13 ms·

A girl who gets gifts from birds

506 points by th0br0 12y ago

right2roam 12y ago
I had a gift this morning, from a pigeon, onto my shoulder whilst waiting for the train to pull into the platform for work. Supposed to be lucky - not sure for me or the pigeon though!
madaxe_again 12y ago
This is cool, but isn't that surprising, if you think about the behaviours of other species, and that corvids as a whole are highly intelligent and use tools in a fashion akin to primates. I mean, primates give gifts to each other and humans, and my cat loves nothing more than to leave the most succulent bits of viscera of whatever her prey was for me on Persian rugs, for me to enjoy, by which I mean tread on while heading to the shower in the morning.
- canjobear 12y ago
  I think it is very surprising even given findings about corvid intelligence. I know of studies showing crows can count, but that kind of intelligence does not at all imply that a creature will spontaneously give gifts in exchange for food. This requires either some kind of ethics including reciprocity, or it requires that the crows reason that giving gifts will make someone more likely to give more food. The latter reasoning requires that the crows are able to model the behavior of an intelligent agent under hypothetical circumstances. Bird brains are very different from mammal brains; they don't have a neocortex. So it's very interesting that they have developed similar gift-giving behavior to mammals and primates.
  - gadders 12y ago
    I think a lot of our intelligence research is mammal-biassed. When we think of intelligent animals we think primates, dolphins, dogs and maybe pigs. We ignore birds and octopus.
    - pidg 12y ago
      Side-note: octopuses enjoy a position as the only invertebrate protected by animal testing laws in the UK (as of 1993): http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1993/2103/made http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1993/2103/made
    - marincounty 12y ago
      I have a weird feeling most animals think a lot; it's not just instinct, or Behaviorism. I also have a weird feeling as humans we attribute too much of our actions to thinking, and not enough to instinct and Behaviorism? I still have huge issues with strict Behaviorists though. My Psychiatrist practices subtle reinforcement techniques, and they never worked, but I just can't tell him; he's a nice guy. I think he needs to validate his fees, in order to keep his own sanity? Can I prove it--no! I just never bought those philosophy/psychology instructors who really tried to teach me animals don't think. The older I get the more humans look like apes. I think my decline in testosterone is playing a part in the way I look at the world? The mystery of it all is fading--sadly--in humans and humanity. But the animal world is more fascinating than ever! I am happily waiting for the first mammal to speak it's mind! I wish I could be around when it happens.
      - MollyR 12y ago
        I've thought about this as well. A lot of the things I do don't really seem to be thought or thinking but instinct, with rationalization later. Lately I've been wondering if people think or animals actually "think". Perhaps everything we do extends from some kind of simple instinct in the case of insects to an extremely advanced form of instinct humans, primates, corvids, etc.
      - Oyeboten 12y ago
        I have never seen anything to suggest that the 'inner world' of a member of some other Species, would be any smaller than or less varied and interesting, than my own. Humans tend to be occupied in neurosis, and subterfuge, more than anything else. While other species are largely occupied with 'Nous'...and thus, would be far more elegant in their mental process and decision making and overall ontological 'poise', than people generally are.
  - Lewton 12y ago
    Crow flies with thing in its beak. Sees food, drops thing, grabs food. Comes back later, sees more food! Assumes food came from dropping thing (See "Superstition in the pigeon" [0]). Meme spreads among the crows. No ethics or deep reasoning required. Random rewards lead to irrational behavior. [0] http://psychclassics.asu.edu/Skinner/Pigeon/ http://psychclassics.asu.edu/Skinner/Pigeon/
    - dragontamer 12y ago
      The final example though, where a Crow returns the camera-lens cap to the family requires some pretty advanced thinking. We know that Crows recognize human faces and expressions, and communicate these facts amongst each other. Crows / Ravens are the only creature aside from Humans who perform meta-tool use. They can use tools to grab tools to accomplish a goal. In many ways, they're smarter than (non-human) primates, and are probably the 2nd smartest animals on earth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Caledonian_crow#Meta-tool_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Caledonian_crow#Meta-tool_... Birds in general are pretty smart (see Pidgeons, Parrots, etc. etc.) However crows / ravens are on a completely different intelligence level. Crows break nuts by dropping them on the asphalt... timing their drops during red lights so that traffic doesn't hit them. Besides, gift-giving is seen in far dumber animals than crows. Dogs, Cats, Penguins... they don't have the intelligence of Crows but they understand gifts and social situations.
