Crows found to have sensory consciousness

[Wepwawet]

Research published in Science The science stuff  shows that crows have sensory consciousness, explained in the abstract:

 

Quote

 

Abstract

Subjective experiences that can be consciously accessed and reported are associated with the cerebral cortex. Whether sensory consciousness can also arise from differently organized brains that lack a layered cerebral cortex, such as the bird brain, remains unknown. We show that single-neuron responses in the pallial endbrain of crows performing a visual detection task correlate with the birds’ perception about stimulus presence or absence and argue that this is an empirical marker of avian consciousness. Neuronal activity follows a temporal two-stage process in which the first activity component mainly reflects physical stimulus intensity, whereas the later component predicts the crows’ perceptual reports. These results suggest that the neural foundations that allow sensory consciousness arose either before the emergence of mammals or independently in at least the avian lineage and do not necessarily require a cerebral cortex.

 

That corvids, and other birds, are smart is not a new idea, think Hugin and Munin, and in modern times I'm sure many of us have seen video evidence on documentaries and Youtube about just how smart they can be. The most famous example is that of the Caledonian crow Betty who was able to bend copper wire into a hook in order to pull food out of a cylinder. Since then she has been surpassed by other corvids showing even greater skills. The authors of this paper have for the first time been able to monitor neuronal activity during experiments in real time. Previously to measure brain activity a bird had to be trussed up and placed in a scanner, and as it wasn't engaged in any activity the results did not give a good idea normal brain activity when the bird was active. These results now put birds, corvids at least, into the same range as us and "higher" mammals such as apes, and researchers have been calling corvids "feathered apes" for a while now. This research ties in with other work done over the years that has shown that corvids have the ability to think about the future and plan. This involves food caches, but it is not a simple matter of hiding food for later, many animals do that, but how they do it and the deceptions they engage in.

This research will cause us to have a re-think over animal intelligence and consciousness, and puts our "exceptionalism" in serious doubt, in fact I think the only difference between us and all other animals in intelligence is one of degree and application of that intelligence via the opposing thumb.

What the researchers have not addressed, and that is because it is another subject, though related, is the extreme miniaturization of the avian brain which allows them to have proportionaly far more neurons than us, and by us that means all mammals as our neuron density is the same, and a higher density allows information to be moved faster within the brain. Pigeons have six times the density of neurons than us and can process information nearly 50% faster. Corvids have about 84 times the density of pigeons, but I have yet to see any experiments that have measured how fast information travels in their brains, perhaps because it will make us look "stupid".

The avian brain is a modified coelurosaur brain, therefore related to the brain of the "raptors", which birds are anyway, and the tyranosaurs. So when a paleontologist points to the "crocodile like" T.rex brain and says this was a "dumb" animal, he cannot know what it's internal structure was like, and if was miniaturized. The insult "bird brain" has outlived it's usefulness, and, I suggest, "beast of the fields". We have long suffered a blind spot caused by scientific ignorance on the one hand, and a desire to separate us from the "beasts", partly for religious reasons.

[khol]

Ive watched two crows work in tandem. For those of you living near the ocean perhaps you've witnessed seagulls taking a clam and dropping it at height to crack the shell. One particular time I was watching one do this. Took him a few drops but eventually he acheived his goal and started tearing the shell open. Out of nowhere two crows landed, one hopped up too the seagull, distracted him the other instantly grabbed the clam and they both flew off.

Im sure snickering to themselves haha. Intelligent and amazing creatures

[Wepwawet]

There's a tale recounted by corvid guru John Marzluff in one of his books about ravens working with, or against another species. He writes that a woman in, I think Colarado, was outside her house when she heard a raven making a lot of noise. She looked around and saw a cougar stalking her, and then ran inside. She thought that the raven had saved her life by alerting her to the cougar, but Marzluff thinks that the raven had drawn the couger to the woman, hoping to feast on her remains when the cougar had finished with her. This interpretation fits with what we know about ravens working with wolves to find prey for them and draw them to it. Wolves are clever, but I think it may be more accurate to say that the ravens are using the wolves, controlling them to an extent even.

[Seti42]

When I was living in Baltimore, I saw what appeared to be a war between crows and pigeons in my neighborhood. Pigeon nests were overturned, spilling eggs and chicks to the street below. Crows would gather, caw, then go silent before flying off en masse to do these attacks. I also saw a few crows on my roof through the skylight. They murdered a pigeon, severing its head and left the body right on the skylight. This 'offensive' lasted about two weeks, and after it was over, I didn't see any pigeons in my neighborhood for months. Tons of crows, though.

[+DanL]

Crows have a lot of smarts for a bird brain. They can count up to two. I used to hunt them to keep them out of the corn. We had a stand sort of like a deer stand that we would put in the field. If they saw you go in the stand they would never come. If two people came and then one left they weren't fooled a bit but if three of you came and then two left as soon as those two were gone they would come into the field. I didn't believe it until i saw it and we did it several times. About the only other way to get a few of them would be to go in at night and stay there until morning. Once you shot a couple that was it they were gone and wouldn't come back until they saw you leave. They are a hard bird to hunt. they also know what a gun is. No gun and they will sometimes even buzz you. Bring a gun and they disappear.

[Wepwawet]

I thought perhaps I should back up what I wrote about the avian brain that was not covered in the article linked to.

