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I remember reading an article in National Geographic of how crow's brains are much more interconnected than is the norm in mammals, i.e. IIRC they have a higher
by prerok 4mo ago
I remember reading an article in National Geographic of how crow's brains are much more interconnected than is the norm in mammals, i.e. IIRC they have a higher density of synapses between neurons. From that article, it seems that the usual brain weight vs. body weight to determine intelligence, which seems can be used to approximate intelligence in different species of mammals, cannot be used for birds (or at least crows, which the article was focusing on).
In other words, they seem to achieve better results with smaller brains than we thought. And yes, crows (in EU) do exhibit some pretty intelligent behavior.
- bruckie 4mo agoI wonder what the energy/evolutionary cost of densely-connected brains is. If it's advantageous, why are crows exceptional?
- xeonmc 4mo agoMaybe they require the equivalent of advanced EUV machines to make?
- IAmBroom 4mo agoIt could simply be an evolutionary "discovery", with no particular advantage over our "brain model". Evolution doesn't seek out optima; it simply encourages genetic structures that improve odds of reproductive success. Or, to put it another way: if corvid genetics happened upon a brain type that promoted their survival, it doesn't matter if it was "better" or "worse" than the path the monkey/hominid brains took. Genetics took the first bus going in that direction.
- virgildotcodes 4mo agoIn terms of why bird brains would be exceptionally efficient for their volume (and I assume by extension, mass), would be that weight is at a premium for them.
- CSMastermind 4mo agoI'm not an expert in the area but have read a bunch on this topic to try and understand it better. Bird brains and human brains are structured very differently. Birds are much more like GPUs with independent distributed processing happening in parallel. Mammals have these big bidirectional layers where signals are constantly propagating up and down in a big connected computation.
- JohnMakin 4mo agoI've read there's also a social aspect - crows are extremely social creatures, as are humans, and other highly intelligent animals like whales. That does seem to be a common denominator. Regarding that, I'm reminded of another story - on my daily walk near work, there was a dead crow on the pavement. 5 or so crows were standing all around it, doing nothing really. Even me passing close by did not trigger them to fly away or anything, it seemed like they were standing watch on the body. The next day, it was still there, same thing. The 3rd day, it was gone, but the crows were still standing watch in the same manner. I didn't know what to make of it other than it appeared they were mourning or taking part in some type of ingroup ritual. I didn't see it again after that, but it struck me.
- Terr_ 4mo ago> [Social creatures] does seem to be a common denominator. One theory is that it drives the creatures to internally model or simulate others intents and reactions, in a way which is a far more regular, consistent, and nuanced than any modeling of various prey or predators. Further along that path is modeling future-me in plans, and layers of "I know they will know I know they know, so..."
- wrboyce 4mo agoCorvids have been known to investigate deaths, truly fascinating creatures! https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003347215003188 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00033...
- JohnMakin 4mo agoThanks for linking this, I had been wondering what the heck I had observed. It was really interesting. I love watching them. I almost always see something new (for me)
- braggerxyz 4mo agoThanks for the link. I observed a flock of "mourning" crows around a dead one in the field behind my yard. I was flabbergasted at what I was seeing. So they are mourning and investigating the cause of death for the sake of the flock. Wow!
- Animats 4mo agoThe brains of corvids are not closely related to mammalian brains. All the mammals have roughly the same brain, but corvids have a different architecture.[1] Intelligence seems to have evolved three times on this planet - mammals, corvids, and octopuses. Octopuses have a distributed system rather than one central brain. They all have neurons, but the higher level architecture differs drastically. Knowing that several different architectures can work is important for AI. There's apparently more than one way to do it. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352154616302303 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S23521...
- bmurphy1976 4mo agoWhere do parrots fall in this grouping? They're not corvids. There must have been a pre-corvid ancestor.
- speed_spread 4mo agoParrots aren't evil, they're just assholes.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- srean 4mo agoOctopuses are probably more alien than others.
- Animats 4mo agoMy point here is that if intelligence developed more than once, it didn't come from some one-time random event or divine intervention. It looks like once there are connected neurons, it evolves via continuous improvement. In some environments, that evolution hits limits. Flying birds are limited in brain mass or they can't get airborne. Which may be why corvids don't rule the world.
- 4mo ago
- karunamurti 4mo agoAnother case of brain efficiency : jumping spiders. They have less than half of ant's neurons, but instead of bruteforcing computing power they have a different specialized wirings.
- pcrh 4mo agoThis might be what that article referred to [0]? tl;dr, the higher cognitive abilities of birds are centered in a different region of the brain compared to mammals, the pallium vs the cortex. Neuron density in the bird pallium is also higher than the comparable density in the mammalian cortex. [0] Developmental origins and evolution of pallial cell types and structures in birds https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp5182 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp5182