Magpies pass the mirror test?

[Mayabird]

It's a science forum, so let's have some science!

Mirror self-recognition found in magpies

by Staff Writers
Frankfurt, Germany (UPI) Aug 20, 2008
A German study shows self-recognition, thought a hallmark of advanced cognitive abilities in animals, might also be present in magpies.

Frankfurt University psychologist Helmut Prior and Ruhr University biopsychologist Onur Gunturkun said they have discovered evidence of self-recognition in magpies -- a bird species with a brain structure very different from mammals.

The researchers said they placed a mark on magpies in such a way that it could only be seen in a mirror. When the magpies engaged in activity that was directed towards the mark, for example scratching at it, the researchers were able to conclude the birds recognized the image in the mirror as themselves, and not another animal.

The researchers said their findings not only indicate non-mammalian species can engage in self-recognition behavior, but that self-recognition can occur in species without a neocortex -- an area of the brain that has been thought to be crucial to self-recognition in mammals. Its absence in the study, said the scientists, suggests higher cognitive skills can develop independently along separate evolutionary lines.

The study appears in the journal PLoS Biology.

Link

Also, does anyone have access to the journal? I'd like to read the study, or at least know what it says in greater detail.

[loomer]

This really doesn't surprise me. Magpies are actually quite intelligent for birds. I grew up with a family living in the backyard, and like a lot of territorial animals, we eventually became ingrained as providers for their entire family.

Thing was, they also learnt to come begging when we weren't throwing out scraps from our lunch. They'd literally fly up to the table, and start poking at our shins.

[Cyborg Stan]

Weird. I was thinking of avian mirror tests the other day. Or more accurately, what might've been a possible use for a probable failure.

Specifically, I was wondering what would've happened if we had taken the Passenger Pigeons - which we could not breed in captivity in small numbers because they only seemed to get in the mood while in really large groups - put them in a cage, and then place two large mirrors outside of the cage across from each other to create a recursive effect, hence creating the illusion of a flock of infinite size. Oh, and have at least two phonographs around to do a similar thing with sound.

[Napoleon the Clown]

I'm not surprised in the least. Magpies are downright brilliant for any animal. They're in the same family as crows and ravens, two other birds of great intellect. The entire family is very intelligent, and can learn human speech, to one degree or another. Now we just wait for a few more cases that will either confirm this to be quite probably the case of show that it was probably a fluke or that the birds used were out of the ordinary.

[Edi]

Corvids in general are smart. Crows, ravens, magpies, jackdaws, they're all very smart birds. Ravens and magpies can learn to count and sometimes even to spek a few words like parrots.

They also have very long memories, as my dad had cause to find out. One year he caught a young crow out of the nest and put a ring on its leg. Mama crow saw him do it and didn't particularly like it and let him know in no uncertain terms what she thought. And for the next several years, every time that crow saw my dad, she raised one hell of a racket to warn everybody about the big mean baby-crow-snatching human in the area. No matter if he wore different clothing, didn't fool her any.

So this news is no surprise at all to me.

[Stile]

Corvids in general are smart. Crows, ravens, magpies, jackdaws, they're all very smart birds. Ravens and magpies can learn to count and sometimes even to spek a few words like parrots.

They also have very long memories, as my dad had cause to find out. One year he caught a young crow out of the nest and put a ring on its leg. Mama crow saw him do it and didn't particularly like it and let him know in no uncertain terms what she thought. And for the next several years, every time that crow saw my dad, she raised one hell of a racket to warn everybody about the big mean baby-crow-snatching human in the area. No matter if he wore different clothing, didn't fool her any.

So this news is no surprise at all to me.

A recent study about crows: Crows recognize and remember human faces

[darthdavid]

There's a reason Huginn and Muninn were ravens...

[cosmicalstorm]

When I was a kid I remember our cat would come home covered in birdshit every time he had tried to climb the local crowfamilys tree, those little bastards literally bombarded him with that nasty stuff, suffice to say he soon found better things to do other than chasing the local birds

[LadyTevar]

Are Myna birds also Corvids? I've heard the local vet's bird talk better than a parrot.

[madd0ct0r]

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/jour ... 1&SRETRY=0

testing ravens on their pulley abilities.
They can do basic mechanics through logic and not trial and error.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/jour ... 1&SRETRY=0

testing ravens on their pulley abilities.
They can do basic mechanics through logic and not trial and error.

Thus proving that they've got a few more brain-cells to rub together than you seem to. Not only is your link entirely broken and undressed, but posting the article would really helpful.

[Qwerty 42]

This really doesn't surprise me. Magpies are actually quite intelligent for birds. I grew up with a family living in the backyard, and like a lot of territorial animals, we eventually became ingrained as providers for their entire family.

Thing was, they also learnt to come begging when we weren't throwing out scraps from our lunch. They'd literally fly up to the table, and start poking at our shins.

Birds, as a whole, are among the most intelligent creatures on the planet. Think of ravens, which have learned to improvise human tools and demonstrate puzzle solving ability, or parrots: there was a news article last year where scientists discovered that a parrot knew what "zero" was.

[Qwerty 42]

Bah. e;f;b.

[Napoleon the Clown]

Are Myna birds also Corvids? I've heard the local vet's bird talk better than a parrot.

Starling, actually. Though they're still bloody brilliant animals. Still, Corvids are generally smarter. To be fair, Corvids are considered, by some, to be the smartest family of avians. There's justification for this, too. Ravens, as mentioned, can figure out how to work simple machines by just thinking about it instead of trial and error. Like I said, very intelligent creatures.

