The interesting part of this research is that baboons, while evolutionary closer to humans, fail to perform this task.
So scientists were thinking "hmm, maybe perception of geometric regularity is a unique skill to homo sapiens?". It turned out that crows can tell a square from trapezoids, too.
I would argue the interesting part is that these shapes are nearly impossible to find outside of human society. Sure you can find quasi-crystals and straight lines occasionally, but either this is reused functionality (abstract thought?!) or they have a special relationship with things humans see as human.
I assume the subtext of this research is not that human are special, and more that each specific claim towards each species of animal needs exploration and confirmation.
And it genuinely takes a lot of time when dealing with reasonably complex animals.
It reminds me of the research on cinereous tits, where the researcher had to spend like half a year at a time to validate a given chant matches a given word.
I've been on the internet for twenty-some-odd years and at some point this attitude has come to feel like willful ignorance (generally; i do agree that it is unsurprising that crows recognize patterns. Or much less obviously intelligent animals for that matter, consensus-driven evidence hopefully inbound.)
Most people in active testable science have worldviews where they suspect many relationships about the world that have not been strongly validated. Einstein was not the first person to discuss how space and time seem inextricably related in a special way; pythagoras was not the first to figure out how to derive the third side of a right triangle; galileo was not the first to suggest a heliocentric worldview; etc etc. Demonstrating things that seem obvious or intuitive or that are already assumed and used practice is still immensely valuable. Communication is hard, and demonstrating things about the world without getting tangled up in the inherent unsuitability of language to precisely describe the world is incredibly, incredibly difficult. We are still validating knowledge that the ancients practiced on a daily basis. Galen certainly never bothered to persuade; only to inform.
It nearly makes me want to ban articles if the paper is available. The discussion inevitably sags.
It does but one has to hold a belief for it to be eventually confirmed or denied.
Many people historically and presently see themselves as the pinnacle of a godly creation, so they put humans above everything and anything, meaning that most perspectives to validate or not are about how unique we are. It might be annoying or backwards but at least there are people out there still willing to chip at it, one study at a time.
The study is testing a very specific type of "recognizing shapes"; which the title of the article calls "geometric regularity". The "background stimuli" are shapes that crows would be expected to be able to distinguish, and are used to train the crows on the task. Whereas the "probe stimuli" are the actual experiment.
As a sibling indicated baboons can not distinguish these shapes easily. Additionally, rather than a binary "crows can recognize shapes" the study shows how well crows process the shapes. One of the graphs in the paper, but not the article shows that two different crows have a similarly hard time with the rhombus.
In other studies, this same test was applied to humans to find that it is a fairly innate skill rather than developed by doing geometry in school.
Specieism in science goes way back. The funny thing is, people who live closer to nature and birds and animals have known about animal intelligence for millennia. But they were "primitives" who couldn't possibly have more knowledge than learned white people.
And crows? Humans have been battling crows since the beginning of agriculture. It takes some serious effort to crow-proof everything on a farm.
Kind of off topic but I just got back from the park and there is a public water bowl set out for dogs and a crow was manipulating something in the water - after a time my eyebrows went up as I realized the crow was softening some dried out discarded human food to make it easy to break up and eat!
They started washing their food in my bird bath like that. I had to put a stop to it once they started soaking dead rodents and things like that. A) gross, B) they don't need soaking. (:
Crows soak all their food in our (sorry, their) swimming pool!
Sadly, that includes rodents too. I wonder if it is because of the chlorine that could potentially "clean" the food, or if they want to wash out sand, etc.
Been careful not to yell or approach abruptly and they definitely learn to recognize our faces, since we can get pretty close to them now.
They've been known to both wash the salt off french fries and dip chicken nuggets in sauce packs.
Anyone who's ever argued that you shouldn't feed crows because it interferes with nature hasn't figured out that crows already adopted to urban human-inhabited environments, and feeding them quality food (cat kibble is cheap and works) is very much a net positive. If you see crows with white feathers, that's malnutrition, and you should give them something good to eat.
I can also recommend bulk roasted unsalted peanuts. They have some advantages: they're cheap, they don't crumble, so you can always have a few in your coat pocket, and they take some work from the crows. They'll enjoy the challenge, and you'll enjoy watching.
I once lived in territory of some ravens, and it was a deep pleasure to gradually become friends with one. It took maybe a year of consistent effort, but eventually he'd come hang out with me outdoors. I would say bits of Poe's "The Raven" to him, and when his turn came he'd respond with soft, friendly mutterings. He especially liked to visit when we'd grill and eat outdoors, as there was nothing he liked better than some some bone with bits of meat and gristle left on it.
I wouldn't be surprised if that crow's got a whole routine down: grab snack > hydrate snack > enjoy snack > judge the dog for drinking from its prep station
I love crows so much. I had some in my backyard that I would give stuff too a lot. When I would leave in the morning for work, they would perch on my gutters and make clucking sounds while looking down at me. I'd wave and be on my way.
