Comments on: How Smart Are Birds?

By: Daun Eierdam

Daun Eierdam — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 00:08:39 +0000

How do we know the bird wasn’t trained to do the trick before the video was shot?

By: Lucian

Lucian — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 15:02:17 +0000

I always knew it! Those birds are purposefully shitting on my car! We were warned in Jurassic Park how “clever” the raptors were. Thanks for the interesting post. BTW, you totally deserve the sexiest scientist or whatever it was that you won, Kristen;)

By: Jeshua

Jeshua — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 15:26:27 +0000

A little off the topic, but it seems that degree of “intelligence” depends on your point of view. As the person above said, birds are as smart as they need to be. One series of experiments with Bonobos showed that they were better at remembering where numbers appeared on a screen than humans. It seems for some reason, Bonobos are smarter than us in some areas!!

By: kevin mike

kevin mike — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 03:37:46 +0000

The kea’s elongated bill is perfect for biting, tearing, and lifting a variety of prey and objects, even prying ruber parts from cars, a behaviour that has gien it a reputation as a vandal.

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 11:08:44 +0000

Don’t know about rooks; the smartest animals, as everyone knows by now, are white mice. Further down the list come dolphins, then man. The fourth smartest is the kea. If you’d ever met a kea, you wouldn’t be at all surprised that it could figure out this trick without training (and when it did, it would even teach it to others!). (And I suspect the fifth smartest is not an animal at all, but a bowl of petunias)

By: Paul

Paul — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 23:58:27 +0000

I wonder if the similarity to Aesop’s fable has more to do with the bird or the experimenters. I know little of the details of the experiment but I can easily imagine the experimenters setting out to confirm the fable. This may involve some bird training before making the video. The ability for a bird to learn such training is an accomplishment in itself. But do these experimenters assert that this is a first-time experience for the bird? This is something I would like to see verified.

By: Dr. T

Dr. T — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 02:59:13 +0000

“For goodness sake, for years it was thought that birds had little to no sense of smell simply because the olfactory bulb would come unattached from the rest of the brain, and get lost in the processing!”

Please provide a source. I’m a pathologist, and we’ve known for over a century that the olfactory tracts and bulbs break off during brain removals unless special techniques are used. I’m certain that our colleages performing xenopsies (animal necropsies) knew this, too. Perhaps an idiotic zoologist or two made such a “bird-brained” claim, but any careful dissection of a bird’s head shows that it has all the requirements for a decent sense of smell.

By: Dr. T

Dr. T — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 02:51:12 +0000

“However, for years scientists looked down on the bird as a minor player in the cognition game.”

Please do some fact-checking before making such a bold statement. Scientists have avidly studied pigeon intelligence for decades. Some of the earliest animal cognition studies used pigeons. Scientists were fascinated by homing pigeons and their amazing ability to return after being transported hundreds of miles from home. Scientists also study the general intelligence of pigeons. Last year Japanese scientists made the controversial claim that pigeons have approximately the same intelligence as three-year-old children. The scientists found that pigeons could recognize self-images (photos or reflections of themselves). In an earlier study, they trained pigeons to distinguish between Picasso and Monet paintings (not exactly tough, but pretty good for a bird). Other studies showed that pigeons could remember over 300 images and associate each image with one of four “keys.” They still remembered 160 image-key associations after two years.

Birds definitely are not minor players in cognition studies.

By: Phil Earnhardt

Phil Earnhardt — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 22:36:59 +0000

The Times picked up this story and published it on Friday: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article6753086.ece . drudgereport.com has a link to the Times story today.

The Times reporter didn’t quite get it: “The birds were extremely accurate, using the exact number of stones needed to raise the worm to a height where they could reach it.”

By: oldebabe

oldebabe — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 18:09:13 +0000

Birds are probably just as `smart’ as they need to be. They may not have the same `smarts’ as other species, and obviously some birds will appear (to humans) to be smarter and/or dumber, but that does depend on, as you say, the guage one is using to do the measurement.

In my personal observation of flights of Canada geese, I can’t but notice that they do not all move instantly in the same direction (“shifts”) over any period of time, i.e. gaggles are notoriously continuously wavy… tho I believe there is a `shifting’ leader, if that counts…