[RIPP_n_WIPE]

Are Myna birds also Corvids? I've heard the local vet's bird talk better than a parrot.

Starling, actually. Though they're still bloody brilliant animals. Still, Corvids are generally smarter. To be fair, Corvids are considered, by some, to be the smartest family of avians. There's justification for this, too. Ravens, as mentioned, can figure out how to work simple machines by just thinking about it instead of trial and error. Like I said, very intelligent creatures.

It would be awesome to breed them as pets selecting for intelligence.

I heard somewhere that they can learn to understand human language and can rudimentarily speak (if I remember correctly though you have to cut their tounge ).

[FA Xerrik]

So, in ridiculous mad-science theory, if we selected for particularly smart specimens, and also for those with shorter tongues, provided enough time, we could create talking ravens??

[Broomstick]

Can we finally put to rest that bullshit about slitting birds' tongues to make them speak - TOTAL BULLSHIT! It won't help. Actually, given that most birds with the capability to mimic human speech have long memories it will probably only piss them off and make them hate you, which is not conducive to getting them to talk.

Ravens and crows most certainly can learn to mimic human speech. They aren't as talkative as parrots and mynas as a general rule. However, individual birds within any given species vary enormously in ability/willingness to talk like people. A highly talkative individual crow may exceed the ability of many not-so-talkative individual parrots.

Both the corvids and the parrots are pretty smart - they're highly social animals with relatively long lives (I think crows live 30-40 even in the wild, the larger parrots live 50-70 years) and good memories.

[Adrian Laguna]

Wait, wait, so "Quoth the raven: nevermore." might be more than a lonely man's fancifulness? Man, I think that makes the poem even creepier.

[Duckie]

Parrots actually can mimic human speech despite having no vocal cords or lips. Instead, they whistle noises to produce sounds similar to human beings.

One parrot has actually managed to master the art of conjugating verbs, and even coining new ones from old ones she knows.

[Duckie]

Ghetto edit- new words, not just new verbs. Although verbs are words. The parrot's name is N'kisi. He speaks english knowing 950 words, which is enough to probably survive in an english speaking country as a foreigner. He also has a sense of humour, and appears capable of inventing his own jokes. They are not always funny, but whose are?

So obviously, slitting their tongue doesn't help, because they produce it via resonant noises in the throat and changing the shape of their throat to produce a different imitation noise.

If parrots spoke like human beings, they would only be able to pronounce the following letters in english:

p, th, sh, s, t, k, y, w, and probably l and r. All of the vowels. perhaps h.

possibly n and ng if they can breathe through their nostrils, which sounds unlikely.

dh (that), zh (treasure), z, d, g, and possibly l and r require vocal cords.
f requires lips.
v, b and m require both vocal cords and lips. (m also requires nasal noises).

There is absolutely no way slitting the tongue would help that I can think of- it doesn't allow the bird to vibrate nonexistant vocal cords, nasalize its consonants (m is a nasal b/p, n is a nasal t/d, and ng is a nasal k/g).

It doesn't give the bird the ability to pronounce bilabial consonants, since it still lacks lips. Even so, would lacking p, f, v b, and m be that impossible to understand?

The thallowing sentence is written without any diladial consonants, rethlacing then with the closest equivalent sound.

So it can't be that either, which is what I first thought, that somehow slitting would allow its tongue to move up closer to its beak's front.

So, definitely busted just by the fact that parrots don't use their tongue to produce human noises, and that it wouldn't help even if they did.

[Duckie]

triple post, unfortunately- My lipless phonetics was off on the vowel front and for a single consonant.

Parrots without lips would not be able to pronounce o or u, replacing them with noises that sound similar but aren't. For example, un-lip-rounded u is Japanese U.

Parrots would also be unable to pronounce w, because it involves lip movement of a sorts. They could possibly replace it with an unrounded u in front of the word.

Parrots would be unable to pronounce german ü or ö also due to lacking lips, but that doens't hurt for english.

This might sound odd, but half of it is essentially what Ventrilloquists go through because they can't use their lips either.

[hongi]

Also, does anyone have access to the journal? I'd like to read the study, or at least know what it says in greater detail.

PLOS is a free-to-access journal, which fucking rocks I must say. Otherwise I'd have to grovel at the feets of scientists more than I already do now for copies of papers.

Here it is.

[Molyneux]

So, in ridiculous mad-science theory, if we selected for particularly smart specimens, and also for those with shorter tongues, provided enough time, we could create talking ravens??

Quite possibly. It'd probably be quite a bit easier than attempting to select parrots for intelligence, given their extremely long lifespan.

Given the probable required increase in brain size, though, it's possible that the birds in question would have to lose their ability to fly...

[RIPP_n_WIPE]

So, in ridiculous mad-science theory, if we selected for particularly smart specimens, and also for those with shorter tongues, provided enough time, we could create talking ravens??

Quite possibly. It'd probably be quite a bit easier than attempting to select parrots for intelligence, given their extremely long lifespan.

Given the probable required increase in brain size, though, it's possible that the birds in question would have to lose their ability to fly...

Or just get bigger and still be able to fly

Mind you I don't know exactly, how much their brain size would need to increase or exactly how big they could get and still be able to fly comfortably.

Though it is nice to know you don't need to slit a crow or ravens tongue to have it speak. Now all I have to do is get a wildlife license (which i think is SUCH bs. The darn things live almost like pidgins and gulls).

[andrewgpaul]

That's OK; we could always teach them to hang-glide.