Animal's intelligence is often underrated. We used to keep goats which many wont consider problem sovlers. They had learned to open gate bolts with their mouths. The bolts I am talking about have a handle and a rod. the handle needs to be rotated then the bolt can be slided out while keeping the handle in the rotated state.
My cat learned to jump and grab the door handles to open doors. It was escaping the house that way. I had to lock the door while I am at home so he doesn't escape. After some tries and seeing that it is no longer working, he forgot/gave up at doing it.
Totally. I've been reading a bunch of stuff related to philosophy of mind lately, and especially the early stuff just assumes this big gap between humans and animals. I think a big factor here is humans wanting to feel special, so another way to look at it is human intelligence being overrated.
How comparable is the intelligence of crows, dolphins, octopi and non human apes? Somewhat or not at all? There seem to be a host of things that each of those can do. Can apes do all of those things and the other groups just a few things each? Is there a huge leap of separation or does the leap come between us and them? Is it in any way quantifiable?
I was watching some crows eat some food in a parking lot yesterday. The first one landed next to a tiny morsel, investigated it a bit, then did a head bob thing while looking up and making what sounded like a cross between a hoot and a caw. Another crow swooped in about ten seconds later and they poked at it a bit. Then a lady walked over towards them, they flew away, and she dumped out her half eaten to-go meal in the parking spot. Too easy.
A lot of it comes from communication. We don't know how intelligent some of these things are simply because we can't communicate with them.
For apes and gorillas we can communicate. We've taught them sign language so we know hands down in terms of language we beat them. But for dolphins and octopi, we just don't really know.
We have not taught apes sign language. They can learn and form crude signs and use them to respond to stimuli or for rewards (wanting an orange, for example) but they’re not meaningfully communicating. It’d be like me claiming I taught my dog English because he can press the little button that plays a sound of me saying “biscuit!” when he wants a treat (which you have to take away from him because he will just mash it, since dogs want dog biscuits).
The way I understand it is that we have thought apes words but we have never thought them grammar.
They are unable to derive consistent meaning from the structure of a sentence. They are incapable of understanding sentences, and that might be the thing that sets us apart. They might be able to understand some vague association between two or three words when put together but at most they perceive it as a bag of words.
Went down that rabbit hole of training crows to do things. Crows are such amazingly intelligent creatures. There is a whole scene of people teaching and training wild crows silly things.
I had to stop feeding the local crows. I thought I'd been training them to come when I called, but realized that they had started training me to come out by pecking my roof.
I started feeding a wounded pheasant that frequented my garden. I trained it to come to a specific place near the back door so the local squirrels didn’t grab everything. The pheasant soon learned that it could get me to come out with food by going to that place and squawking loudly
It's always me coming into these comment sections on animal intelligence posting shadow the rat videos, well, I love rats sooo much, so here I am again. They're really wonderful pets who are clearly very loving and extremely intelligent. Cannot recommend them enough, they're fantastic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV9z0c1hjnA
I had a similar thought. Birds are extremely visual animals. They should be good at noticing changes in patterns and such.
It might seem remarkable that they can do this in a structured setting like humans do, but the more I learn about animals… The less remarkable I think this kind of behaviour is.
I always thought these plurals were just crazy, and felt so relieved to see decent researcher explaining them as potential jokes that ended up catching on and staying for centuries afterwards.
Edit, to add: years ago a lot of people kept pigeons in rooftop coops around NYC. As a kid there was an older guy near by who you'd see on his roof waving around a cloth that sort of directed the birds as they flew in a big flock. Now I'm imagining that but a flock of crows bringing back loot to some gangster on a rooftop.
This is a real thing with cigarette butts. You just need to set up a vending machine where the crows can "redeem" their trash for treats and they'll even teach each other about it.
I recall the story, and the attention the author received.
I can imagine this working, but digging into it at the time, there was no validation it worked at all. I couldn't get videos of it working, or even a cogent response from the author.
One of the things people seem to miss, is that bring intelligent doesn't mean domesticated. Or that an animal domesticates well.
Crows can understand a great deal, but does that mean they care to do your bidding? Even for treats?
Take a look at the differences between cats and dogs. You can train cats, but often they barely care. Dogs are, however, far easier to train.
Likely a difference in external validation.
And after all, what is true value to a crow? City crows seem to have an easy time of it. I don't think they go hungry, and there is lots of free tasty food.
ISTR a study where someone trained crows to retrieve street garbage. It stopped working because the peanuts or similar they were using to pay the crows were less valuable to them than the discarded pizzas etc they were supposed to be bringing back
Thinking about this more,it seems that it's not so much that crows or humans, recognise geometric shapes, but that they can, which is slightly odd and interesting, as all life on earth eveloved and thrived, without any recourse to geometry, nature famously abhoring strait lines, there bieng non to exploit in the first place.
