4 ms·

I know it was said over 2000 years ago, but ravens are quite intelligent. Raking up there with primates and estimated to be similar to a 3-4 year old human. Bir

I know it was said over 2000 years ago, but ravens are quite intelligent. Raking up there with primates and estimated to be similar to a 3-4 year old human. Birds get a bad rap with terms like "bird brained", but it's rarely true, even for those that people consider pests like pigeons[1]. A researcher from the University of Washington has a really great blog on corvids I follow (crows, jays, ravens, rooks, magpies, etc)[2]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeon_intelligence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeon_intelligence [2] https://corvidresearch.blog/category/raven-intelligence-2/ https://corvidresearch.blog/category/raven-intelligence-2/

numpad0 6y ago
I wonder why there aren’t more examples of speaking animals. Screw down a baby bird or a cat in a box, give him computerized English tests with prizes and/or punishments like food or electric shock or elevated oxygen level, whatever, 12 hours a day learning and 12 hours for brain to soak in a day’s programming, for couple months. Exactly above is an animal cruelty, but I bet something to that effect would get him speaking in matters of months to few years.
- opportune 6y ago
  I think the brain needs something special to be able to understand language properly. Perhaps this is one of the things humans are particularly (well, extremely) good at relative to our general intelligence. Many parrots can speak but it's not really language, it's more contextual. Same with the non-human apes that can "use sign language". Also your example is not good IMO because there are physiological constraints on animals' ability to speak similarly to humans, like needing a larynx
- fiblye 6y ago
  This is just my own personal theory, but one reason is that we just scoop animals up, put them in a room, and expect to try finding speech patterns. What would happen if a flock of hyperintelligent pigeons found some human babies and locked them up in a room until it's time for snacks and games? There probably wouldn't be much language observed aside from a few repeated sounds. Another is aside from insects and humans and maybe some birds, not many creatures have multi-generational, continuous societies grounded in one region. Humans have towns, cities, and countries. People have had their entire family history confined to one town or one country with interconnected cities for centuries or even thousands of years. This lets humans develop a common means of communication between others who we see frequently or between those who share a similar background. A lot of animal groups get pretty divided and don't live in large and everlasting packs. There's not much evolutionary pressure for complex language to evolve. We don't even know when humans first developed languages capable of expression of abstract thoughts, but it was probably sometime after we started to organize ourselves and cooperate to form lifelong communities. The last one is that even if animals had a language, our brains just might not recognize it. For example, to many Europeans, picking up the idea of a tonal language at 40 is pretty tough. They might not even notice the difference in sound. Animals might have some way to distinguish words that we're just not looking at. I think this is one time where the recent ML/AI surge might come in handy. Record thousands of hours of animal sounds and put it through a black box. We've identified some sounds from prairie dogs as carrying meaning, but I don't think we've managed to identify grammar or sentences yet.

numpad0 6y ago

I wonder why there aren’t more examples of speaking animals. Screw down a baby bird or a cat in a box, give him computerized English tests with prizes and/or punishments like food or electric shock or elevated oxygen level, whatever, 12 hours a day learning and 12 hours for brain to soak in a day’s programming, for couple months. Exactly above is an animal cruelty, but I bet something to that effect would get him speaking in matters of months to few years.

opportune 6y ago
I think the brain needs something special to be able to understand language properly. Perhaps this is one of the things humans are particularly (well, extremely) good at relative to our general intelligence. Many parrots can speak but it's not really language, it's more contextual. Same with the non-human apes that can "use sign language". Also your example is not good IMO because there are physiological constraints on animals' ability to speak similarly to humans, like needing a larynx
fiblye 6y ago
This is just my own personal theory, but one reason is that we just scoop animals up, put them in a room, and expect to try finding speech patterns. What would happen if a flock of hyperintelligent pigeons found some human babies and locked them up in a room until it's time for snacks and games? There probably wouldn't be much language observed aside from a few repeated sounds. Another is aside from insects and humans and maybe some birds, not many creatures have multi-generational, continuous societies grounded in one region. Humans have towns, cities, and countries. People have had their entire family history confined to one town or one country with interconnected cities for centuries or even thousands of years. This lets humans develop a common means of communication between others who we see frequently or between those who share a similar background. A lot of animal groups get pretty divided and don't live in large and everlasting packs. There's not much evolutionary pressure for complex language to evolve. We don't even know when humans first developed languages capable of expression of abstract thoughts, but it was probably sometime after we started to organize ourselves and cooperate to form lifelong communities. The last one is that even if animals had a language, our brains just might not recognize it. For example, to many Europeans, picking up the idea of a tonal language at 40 is pretty tough. They might not even notice the difference in sound. Animals might have some way to distinguish words that we're just not looking at. I think this is one time where the recent ML/AI surge might come in handy. Record thousands of hours of animal sounds and put it through a black box. We've identified some sounds from prairie dogs as carrying meaning, but I don't think we've managed to identify grammar or sentences yet.