      - Lewton 12y ago
        It sounds like there's a pretty big amount of crows that got in on the "drop gifts for food" program. And a camera lens is well within the range of what a crow would usually be interested in. It doesn't sound unlikely to me that it would just pick it up as any other thing and gift it. Crows are awesome though, I'm not trying to put down their intelligence, haha. I just wanted to point out that neither deeper reasoning nor ethics is required to explain this phenomenon. One of the researchers in the article said that he had never experienced the gift giving, even though he also fed crows often. That to me makes it more sensible to believe that it's just a meme that developed by chance
  - protonfish 12y ago
    Reciprocity is possibly the simplest form of cooperation. All that would be required is the ability to distinguish between individuals and this type of social behavior could appear through simple Pavlovian conditioning.
- svankmajer 12y ago
  Good heavens. My cats sometimes do things like that, but I always thought that it was all about passing down hunting wisdom and not much about gifts or gratitude.
mxfh 12y ago
There already exists an automated exploit for this behavior: Joshua Klein's Crow Machine: https://www.josh.is/crow-machine/ https://www.josh.is/crow-machine/ see also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=470840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=470840
- im3w1l 12y ago
  I think there is a big difference between gift and payment. Your article is on skinnerian conditioning to train crows to pay for peanuts. In this article the crows got peanuts whether they gave gifts or not. They just decided to give gifts. No training occured.
  - jmilloy 12y ago
    Clearly, they're the same crows.
  - autechr3 12y ago
    Perhaps in the mind of the crows, they are giving gifts as a reward. In effect, training the human (in the article).
    - MollyR 12y ago
      That is mind-blowing, and makes me want to reevaluate the concept of gift giving.
      - qb45 12y ago
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_8hPcnGeCI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_8hPcnGeCI
      - blacksmith_tb 12y ago
        There's a famous quote attributed to the Inuit that Marcel Mauss mentions in The Gift: "Gifts make slaves like whips make dogs." Both halves of that statement are provocative.
sebthomas 12y ago
Thought it read 'get lifts from birds' - disappointed.
profinger 12y ago
Anyone else experiencing difficulties with the bbc site?
rickdale 12y ago
On one of David Attenborough's recent shows, he said that crows can store up 30,000 pieces of food in various locations in the ground. They not only know where each piece of food is, but they know which ones are perishable and to get the food before it spoils. Pretty remarkable if you ask me.
- maxerickson 12y ago
  More here: http://www.pbs.org/lifeofbirds/brain/ http://www.pbs.org/lifeofbirds/brain/ The particular bird matching that number, Clark's Nutcracker, looks well studied. This paper discusses them caching 30,000 seeds, but not in 30,000 separate locations, it concludes that they locate at least 1,000 locations by memory: http://www.auburn.edu/academic/classes/biol/7560/folkerts/hutchinsnutcracker.pdf http://www.auburn.edu/academic/classes/biol/7560/folkerts/hu... (that author seems to have done much field work studying the bird) Another paper estimates that they might cache 90,000 seeds.
  - Luc 12y ago
    The paper you linked to mentions them caching seeds in all manner of different locations. I wonder if they have some form of algorithm unknown to us to determine a good location, rather than choosing randomly. That would aid a lot in 'remembering' locations of the caches.
    - maxerickson 12y ago
      From the reading I did they basically don't spend any time looking in spots where there is not a cache. Which at least suggests they are using memory.
    - rickdale 12y ago
      On that same program the showed an experiment with 2 crows in side by side cages. When the crows could see each other, they put the food in the soil without making any noise. When they blocked the view of the other bird they put the food into the rocks, which makes quite a bit of noise. So theres more going into where they hide their food then first glance.
sdfjkl 12y ago
Crows are incredibly smart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY8-gP3Sw_8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY8-gP3Sw_8
tomswartz07 12y ago
There's an old 4Chan thread where a user starts 'World War Crow' by favoring a certain group of crows over another. Allegedly, after some time, the two groups of crows have an all out battle over which group gets french fries. http://usvsth3m.com/post/69700674556/has-an-anonymous-4chan-user-really-started-world-war http://usvsth3m.com/post/69700674556/has-an-anonymous-4chan-...
