Amazing crow intelligence

[Sisyphus]

I'm putting this in The Lounge because I don't really have any comment besides, "look at these awesome crows," but I'll move it to biology if people have more intelligent things to say. (Sorry about the URLs, forum software won't let me embed this many videos.)

 

Anyway, here is a crow making a tool, bending a wire into a hook and using it to retrieve out of reach food:

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fijuwTeoBt8&feature=related

 

Here is a crow using three different tools in sequence, using a short stick to retrieve a medium stick, then the medium to retrieve a long stick, then the long stick to retrieve some food:

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZE4BT8QSgZk

 

Here is a magpie proving that it can recognize itself in a mirror:

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRVGA9zxXzk&feature=related

 

Here is a crow fishing with bait:

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_8hPcnGeCI&feature=related

 

And here is a rook raising the water level in a test tube by dropping stones into it, in order to retrieve a floating piece of food (it purposely chooses larger stones, and attempts this trick with a tube filled with water but not one filled with sawdust):

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=riqtFvZg1mI&feature=related

 

I know humans who couldn't figure out how to do these.

[John Cuthber]

Have you seen this one?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhmZBMuZ6vE&feature=related

[lemur]

I wonder if people trained these crows to do these things.

[Sisyphus]

Have you seen this one?

 

 

No, I hadn't. Thanks.

 

I wonder if people trained these crows to do these things.

 

No, they were not trained by humans to do any of these things, nor was it pure trial and error:

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090805144114.htm

 

However, they do train each other, passing down techniques and making improvements:

 

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/04/0423_030423_crowtools.html

 

Is it fair to say that crows have "culture?"

[lemur]

Is it fair to say that crows have "culture?"

To me culture just refers to various ways of living, fulfilling needs, thinking, feeling, acting. In that sense, I think all living things have culture and maybe you could even describe non-living things as having cultures, e.g. rust could be described as a culture of steel to corrode and break down. Since the meaning of "culture" is rooted in the metaphor of bacterial cultures that reformulate milk into things like yogurt and milk, culture basically just refers to any process of reformulation/transformation of raw materials into processed ones. Why should human-processing activities be given special status over those processed by animals or weather?

Edited November 28, 2010 by lemur

[Fuzzwood]

I see it like this. Our current evolutionary state is essentially caused by survival of the fittest. What makes you think the same mutations allowing for increased intelligence can't occur in other species? They too will be able to survive better and pass on their traits. So yeah I won't be surprised if other animals start to communicate the way we started to.

[Mr Rayon]

omg, they're so smart.

I bet in the future mankind is just gonna take advantage of all this and use them in factories as workers to bend a variety of metals. Crows may act for cheap labour for those entrepreneurs out there!

[lemur]

I see it like this. Our current evolutionary state is essentially caused by survival of the fittest. What makes you think the same mutations allowing for increased intelligence can't occur in other species? They too will be able to survive better and pass on their traits. So yeah I won't be surprised if other animals start to communicate the way we started to.

That's an interesting thought. How do you think humans would figure it out if crows or other animals were communicating in abstract concepts using complex language? Would we recognize it or maybe they would learn English or some other human language first and use it to communicate with people. Could linguists ever study crows or other animals closely enough to decipher non-human phonics, syntax, and grammar?

 

omg, they're so smart.

I bet in the future mankind is just gonna take advantage of all this and use them in factories as workers to bend a variety of metals. Crows may act for cheap labour for those entrepreneurs out there!

Animal labor was used extensively prior to industrialism but I think you're right that the benefits of using them instead of machines may ultimately outweigh their relative inefficiency. Of course, I also think that eventually wind-power will be rediscovered for global shipping since sailing ships were used for centuries before steam without using any fossil fuel.

[Sisyphus]

To me culture just refers to various ways of living, fulfilling needs, thinking, feeling, acting. In that sense, I think all living things have culture and maybe you could even describe non-living things as having cultures, e.g. rust could be described as a culture of steel to corrode and break down. Since the meaning of "culture" is rooted in the metaphor of bacterial cultures that reformulate milk into things like yogurt and milk, culture basically just refers to any process of reformulation/transformation of raw materials into processed ones. Why should human-processing activities be given special status over those processed by animals or weather?

