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I work on some aspects of intelligence in birds, primarily in songbirds. There have been some effort finding general intelligence ("g" cognitive factor) in bird
by pks016 6mo ago
I work on some aspects of intelligence in birds, primarily in songbirds. There have been some effort finding general intelligence ("g" cognitive factor) in birds since last 15-20 years. The results have been mixed as you would expect. Animals' intelligence have evolved for survival and designing experiments to test those are quite hard.
Research has shown brain size matters but not that much, we should look at relative brain size.
- ninalanyon 6mo ago> Animals' intelligence have evolved for survival What do you mean by this? Surely this applies to humans too, we are animals after all. So what distinction did you intend to make?
- pks016 6mo agoI mean regarding the domains of intelligence and how to test them. With humans, performance in one cognitive test correlates with another and so on, generally. So, intelligence across domains. Researchers test the same with animals. The issue being animals' intelligence being tied to their ecology. The dilemma being what is it worth for an animal solving a task that has no significance in its life. The other argument being if the animals' intelligence is closer/similar to human intelligence, we will find similar results in both.
- robotpepi 6mo ago> Animals' intelligence have evolved for survival and designing experiments to test those are quite hard. My conure is extremely intelligent at times, learning a trick at the second try or doing what I ask him immediately. Most of the time, though, he understands but decides to just ignore me.
- pks016 6mo agoRelatable. Motivation is crucial for any task and most of time they are not motivated to do what you want.