As some of you may know, it was shown recently that magpies are self-aware (this was done using the mirror test). This put the bird amongst the small group of animals that fall into this category: "great apes (bonobos, chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas, humans), bottlenose dolphins, Orcas, elephants, and European Magpies" (stolen from Wikipedia).
Now crows, a relative of magpies in the corvids family ("a group that includes crows, ravens, rooks, jackdaws, jays and magpies" (BBC)), are making a run for the title of smartest animal around. Check out this article by the BBC that discusses tool use and other evidence of meaningful thought within New Caladonian crow communities. If you look at nothing else, check out the first video, in which a crow picks up a straight length of wire, bends it to create a hook on one end, and then uses this newly created tool to reach a bucket of treats at the bottom of a small shaft.
And if you are still interested in finding out more about crows check out this TED talk on the subject of useful things we may be able to train crows to do.
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I'll check on this later, but your topic is awesome. A+
ReplyDelete(Speaking of which, I wonder if there's a way to rate posts on here - that could be quite useful ...)
Haha thank you, thank you.
ReplyDeleteI would love to have some kind of rating mechanism. I know that 538 has a list of "Top Posts" on the right side of the page, but I don't see any way to rate their posts and have no idea how that gadget works.
I just did a bit of research and signed up (for free) Somebody Think A Little to be indexed by the same group that does the 538 post ranks. I don't know how long that will take, but we should be able to have that feature up and running soon.
ReplyDeleteLast update: Check out this page to get an idea of what PostRank does. In short each of us signs up for PostRank and subscribes to STAL via PostRank, and then based on our interactions with the blog through PostRank each post gets a ranking. Personally I don't have any interest in using a feed reader for the blog so I will be skipping this, but in case anyone else is interested I will leave the gadget installed at the bottom of the right-side column of the blog.
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