 

To me culture is the ways of living, fulfiling needs, thinking, feeling, acting that are learned from one another, as opposed to being biologically determined or learned from one another. In other words, populations that behave differently despite being biologically the same, because of the memes they pass down. Crushing nuts under car wheels at pedestrian car walks would be part of the culture of the crows in that area of Japan.

[lemur]

To me culture is the ways of living, fulfiling needs, thinking, feeling, acting that are learned from one another, as opposed to being biologically determined or learned from one another. In other words, populations that behave differently despite being biologically the same, because of the memes they pass down. Crushing nuts under car wheels at pedestrian car walks would be part of the culture of the crows in that area of Japan.

Culture is often used to differentiate individuals according to group identities, but difference isn't the basis for culture. Think about it, why would nut-crushing be culture if it is only done by some crows but not be culture if all crows did it? Culture refers to ways of living, whether created ad hoc by an individual in an isolated situation or whether learned as institutional practices from others. It may be institutionalized culture to grind wheat berries into flour but at some point someone had to get the idea to do so in the first place. Whether someone comes up with a practice on their own or learns it from someone else, it's still a method of living and therefore culture.

 

You seem to be focussed on using culture as a logic of group-identity construction, which is a cultural practice in and of itself. It is actually a very interesting one, because it enables cultural sharing to be done at the same time as ethnic differentiation. Thus, if Robinson Crusoe discovers Friday and teaches him his language, he can convince Friday that he is ethnically different from Robinson because they have different cultures. Thus, the practice of sharing Robinson's culture of differentiation results in the Friday's belief that he is culturally different from Robinson. Isn't that ironic? Robinson could also ask Friday if he sees him as different and if Friday would say no, he could make that the basis for his claim of cultural difference. I.e. "I see you as different from me but you see me as the same as you, therefore we are different." You could call this a principle of unilateral differentiation/exclusion, I think.

Edited November 28, 2010 by lemur

[Sisyphus]

You misunderstand. That different groups behave differently is not what makes it culture, but it does prove that it is. It would still be cultural if all crows did it, but it would be difficult to distinguish that from instinctive behavior.

 

Whether someone comes up with a practice on their own or learns it from someone else, it's still a method of living and therefore culture.

 

I disagree. Culture is group learned behavior. But I guess that's just a matter of differing definitions. But the way you seem to be using it seems broad enough to be basically meaningless, i.e. it's just whatever happens, e.g. rust is the "culture" of iron.

[Moontanman]

Crows do some amazing things, they can judge the distance of a shot gun blast and stay just out of range. In one experiment a man walked into a field with a large card board tube. Sometimes the tube had a shotgun in it other times it didn't (I think it was weighted when it was empty) Crows were good enough at reading human body language to guess when the man had a gun hidden in the tube. Crows do a pretty good job of talking too, not as clear as a parrot but they get their point across, they will steal shiny objects, drop rocks on your head and if you raise them from chicks they will stay around where you live, almost like a half feral dog. Lots of people raised crows where I lived in WVa, they could be very aggravating.

 

Maybe crows of the future will be digging out human cities in archeology digs and wondering what happened to us...

[CharonY]

They are also able to solve longer logic riddles (e.g. pulling up a short stick dangling from a rope to get to a longer stick that allows then finally to retrieve food) without active training. Also they communicate dangers and teach their kids to stay away from certain individuals. Since the kids react to the person without actually having interacted with them before it is the basis for the formation of culture (in the sense of transmitting information across generations).I think we had a thread about it (specifically the worm and the stone experiment) in the news section. I personally liked the part when one of the crows decided not to participate because he got sick after eating a worm.

Edited November 29, 2010 by CharonY

[JohnB]

Am I the only one who thinks it rather counter productive to attempt to define a non human intelligence in the terms of human "culture"?

 

The only thing that can be certain from this approach is that it will lead to incorrect answers.

[CharonY]

Depends on the definition of cultures. Not all are anchored to humans. Or do you mean we should not use precisely those definitions?

I am using that in terms of traditional culture. I.e. passing down behaviors along the generations without actually direct exposure to the initial source leading to the rise of the given tradition.

[lemur]

You misunderstand. That different groups behave differently is not what makes it culture, but it does prove that it is. It would still be cultural if all crows did it, but it would be difficult to distinguish that from instinctive behavior.

