Parrot uses tool

[Shinova]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bI4bNeXzXBY


Interesting. I've never seen parrots do anything like this before.

[salm]

*Waits for the unavoidable "I for one welcome our new overlords" comment.*

[Sikon]

What is impressive but strange is that some birds seem to have abilities like tool-use at a level reproduced only in animals with vastly larger brains, such as primates. It is as if their brain structure is abnormally, exceptionally efficient, partially compensating for the small size of birds compared to bigger animals. One wonders how smart would parrots or crows be if they weren't so relatively small.

[bilateralrope]

Well when you have an itch, you will scratch it any way you can.

[Rye]

Minah birds can learn quite complex human vocabularies, birds can often be quite smart, though they can be annoying when they keep stealing anything shiny.

[wolveraptor]

Shouldn't this be in SLAM?

[Broomstick]

What is impressive but strange is that some birds seem to have abilities like tool-use at a level reproduced only in animals with vastly larger brains, such as primates. It is as if their brain structure is abnormally, exceptionally efficient, partially compensating for the small size of birds compared to bigger animals. One wonders how smart would parrots or crows be if they weren't so relatively small.

Bird brains ARE organized in a different manner than mammal brains.

Bird brains typically devote much of their processing power to vision and navigation, with scent and taste processing even more poorly developed than in humans.

You shouldn't compare absolute brain sizes - by that criteria dolphins and elephants are more intelligent than humans. You have to compare brain size to body size. Then you have the problem of comparing mammals to avians. Then you have to consider what the brain is geared towards. Birds may display some traits normally considered the province of primates because they are also visually oriented creatures that utilize sound for communication and have appendages with opposible digits. Part of the reason chimps and parrots use tools is because they can - they able to physically manipulate objects with some dexterity in a way an animal with, say, hooves or flippers simply can't.

[Lord Zentei]

You shouldn't compare absolute brain sizes - by that criteria dolphins and elephants are more intelligent than humans. You have to compare brain size to body size.

Another yardstick is the surface area of the celebral cortex when flattened out - which is larger in humans than in other animals, iirc. Also, the neuron count - dolphins brains have proportionally more glia (heat regulators) than neurons (information processors), for example.

[Sikon]

What is impressive but strange is that some birds seem to have abilities like tool-use at a level reproduced only in animals with vastly larger brains, such as primates. It is as if their brain structure is abnormally, exceptionally efficient, partially compensating for the small size of birds compared to bigger animals. One wonders how smart would parrots or crows be if they weren't so relatively small.

Bird brains ARE organized in a different manner than mammal brains.

Bird brains typically devote much of their processing power to vision and navigation, with scent and taste processing even more poorly developed than in humans.

You shouldn't compare absolute brain sizes - by that criteria dolphins and elephants are more intelligent than humans. You have to compare brain size to body size. Then you have the problem of comparing mammals to avians. Then you have to consider what the brain is geared towards. Birds may display some traits normally considered the province of primates because they are also visually oriented creatures that utilize sound for communication and have appendages with opposible digits. Part of the reason chimps and parrots use tools is because they can - they able to physically manipulate objects with some dexterity in a way an animal with, say, hooves or flippers simply can't.

You make some good points. For a more visually oriented creature to be more effective at tool use, all else being equal, is definitely logical. Birds do have an unusually high ratio of brain size to body size. Overall the best predictive model for predicting intelligence based on such basic data would incorporate multiple factors. Orders of magnitude greater brain size is definitely a factor in humans being more intelligent than birds despite birds having a brain weight to body weight ratio several times greater than humans: typically a 1/12 ratio for birds versus a much lesser 1/40 ratio for humans.

The overall trend is apparent in this chart:



I find the practical intelligence of birds like tool-use compared to their brain size as illustrated in the above chart to be interesting, but, yes, the factors you mention do definitely seem to play a part.

[Jason von Evil]

We had to put a lock on our parrots cage, because it knew how to work the latch on the door. We had caught it at various times with the door partially opened. Then one day, my dad came home from work, walked in the living room and woke my mom up (who was napping) and asked her where the parrot was.

