Owls
Owls
Tom Cox @cox tom
Almost certainly the best thing I wa ever told about owls was when I met an owl handler and he told me that the wild owls in the sanctuary where he worked worried about the tame show owls there and sometimes stopped by to leave them shrews and mice as presents.
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Birds are way smarter than we give them credit for. Im possitive that the smarter ones have a rudimentary language, specifically corvids. Owls are so cool, where I live I can go spot great horned owls just hiking around.
Parrots are definitely capable of using human words and phrases in context. Stuff like “bye bye” when someone leaves a room, or “want some water?” when they see you drinking from a glass and want to have a taste. Attaching sounds to concepts and using them to communicate those concepts seems like basic language stuff to me!
Source: had parrots my whole life. +bird tax
That's like the first beautiful tamed picture of a parrot I've seen. My aunt has a 27 year old parrot so he's an old fuck and I used to have a friend who's emotional state was so fucked up that her bird looked like she was on crack. Please more picture of your parrot please
Thank you, she’s adorable!
D'aawwwww
Isn't bird singing a rudimentary language ? They have different songs with different meanings
I mean as in they can describe appearances and events to each other, but probably not formulate any plans more complex than eat here, avoid that place, attack guys dressed up in Jason Voorhees costumes because three generations ago a guy dressed like that messed around with our nests... stuff like that
One time I tried to talk to a crow by telling it to caw once for yes, twice for no.
Grabbed its attention with a friendly greeting, to which it turned and looked at me, waiting for what I'd say, keeping eye-contact and everything.
I asked it if it actually was a crow, since I wasn't sure. It cawed once, and patiently waited for me to speak again, looking at me all curious. I said Thank you, and it looked like it nodded.
Obviously I have no idea if that bird actually understands that crow is what humans call it, but it did feel like I had an actual conversation with it.
I can tell you Ravens can learn their name and react to it.
We used to have a HUGE raven that would hang around a pet food co I worked at. So I started sneaking him bird seed because idgaf what the boss thinks, Im making a friend here.
One time the raven made this sound. Almost like the japanese water clock at the end of Kill Bill 1. I reacted like whoa, what a cool sound! And did a little jig. That raven named me 'waterclock' and used that sound to greet me whenever he encountered me. I miss Black-Beauty (my name for him)
That's so cool! Merlin would just peck at shoes of tourists to ask for food lol
I used to carry a bag of nuts in my pocket at work (where he used to visit me) just to get him away from scared people all the time.That sounds so funny to me lol
They can do so much more! They're super intelligent, if you think a dog is clever (and I'd agree you're right) then look up the stuff ravens can do!
I know; friend of mine nursed an injured raven chick back to health a few years ago and he stayed around for the entire summer :)
Oh wow, that's awsome!
That last one was very specific
The last one was an experiment to see what corvids teach to their young and what knowledge is just inborn to them.
Very cool!
Yes, that is what I was referencing. Im on mobile so links I cant figure out. Does anyone feel like heroing up and linking the study?
Edit: removed gender pronoun
It was one guy with a caveman mask and one with a Dick Cheney mask. Dick was ironically the neutral or good (control) person who did nothing and the caveman was the bad (treatment) person who once trapped some crows and then released them.
Wildly speculating but could it be that knowledge about skills of corvidae goes back a bit and Hitchcocks "The Birds" wasn't just fiction?
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/uw-professor-learns-crows-dont-forget-a-face/
Thank you!
It definitely depends on the species. Parrots and corvids are the most intelligent groups as far as we know.
My immediate thought was imagining an owl hopping from boulder to bush, hiking around a forest.
My second thought was that I'm an idiot.
No, your awesome
Anecdotal story for you. I worked at a restaurant where our dumpster was across the parking lot. So when we took out trash it was a little walk. One time when taking out the trash, as I opened the door to go outside I heard a bird start chirping. It then flew over the dumpster, and as it passed over about 10 other birds flew out of the dumpster. He was the lookout.
Crafty!
I have ducks, and they're way smarter than people think. I have them trained pretty well. They follow some basic commands that make handling them easier. My favorite bird also helps me wrangle any ducks who aren't listening. I just tell him to help me and he does lol.
A sheep duck that herds other ducks? Thats quakers!
As I understand it Owls sit a little on the derpy side of the bird spectrum. A friend of mine was a vet tech for a sanctuary and appearantly they are divas who get very attached to a single person. She said owls as a rule are very easy to confuse and dupe.
Owls might be interesting birds but they've got the brains the size of a grape.
Total size is secondary.
Number of neurons / brain size in comparison to total body size is a common metric used to predict intelligence. Bigger bodies need more neurons dedicated to control and coordinator muscles and organs.
Besides the excess neutrons, it helps if the animal frequently have free time and energy available after hunting for food as well as not needing to constantly watch for predators.
Even then it's just a vague correlation, not a strong prediction.
Bird brains are small in general. Therefore the high intelligence of some species was quite surprising. There's some fresh research showing that bird neurons are way smaller than mammal neurons - so quite an impressive number of them can be fitted in a small brain. They have a small brain with a big computational power. My pet theory is that this characteristic could have been present already in the dinos, making them smart instead of dull.
Sounds like an adaptation to cut weight for flight, like how they have hollow bones too.
You see your brain is bigger than that of an owl but still you didn't even look up established fakt about intelligence and rather made a stupid comment that is making the same argument as the nazis did back then.
godwins law strikes again, end of thread lol
Eh? The Nazis had opinions on owls?
I'm just saying they are not smart. The idea of the wise owl is a myth they have the smallest brain to body size of any bird. There's more going on in the head of a pigeon
The nazis financed research that should show that white people have bigger brains and therefore are more intelligent.
Yes that's correct brain size is not a useful measurement to detect intelligence between humans but between different species it's a good estimate.
Owls do not have very big brains, and what they have is almost entirely given over to optical and audio processing. This is all very easily verified.
The theory is called phrenology and I'm with you. Not in saying one is a nazi if they do it. But that it's problematic and even dangerous to relate brain size to intelligence. And if science is using that metric it should reevaluate its methods.
As user angrystego wrote above: size doesn't really matter. It's how you use it. Neuroplasticity is not a feature of humans alone. After all we're still members of the great ape taxonomic family.
My personal opinion which has nothing to do with the phrenology topic:
It's ignorant to value other species intelligence by our own understanding of intelligence while not even speaking their languages. AI is already starting to be used successfully in that field (though it could pose a danger for animals too).
And we selectively see animals that seem to grasp our weird concepts of life and are ok with being leashed outside all the time as more valuable instead of trying to understand other animals. Damn chickens can be called by their name. The brain of the Red Junglefowl, the ancestor of the chicken, looks quite different from the other birds (but yeah phrenology):