Freudianism offers a good basic model of how instincts result in the development of culture. The id has desires and it encounters restrictions/constraints/obstacles in satisfying those desires (superego) and thus it develops methods of achieving what it wants. Freud is specifically referring to ego-development (i.e. development of a coherent identity and sense of self) but this could be viewed as one culture among others that gets developed by the individual to achieve what it wants. Basically, I see culture as an analytical differentiation between the actual materiality of actions and the agential aspects of how those actions are constructed and performed. So eating, for example, is a material process of supplying the body with fuel and other nutrients but culture is the methods, meanings, perceptions, and other subjective interface by which materiality is approached and negotiated. In other words, culture is ubiquitous but it is analytically distinct from objective material processes.

 

Now I'm rethinking my example of rust as a culture of steel and I'm thinking it would be more accurate to say that rust is a by-product of the culture of the bacteria converting the steel into rust. I.e. making rust is part of the way that bacteria lives and eats. There may be some anthropomorphism at work here on my part, though.

 

I disagree. Culture is group learned behavior. But I guess that's just a matter of differing definitions. But the way you seem to be using it seems broad enough to be basically meaningless, i.e. it's just whatever happens, e.g. rust is the "culture" of iron.

I think groupism has gone off the deep end in trying to appropriate the concept of culture to emphasize similarities and differences among individuals to categorize them into groups. Groupism itself is a culture, as is identity, conformity, individuality, etc. All culture can ultimately only be expressed/perform at the level of individual actors so the "group-culture" ideology is misleading. It is a remnant of Durkheimian structuralist sociology (one that gets clung to as if letting go of it would spell the end of the world, btw). Individuals can approach culture in a mode of assimilation/conformity, which itself is a learned cultural behavior. This does not make culture group-based, it just means that individuals practice the culture of viewing culture as group-based as their method of approaching and giving meaning to culture. So it's actually quite biased to take a particular lay-culture of culture and elevate it to definitional status for culture universally. I try to be more empirical than that.

 

edit: an example just occurred to me of a parrot learning to say "hello" from humans. Saying "hello" is a culture of the parrot in question although it would be impossible to call it "parrot culture" to speak human words (unless you defined the parrot's group as "pet parrots" in which case groupists would begin to think of it in terms of a group culture probably). Still, the parrot may have a culture of imitation that is partly instinctual and partly shaped through its development. Human individuals also learn culture in an individual socialization process with other individuals in various situations, but "cultural groupism" ignores this to simply assume that individuals practicing similar culture are part of the same group and individuals that are part of the same group practice similar culture. By doing this, the individuality of culture is obfuscated in favor of classifying and comparing culture at the institutional/pattern level.

Edited December 1, 2010 by lemur

[Sisyphus]

Freudianism offers a good basic model of how instincts result in the development of culture.

 

Stop. The existence of culture may be instinctive. Specific cultural behaviors are not, which is what makes them cultural as opposed to instinctive behaviors.

 

Everything else is pedantry and semantics. You can use a different definition of "culture" if you want, but it's clearly not what is being discussed, so why bring it up in this thread?

[lemur]

Stop. The existence of culture may be instinctive. Specific cultural behaviors are not, which is what makes them cultural as opposed to instinctive behaviors.

Well, you clearly stopped reading my post after that sentence because I basically explained in terms of Freud's model how culture is a step removed from instinct. The problem with your approach is that you try to distinguish behaviors as being either instinctual or cultural but instinct is the basis for engaging in cultural activities. You instinctually communicate vocally but culture is how you learn to form utterances that achieve your goal more easily than grunting at someone until they do what you want them to.

 

Everything else is pedantry and semantics. You can use a different definition of "culture" if you want, but it's clearly not what is being discussed, so why bring it up in this thread?

How is it "clearly not the one being discussed?" Who is to say that people discussing culture in this thread even have a rigorous understanding of what culture is to discuss in objectively in the first place? I am telling you how culture should be defined from an empirically rational standpoint instead of from some kind of groupist realpolitik. If you want to discuss whether crows distinguish themselves according to sub-species groups according to perceived cultural differences, that's a different issue. The issue was whether these crows were practicing culture, so answering that requires a valid definition of what culture is/means. What is it that you are trying to establish? Whether crows are more like humans than other animals intellectually?

 

 

 

[Mr Skeptic]

Well, you clearly stopped reading my post after that sentence because I basically explained in terms of Freud's model how culture is a step removed from instinct. The problem with your approach is that you try to distinguish behaviors as being either instinctual or cultural but instinct is the basis for engaging in cultural activities. You instinctually communicate vocally but culture is how you learn to form utterances that achieve your goal more easily than grunting at someone until they do what you want them to.