Then my dad looked at the top of the cage. There he sat, just looking at them both.

[Broomstick]

Orders of magnitude greater brain size is definitely a factor in humans being more intelligent than birds despite birds having a brain weight to body weight ratio several times greater than humans: typically a 1/12 ratio for birds versus a much lesser 1/40 ratio for humans.

Again, you have to look at bird specializations again.

Birds have evolved to be very lightweight animals - necessary for flight. In many birds, the weight of the feathers exceeds the weight of the skeleton. Flight drives a relentless pressure to reduce weight and increase strength. In addition to hollow bones, birds also only utilize one organ where other vertebrates use two, the other being atrophied or absent. Thus, they have 1 funtional kidney instread of 2, as an example. This is repeated with the 1 lung (assisted by an auxillary system of bringing air into the body, so their respiration is actually more effiencient than animals that use two lungs) and 1 functional gonad. The result of this would be a greater brain-to-bodyweight ratio than in mammals, reptiles, amphibians or other vertebrates.

The flightless birds drop off this curve, though - ostriches and penguins can afford heavier bones since they don't fly.

[Sikon]

Orders of magnitude greater brain size is definitely a factor in humans being more intelligent than birds despite birds having a brain weight to body weight ratio several times greater than humans: typically a 1/12 ratio for birds versus a much lesser 1/40 ratio for humans.

Again, you have to look at bird specializations again.

Birds have evolved to be very lightweight animals - necessary for flight. In many birds, the weight of the feathers exceeds the weight of the skeleton. Flight drives a relentless pressure to reduce weight and increase strength. In addition to hollow bones, birds also only utilize one organ where other vertebrates use two, the other being atrophied or absent. Thus, they have 1 funtional kidney instread of 2, as an example. This is repeated with the 1 lung (assisted by an auxillary system of bringing air into the body, so their respiration is actually more effiencient than animals that use two lungs) and 1 functional gonad. The result of this would be a greater brain-to-bodyweight ratio than in mammals, reptiles, amphibians or other vertebrates.

The flightless birds drop off this curve, though - ostriches and penguins can afford heavier bones since they don't fly.

What you mention above sounds like a factor in the brain to body weight ratio of birds. In my last post, I was just observing that brain size is among the factors affecting intelligence. For example, the web page I linked to in it mentions that a mouse has a typical brain weight to body weight ratio of 1/40, while the brain weight to body weight ratio of a human is also typically approximately 1/40. Orders of magnitude greater brain volume help a human be much smarter than a mouse.

As you have implied, brain size is certainly not the only factor. I am just saying it is one factor. Its effect is most clear for very large differences, like how no brain of 0.1 cubic centimeters can do what brains of 1000 cubic centimeters can manage. Such is a little analogous to how a megaflop computer with megabytes of memory can not match the capabilities of a gigaflop computer with terabytes of memory, if both are running similar software, etc. The effect of available "hardware" is a subject discussed much in artificial intelligence research, like what level of technology would be required to have the equivalent of a spider brain versus a human brain.

[Edi]

This here thread contains altogether too much useful information to be left langusihing in Testing. Off to SLAM we go.

Edi

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

Crows have been shown to be able to craft wire into hooks to get at food in a tube. Quite innovative. They have have the ability to work open velcro and steal my sandwiches, sneaky bastards.

But yes, several species of birds are rather more adept in many areas than we give them credit for.

[NecronLord]

Yup. Corvids are clever creatures indeed. I hear some in the states have learnt a new technique for opening nuts: Toss them onto a crossroads and wait.

[Akhlut]

Yup. Corvids are clever creatures indeed. I hear some in the states have learnt a new technique for opening nuts: Toss them onto a crossroads and wait.

Actually, that's in Japan.

[Ariphaos]

Mice brains don't go through any of the twisting and shriveling process that human and other brains go through (in a healthy individual) that gives the 'unusually large surface area' - size ratio is far from the only factor.

That said, a friend of mine watched a duck open a lady's backpack and steel her sammich from inside. Amusing.

