to fuck is a waste of time after that we smoked some more and went to a playground and when I saw the lure and my image I got a pain in the balls so I said goodbye to them and took the first bus back Home and who do I see driving the bus? You are Elfron! He told me I was a maniac and why did I disappear like that for six months? So I told him that I just jumped to Alice and what is he talking about? So he tells me, it's a fact, in the meantime I got a bus license and I drive horny nuns to pilgrim sites all over the country from there we got back and I went to peace because I was already on the verge of losing my sanity and they hospitalized me there for five months, and since then I saw Alferon twice more once Fighting with some cocky parrot who drove everyone crazy, the whole time he was flying around asking "Who's number one?" So Alferon bent his wing and plucked a few feathers from his tail and a second time he was making out with Alice on the bench in the garden and my fuse was lit and I came to tell him that he is the most slutty crow I know, in the positive sense of the word, and that it has very little to do with him making out with my girlfriend So what does the maniac tell me? Ride ride before Baruch hospitalizes you now I was already hot and nervous right from the start I grabbed the trash at the source I pushed him into the cage and to this day he plays the canary at my old and senile neighbor in the Hatikva neighborhood who is sure that it is the canary her carcass husband bought for her when they met. What sections?
Yaeli from whom,
It is not clear to me what motivated me to read the section about the wise crows, perhaps boredom or perhaps because the other articles this morning were so dreary that the wise crows seemed fascinating for a moment. One way or another, the article led to a response and the response to the blog and the blog.. Well, you know if I had a torch I would light it in your honor. You have a new reader for the blog 🙂 Lovely morning Yael.
exciting.
I believe that their social skills are also developed and they have character, I saw it with my own eyes.
In her peace, there was a familiar crow among most of the hospitalized, they even gave him the name "Alferon" which suited his character.
He liked to sit among the patients, once with the guys from my ward when we sat down to smoke he joined us, stole the cigarette from me and knew exactly which side to hold it without burning, then he searched my bag, I don't know what he was looking for there, no I wonder if he was looking for money.
For some reason he liked her peace but in the end he met his death when he grabbed one of the patients' bed.
The story is completely true.