 

Learned behavior is learned even if the organism doesn't learn to learn (which it couldn't do anyways without being able to learn in the first place). Obviously learning has to be genetic, otherwise we wouldn't be able to do it. But that still won't make the learned behaviors genetic -- there is no gene for speaking English, for example.

 

How is it "clearly not the one being discussed?" Who is to say that people discussing culture in this thread even have a rigorous understanding of what culture is to discuss in objectively in the first place? I am telling you how culture should be defined from an empirically rational standpoint instead of from some kind of groupist realpolitik. If you want to discuss whether crows distinguish themselves according to sub-species groups according to perceived cultural differences, that's a different issue. The issue was whether these crows were practicing culture, so answering that requires a valid definition of what culture is/means. What is it that you are trying to establish? Whether crows are more like humans than other animals intellectually?

 

Culture is socially learned behaviors. At least that's what everyone means by it when they're talking about animals in general, although with humans it may have a more restrictive meaning restricting the society in question to a specific group.

[lemur]

Learned behavior is learned even if the organism doesn't learn to learn (which it couldn't do anyways without being able to learn in the first place). Obviously learning has to be genetic, otherwise we wouldn't be able to do it. But that still won't make the learned behaviors genetic -- there is no gene for speaking English, for example.

Actually I think organisms do learn to learn by learning. That is to say, as an animal develops various habits, those habits become more practices and form the basis for learning new behaviors. E.g. there must be something about the way parrots learn to imitate sounds that cause them to be able to imitate human speech. I doubt they are just born able to imitate speech without practicing, just like a baby has to practice different sounds before putting them together into words.

 

Culture is socially learned behaviors. At least that's what everyone means by it when they're talking about animals in general, although with humans it may have a more restrictive meaning restricting the society in question to a specific group.

Right, and you've just tapped into the big issue, which is how to define what constitutes a particular society or group and what is defined as "social." Is a person's relationship with their hands or a computer "social," for example, or only relationships between separate individuals with separate bodies? Likewise, this gets into the politics of who has the authority to define the boundaries of a particular group/society. If my parent tells me I'm part of a social unit called "the family" because I bear some physical resemblance, etc. and I disagree, who is to say my culture is wrong and my parent's is right? As I said, defining and territorializing individuals as parts of groups is itself one type of culture. Thus to be reasonably objective you have to use a definition of culture that is not biased toward the culture of group-identification. Culture is, therefore, any socially learned knowledge or technique for doing something (thinking, feeling, or acting) where individuals' relationships with themselves are also defined as social. E.g. if you experiment with food and come up with something you like and then right down the recipe so you can repeat it later, you have just institutionalized your own culture and practiced it by sharing it with yourself socially.

Edited December 2, 2010 by lemur

[Genecks]

That's an interesting thought. How do you think humans would figure it out if crows or other animals were communicating in abstract concepts using complex language? Would we recognize it or maybe they would learn English or some other human language first and use it to communicate with people. Could linguists ever study crows or other animals closely enough to decipher non-human phonics, syntax, and grammar?

 

 

Animal labor was used extensively prior to industrialism but I think you're right that the benefits of using them instead of machines may ultimately outweigh their relative inefficiency. Of course, I also think that eventually wind-power will be rediscovered for global shipping since sailing ships were used for centuries before steam without using any fossil fuel.

 

Very much an interesting thought. Consider that we still use animals to further medical science research in our industrial world. We're still using animals for industry!

 

But this crow stuff is definitely a few years old. "Betty the Crow" comes to mind.

Edited December 10, 2010 by Genecks

[cypress]

Am I the only one who thinks it rather counter productive to attempt to define a non human intelligence in the terms of human "culture"?

 

The only thing that can be certain from this approach is that it will lead to incorrect answers.

 

I am another that sees this line of belief as counter productive. Other than incorrect answers though, it certainly acts to further a prior commitment to a particular agenda.

[Genecks]

I am another that sees this line of belief as counter productive. Other than incorrect answers though, it certainly acts to further a prior commitment to a particular agenda.

 

I often consider the limits to one's culture a product of one's limits due to biology.

 

For example, birds got wings. So, if shit gets too complicated, they fly away.

Society of cowards, if you ask me. None of them want to stay and fight the good fight.

 

*claws at the air like a cat*