- silveira 12y ago
  True or not, this story is amazing.
  - klipt 12y ago
    Reminds me of http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=59 http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=59
- api 12y ago
  Maybe some group of aliens distributed oil and other valuable minerals unevenly across the Earth, and now they're watching and laughing and running betting pools.
- comrade1 12y ago
  What!? That's not the end though. There was a second part where the crow factions fight. I hope someone saved it!
  - fheisler 12y ago
    http://i.imgur.com/o30vTqq.png http://i.imgur.com/o30vTqq.png
- Zuider 12y ago
  Yeah, you have to be careful to share the goods evenly among corvids. If you favor one individual, it can be exiled, or even attacked and killed by the others. A crow that is good at getting your attention rises in status if you make sure that there is enough to go around for the group.
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thekevan 12y ago
I was disappointed that this article didn't include a definite scientific opinion on whether the crows saw this as an exchange for food, or if for some reason they bring objects to a feeding area.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  crows leave gifts for one another. This may be some variant of that, triggered by the food?
shutupalready 12y ago
> Lisa logged on to her computer and pulled up their bird-cam. There was the crow she suspected. "You can see it bringing it into the yard. Walks it to the birdbath and actually spends time rinsing this lens cap." Why wouldn't they put this video in the BBC article?
- kbenson 12y ago
  They may not have kept it. The camera system may keep a certain amount of prior footage that is automatically flushed at a certain age, or that the users clean out when it gets large. This is recounting a story from a few weeks ago.
deleted 12y ago
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discardorama 12y ago
A lot of people refuse to believe that animals (or birds) can show any kind of advanced thinking. "Oh, the crow was probably carrying something in its beak; it saw the peanut, and dropped the thing in its beak" is their explanation. I'm sorry, but animals are far more perceptive than they're given credit for. Also, how do you explain this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5NuBk5_Izc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5NuBk5_Izc
- Varcht 12y ago
  I blame this on the "DreamWorks Effect", animators have done such a good job giving animals human traits and emotions that millinials+ really can't help but be animists.
  - tbrake 12y ago
    I used to have a similar theory but personification of animals has been a part of human storytelling since the beginning of time. I'm just unsure if modern CGI is any more compelling in forming lasting notions of animism than, say, Bambi was.
    - mikeash 12y ago
      Seems like a reversal of cause and effect. We don't see human traits in animals because our stories have them, our stories have them because we often see human traits in animals.
    - Varcht 12y ago
      Even with all the down votes I wouldn't write it off. These generations spent huge amounts of time watching real looking animals behave as humans while their brains were still developing.
    - lotsofmangos 12y ago
      By the way, I think that you and Varcht may be misusing the term 'animism' here. Belief systems like Shinto are animist, where you think things like rivers and trees and rocks and the different winds are conscious and have souls.
codeduck 12y ago
I had a pet crow when I was about 6 years old - he was a fledgeling who'd left his nest on the hottest day of the year and was dehydrated. My brother and I were squirting eachother with water and he cawed at us until we squirted him. He decided this was the best thing ever, and basically adopted us from then onwards. He was the terror of the local cats and dogs, but left our two siamese alone because he knew they were part of the family. He'd regularly steal visitor's keys, and hide them in the bush alongside our house purely so he could watch my dad or mum have to hunt for them. He'd play in the sprinkler, and knew the sound of my dad's motorcycle - when he heard my dad coming home in the evenings he would fly down the street and perch on my dad's shoulder for the ride home. Crows are awesome.