This paper is is entitled "Birds have primate-like numbers of neurons in the forebrain" Brainy birds   What the authors mean by "primate-like" is that birds, due to miniaturization, really do have almost as many neurons as primates even though their brains are physically very much smaller.

A few quotes from the paper:

Quote

Because corvid brains tend to be larger than brains of noncorvid songbirds for any given body size (Fig. 1D and Fig. S4C), corvids have larger total numbers of neurons than noncorvid songbirds of the same body size (Fig. 1E). We suggest that corvid brains are scaled-up songbird brains, just as humans brains are to brains of nonhuman primates (38, 47), and that large absolute numbers of neurons endow corvids with superior cognitive abilities.

This comparing other birds, primarily the more basal birds that are generally considered by us to be "dumb", to corvids.

Quote

The emu, the red junglefowl, and the pigeon, all species representing more basal bird lineages (Fig. S1), share lower degree of encephalization (Fig. 1D), a proportionally smaller telencephalon (Fig. 4A), small telencephalic and dominant cerebellar neuronal fractions (Fig. 4C), generally lower neuronal densities (Fig. 2C), and larger glia/neuron ratios (Fig. S6). Therefore, their brains harbor much smaller absolute numbers of neurons than brains of equivalently sized songbirds or parrots. For instance, although a red junglefowl is ∼50-fold heavier than a great tit, both birds have approximately the same number of brain neurons (Fig. 1E and Fig. S3). Remarkably, even in these basal birds, neuronal densities in the pallium are still comparable to those observed in the primate cortex (Fig. 3A). Thus, high neuronal density in the telencephalon appears characteristic of all birds. This means that neuronal densities in the primate pallium are matched by those of chicken and emu, but surpassed by those of songbirds and parrots.

So even the "dumb" birds match primates for the number of neurons they posses, and as already stated, pigeons have 6 times the density of neurons as us and process information 50% faster Pigeons better at multitasking than humans

Not a direct quote, but extracted from the paper it can be seen that while corvids have a similar total number of neurons to small monkeys, ravens have an EQ usually stated as 2.8, the same as a great ape, though some have been found to be 3.0. Only some species of dolphin, the bottlenose being one, sit between corvids and us in brain power. Fortunately for us, there is no real possibility of the avian wing fingers evolving back into a claw, let alone a hand with an opposable thumb.

[Free99]

When I was a kid my grandmother had a garden. She had scarecrows around it. My dad told me that crows were very smart that you could point a broom stick at them like it was a rifle and they would fly off. I tried it and he was right. Apparently they are smart enough to know what guns are.

[Wepwawet]

2 hours ago, Free99 said:

When I was a kid my grandmother had a garden. She had scarecrows around it. My dad told me that crows were very smart that you could point a broom stick at them like it was a rifle and they would fly off. I tried it and he was right. Apparently they are smart enough to know what guns are.

It's also known that when a crow is killed, all other crows may avoid that area for two years. This is not just avoidance by the crows that saw the killing, but all the local crows as they pass on information. Experiments conducted by Marzluff at Seattle proved that crows can remember human faces, and who has been bad to them, and can pass that information beyond their own territory and down the generations. The researchers found that crows not in the area of the experiment, and not even alive when the experiments were first carried out five years prior, could recognize these bad faces, in fact masks worn by the researchers so they would not be mobbed going about their daily business on campus.

This video presented by John Marzluff is a good overview of corvids, with the "mask" experiment discussed at about 17:50.

 

Edited October 4, 2020 by Wepwawet

[lightly]

When we camp in th desert, every area we camp in has a pair of Ravens which greet us each morning with a fly over  and a squawk 

.    . they are probably checking for anything edible too.. .  We once put some bits of carrot out for the "Nude Wash" couple. We don't make a habit of that sort of thing though.

[Wepwawet]

Cogito ergo sum ?

or

Cogito ergo sum corvus

 

Edited October 5, 2020 by Wepwawet

[Jon the frog]

Human are way biaised on their evaluation of intelligence... elevating himself on an illusionary pedestal to tower over others animals.

[khol]

easy meal lol..

 

[Abramelin]

On 10/3/2020 at 9:04 PM, Seti42 said:

When I was living in Baltimore, I saw what appeared to be a war between crows and pigeons in my neighborhood. Pigeon nests were overturned, spilling eggs and chicks to the street below. Crows would gather, caw, then go silent before flying off en masse to do these attacks. I also saw a few crows on my roof through the skylight. They murdered a pigeon, severing its head and left the body right on the skylight. This 'offensive' lasted about two weeks, and after it was over, I didn't see any pigeons in my neighborhood for months. Tons of crows, though.

http://kromakhy.blogspot.com/2013/05/134-crows-capable-of-coordinated-attack.html?m=1

[Wepwawet]

This is not new news, or about crows, but worth repeating as maybe not everybody is aware of this.

Some birds in Australia have been seen to pick up burning twigs from an existing bush fire and drop them in a new location to start another fire. The purpose is to flush out prey. So maybe when it is seen as suspicious that fires start up unexpectedly, it may not be some drunken bozo or malignant arsonist, but birds hunting. While this may be annoying to us, deadly even, it shows a very high level of intelligence on the part of the birds.

 

Edited October 17, 2020 by Wepwawet

[Abramelin]

Well. start a thread about crows, and you will find me there, heh.

What I find fascinating about crows is, that they actually make use of fire, and not only for hunting (see link in my former post), but also for other purposes:

https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum/topic/169314-the-phoinix/?tab=comments#comment-3177985n