[Zor]

I knew parrots were among the smartest of birds, but this is interesting to say the least.

Zor

[Molyneux]

*Waits for the unavoidable "I for one welcome our new overlords" comment.*

It's DEAD, all right? It's F*ING DEAD!

On-topic - I've been interested in parrot intelligence since I first heard about Alex. They're smart little featherheads...wonder what a few generations of selective breeding for intelligence and innovation could do?

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

*Waits for the unavoidable "I for one welcome our new overlords" comment.*

It's DEAD, all right? It's F*ING DEAD!

On-topic - I've been interested in parrot intelligence since I first heard about Alex. They're smart little featherheads...wonder what a few generations of selective breeding for intelligence and innovation could do?

Probably not as much as you're hoping. Birds may make much more efficient use of their available braincase volume than mammals do, but the total volume available for a bird's brain is small, limiting the number of neurons, and thus, the overall complexity of the bird's neural network. You would have to have a lot of generations, enough to generate a much larger bird with a braincase large enough to support an extremely intelligent brain.

[Molyneux]

*Waits for the unavoidable "I for one welcome our new overlords" comment.*

It's DEAD, all right? It's F*ING DEAD!

On-topic - I've been interested in parrot intelligence since I first heard about Alex. They're smart little featherheads...wonder what a few generations of selective breeding for intelligence and innovation could do?

Probably not as much as you're hoping. Birds may make much more efficient use of their available braincase volume than mammals do, but the total volume available for a bird's brain is small, limiting the number of neurons, and thus, the overall complexity of the bird's neural network. You would have to have a lot of generations, enough to generate a much larger bird with a braincase large enough to support an extremely intelligent brain.

So make a small research lab, give them ~1 million dollar a year, and maybe my grandkids could have parrots that really talk back? I'd invest in that.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

It's DEAD, all right? It's F*ING DEAD!

On-topic - I've been interested in parrot intelligence since I first heard about Alex. They're smart little featherheads...wonder what a few generations of selective breeding for intelligence and innovation could do?

Probably not as much as you're hoping. Birds may make much more efficient use of their available braincase volume than mammals do, but the total volume available for a bird's brain is small, limiting the number of neurons, and thus, the overall complexity of the bird's neural network. You would have to have a lot of generations, enough to generate a much larger bird with a braincase large enough to support an extremely intelligent brain.

So make a small research lab, give them ~1 million dollar a year, and maybe my grandkids could have parrots that really talk back? I'd invest in that.

Except the brightest parrots can already do that. The brightest of them grasp basic sentence structure, so you can already communicate with them using spoken-word. That, incidentally, is one of the reasons some researchers prefer studying parrot intelligence, because you don't have to go through the sorts of hoops you need to go through in order to communicate with great apes.

And I was talking about evolutionary timeframes, not something that can be done by a research lab in two human generations. An African Grey Parrot has a lifespan of up to ninety years, and takes six years to be really mature enough to start breeding. The sort of changes required to produce a parrot more intelligent than, say, a chimpanzee, are tremendous. An African Grey tops out at the same intellectual level of development as a two or three year old human child. The brightest chimpanzees top out at the equivalent of a seven year old child. To get a super-intelligent parrot, you'd first have to breed one the size of a typical penguin, and then you could go to town. These sort of drastic changes would probably need more than the ten or so generations you'd have to work with to fit super-intelligent parrots in the specified timespan. And I suspect it's unlikely we'll have the sort of genetic engineering prowess required to arbitrarily engineer such a bird in a way where it won't die horribly of some genetic defect.

[Superman]

Big deal. I sometimes use a comb to scratch my ass.

[Molyneux]

Big deal. I sometimes use a comb to scratch my ass.

Yes, but the parrot's cuter than you.

[Broomstick]

So make a small research lab, give them ~1 million dollar a year, and maybe my grandkids could have parrots that really talk back? I'd invest in that.

Parrots can already talk back. Trust me, mine communicate VERY well! If you invested in breeding super-parrots you'd wind up with a bird colony setting up a research institute on how to get us to speak their language.