- drobati 12y ago
  I've always heard that crows are incredibly smart. Great story. :)
  - wozniacki 12y ago
    Crows are incredibly smart. They are known to memorize curbside garbage pick up routes of city vehicles and the specific days for each neighborhood, within a city. They are also quick to adapt, given a change in schedule and only visit those specific neighborhoods only on those specific days, from miles away. Here's a video of crow performing a multi-step tool action test - a test of intelligence - for the first time, without guidance and solving it in the first attempt. [1] Crow Intelligence - Multi-Step Tool Action Test https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY8-gP3Sw_8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY8-gP3Sw_8
    - balabaster 12y ago
      This one's my favourite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUiGEDnf5e4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUiGEDnf5e4 Crow keeps undoing the guys shoe laces so he can steal the frying pan while the guy's doing his shoe laces up. Classic.
      - 12y ago
Udo 12y ago
Whenever someone asserts that mammalian-equivalent intelligence is incredibly unlikely to arise twice, I like to point towards very intelligent and social birds, like crows - who are capable of performing advanced mental feats without a neocortex.
- metaphorm 12y ago
  nature rarely does anything just once. if it can happen once it can almost certainly happen more than once, and almost certainly does happen more than once.
  - Udo 12y ago
    In case it wasn't clear from my comment: that was my point. I agree with you.
- Balgair 12y ago
  Avian neuroscience is actually pretty cool. Our neocortex is made up of 6 layers of cell bodies, with interconnections and projections to other parts of the brain and body. The avian brain, however, is not divided into layers, but is more like the brainstem, in the sense that it's a lot of nuclei and bulbous areas called the nidopallium and mesopallium. The songbirds are well studied, if you want to do some research, as we the vocalizations are easier to measure and mess with. Mind that crows, though very smart for birds, as still nowhere near us humans or our close friends, the dog or pig. It still seems that the neocortex and many other factors have beaten the corvid brain to civilization and are, at least in this environment, better suited for higher intelligence. Good starter articles on corvid intelligence are: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1626540/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1626540/ http://academic.reed.edu/biology/professors/srenn/pages/teaching/web_2010/ndr_site/mechanism.html http://academic.reed.edu/biology/professors/srenn/pages/teac...
- bshanks 12y ago
  Tangentially, there is recent discussion of the idea that the neocortex is homologous to structures that do exist in the avian forebrain, eg that mammalian neocortex vs avian forebrain is almost the same processing units, wired with almost the same way connectivity, but just with a slightly different spatial organization: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098221201322X http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982212... Harvey J. Karten. Neocortical Evolution: Neuronal Circuits Arise Independently of Lamination. Some evidence is that some genes which correlate with cortical layers in mammals show up in these other places in avians.
hackaflocka 12y ago
Hoaxes involving children and/or their magical gifts: http://tempr.org/54ef57337b951.html http://tempr.org/54ef57337b951.html
- MollyR 12y ago
  thanks for this, its a good reminder to be skeptical.
- ForHackernews 12y ago
  None of those seem relevant or even related to this story, except inasmuch as they involve a child.
- adamnemecek 12y ago
  a.) there are no gifts involved in the stories you posted b.) it seems like the bbc witnessed the gift-giving
- hackaflocka 12y ago
  Hoaxes involving the BBC found from 30 seconds of Googling: http://tempr.org/54ef79520a0bc.html http://tempr.org/54ef79520a0bc.html
- Crito 12y ago
  On the other hand: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taung_Child http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taung_Child
sprkyco 12y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5_DuZ8WuMM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5_DuZ8WuMM Saw this video a while back and was really quite amazed the process adopted to crack walnuts. After watching that video I definitely had a higher level of "respect" for animals and their intellect.
minikites 12y ago
Crows are real smart. On an episode of Roderick on the Line, John Roderick recalled a story he read where a researcher was trying to round up crows for tests. He went into a parking lot and tossed a net, capturing some. The next day, he went to a different parking lot across town and the crows immediately flew away when he pulled in, because they recognized him. He went back to the same second parking lot in a different vehicle and was able to capture some, but then that vehicle didn't work. He started wearing masks and trying all sorts of tricks, but as far as he could tell, the crows were communicating through town.