And for the species that "cant" recognise geometrical shapes, perhapsthey just reject them out of hand, as a deaper level of awareness signals danger, as the closest nature gets to geometry is in splintered and jagged shapes left from violent phenominon.
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So scientists were thinking "hmm, maybe perception of geometric regularity is a unique skill to homo sapiens?". It turned out that crows can tell a square from trapezoids, too.
And it genuinely takes a lot of time when dealing with reasonably complex animals.
It reminds me of the research on cinereous tits, where the researcher had to spend like half a year at a time to validate a given chant matches a given word.
Most people in active testable science have worldviews where they suspect many relationships about the world that have not been strongly validated. Einstein was not the first person to discuss how space and time seem inextricably related in a special way; pythagoras was not the first to figure out how to derive the third side of a right triangle; galileo was not the first to suggest a heliocentric worldview; etc etc. Demonstrating things that seem obvious or intuitive or that are already assumed and used practice is still immensely valuable. Communication is hard, and demonstrating things about the world without getting tangled up in the inherent unsuitability of language to precisely describe the world is incredibly, incredibly difficult. We are still validating knowledge that the ancients practiced on a daily basis. Galen certainly never bothered to persuade; only to inform.
It nearly makes me want to ban articles if the paper is available. The discussion inevitably sags.
Many people historically and presently see themselves as the pinnacle of a godly creation, so they put humans above everything and anything, meaning that most perspectives to validate or not are about how unique we are. It might be annoying or backwards but at least there are people out there still willing to chip at it, one study at a time.
As a sibling indicated baboons can not distinguish these shapes easily. Additionally, rather than a binary "crows can recognize shapes" the study shows how well crows process the shapes. One of the graphs in the paper, but not the article shows that two different crows have a similarly hard time with the rhombus.
In other studies, this same test was applied to humans to find that it is a fairly innate skill rather than developed by doing geometry in school.
And crows? Humans have been battling crows since the beginning of agriculture. It takes some serious effort to crow-proof everything on a farm.
Been careful not to yell or approach abruptly and they definitely learn to recognize our faces, since we can get pretty close to them now.
Anyone who's ever argued that you shouldn't feed crows because it interferes with nature hasn't figured out that crows already adopted to urban human-inhabited environments, and feeding them quality food (cat kibble is cheap and works) is very much a net positive. If you see crows with white feathers, that's malnutrition, and you should give them something good to eat.
I once lived in territory of some ravens, and it was a deep pleasure to gradually become friends with one. It took maybe a year of consistent effort, but eventually he'd come hang out with me outdoors. I would say bits of Poe's "The Raven" to him, and when his turn came he'd respond with soft, friendly mutterings. He especially liked to visit when we'd grill and eat outdoors, as there was nothing he liked better than some some bone with bits of meat and gristle left on it.
https://youtu.be/EnFAW-ZxAQ0
Now they are arriving slightly before the hawks and other predators and scaring them off.
If you see crows randomly arrive, and look around, there is almost always a circling bird in the sky.
It's super cool.
For apes and gorillas we can communicate. We've taught them sign language so we know hands down in terms of language we beat them. But for dolphins and octopi, we just don't really know.
They are unable to derive consistent meaning from the structure of a sentence. They are incapable of understanding sentences, and that might be the thing that sets us apart. They might be able to understand some vague association between two or three words when put together but at most they perceive it as a bag of words.
It might seem remarkable that they can do this in a structured setting like humans do, but the more I learn about animals… The less remarkable I think this kind of behaviour is.
This one shows that they can distinguish shapes even slightly different from another. I think it is still significant and interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5rcbUqiZKI
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Edit, to add: years ago a lot of people kept pigeons in rooftop coops around NYC. As a kid there was an older guy near by who you'd see on his roof waving around a cloth that sort of directed the birds as they flew in a big flock. Now I'm imagining that but a flock of crows bringing back loot to some gangster on a rooftop.
I can imagine this working, but digging into it at the time, there was no validation it worked at all. I couldn't get videos of it working, or even a cogent response from the author.
One of the things people seem to miss, is that bring intelligent doesn't mean domesticated. Or that an animal domesticates well.
Crows can understand a great deal, but does that mean they care to do your bidding? Even for treats?
Take a look at the differences between cats and dogs. You can train cats, but often they barely care. Dogs are, however, far easier to train.
Likely a difference in external validation.
And after all, what is true value to a crow? City crows seem to have an easy time of it. I don't think they go hungry, and there is lots of free tasty food.
So why would they care?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/01/swedish-...
I guess you also need to make sure whether the crows are properly classified as employees or independent contractors.