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Blog: Crow Intelligence
from the Guardian (UK)
I've got a lot of peeves. One of my peeves is the phrase, "bird brain," which presumably means "stupid." However, having spent most of my waking life in the company of birds and a suite of other animal species (including non-human primates), I've learned that birds are much smarter than other animals. In fact, they're smarter than a rather large number of humans whom I happen to know or know about (but I am merciful; I won't name names).
Originally, people based their unfounded opinions about avian intelligence on (1) the behaviours of domestic fowl that had been inbred for thousands of generations and living in tiny overcrowded cages for hundreds of generations and (2) the physical structure of bird brains.
Basically, birds' brains look a lot different than primate brains, but now that people are actually observing wild, never domesticated birds, they're finding that birds use their brains differently than humans do to achieve the same goals. Which is consistent with structural differences.
Read more...
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