- ham 12y ago
  Regularly, I'd walk in a park near my workplace to work out problems and I began too often to play games and tricks with the magpies (another type of Corvid like the crow). I'd do things like throwing twigs on either side of them to see how they would react (no magpies ever injured!). After a while I'm certain the magpies had a particular warning call any one would call out when I arrived in the park that would set them all of making that cawking sound until I left. After a while I needed to avoid the park for a bit and I think I was forgiven when I slowly started integrating myself in by leaving bits of food like nuts. I was amazed too at how observant they were, keeping a different distance if they noticed I had am umbrella or something in my hand or if I was walking funny. The magpie is the only bird to pass the mirror test: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_magpie#Intelligence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_magpie#Intelligence
pakled_engineer 12y ago
David Suzuki did an interesting show about crows but of course due to annoying geoIP copyright can't find an American version to link. http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/m/episodes/a-murder-of-crows http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/m/episodes/a-murder-of-crow... There's signs up at some Indian public markets forbidding vendors taking payment from monkeys as they watched humans exchange cash for fruit and became pickpockets. No gifts though except a huge tip when handing over piles of notes for one bunch of bananas.
nkurz 12y ago
Here's a more scientific look at the behavior: John Marzluff & Tony Angell: Gifts of the Crow (2012) Video: https://archive.org/details/scm-67314-johnmarzlufftonyangellgiftsoft https://archive.org/details/scm-67314-johnmarzlufftonyangell... Book: http://books.simonandschuster.com/Gifts-of-the-Crow/John-Marzluff/9781439198742 http://books.simonandschuster.com/Gifts-of-the-Crow/John-Mar...
yoshizar 12y ago
Konrad Lorez, one of the founders of the field of animal behavior and a Nobel laurete, did a lot of his research on jackdaws, which are a close relative of the crow. His book King Solomon's Ring is a really enjoyable read into his insights about their intelligence and social life.
- codyb 12y ago
  For anyone interested in psychology in general, his text "On Aggression" is an amazingly well developed read on the habits of aggression starting with fish, then birds, then eventually mammals (concluding of course with humans). The final explanation of why a loving father of four can firebomb a city filled with innocent people blew my mind as a younger man and shaped my worldview. I think I'll add King Solomon's Ring to my amazon cart now. Cheers for reminding me of him.
bane 12y ago
When I was quite young I lived in a low-end apartment complex, not quite "the projects" but home to lots of new immigrants working multiple jobs, lots of latchkey kids, that sort of thing. From time to time birds would fly into the building and those that survived usually needed some place to recuperate a bit. I became well known in the neighborhood as "the bird boy" for my seemingly miraculous ability to nurse stunned birds back to health...several of the other kids in the neighborhood tried it as well, but they ended up killing all their birds. For a while I had a pet robin, too young to fly. He had fallen from his nest and was abandoned after that. I took him in and fed and raised him till eventually turning him over to a local animal sanctuary. While I had him, for all that time, I had a friend on my shoulder or head pretty much wherever I went. He knew who my family was and who my friends were, and would stay away from people he didn't know. He knew where I kept his food and the process I had to go through the make it ready for him to eat. I don't recall ever being pooped on by him, not even once. He'd hold it till I put him in his house, or up on a branch while out playing with my friends. He never bit me, or did anything aggressive towards me. But he'd misbehave with other people he didn't know. One day, in a well meaning attempt to set him free, my mother dropped me off from school and then dropped my bird off in the woods. I came home and couldn't find him, my mother lied and said that he had flown away (which I knew was patently false). Finally, out of guilt, my mother fessed up and I ran out to the woods where she had dropped him off. He had waited patiently all day for me and vigorously hopped towards me when he saw me coming, chirping his head off in angry protest. He was shivering and starving and getting him back home, warm and fed was the guiltiest I ever felt. Not a crow, but definitely a cool experience with wild birds.
beefman 12y ago
Url should be simplified to http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31604026 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31604026
gandy 12y ago
Give and receive. This is some support for the idea that the law of reciprocity is ingrained fundamentally in us, even to lower form species like birds.
gandy 12y ago
Give and receive. This is support that the law of reciprocity might be ingrained in us--evident even in lower form species like birds.
marcusgarvey 12y ago
At what point do we start calling them "people"?
ChrisNorstrom 12y ago
I pissed off crows and they punished me for 2 weeks. My uncivilized hooligan former neighbors had a young tree in their yard which they purposely allowed to grow for years right in the foundation of our brick wall. It started casting a shadow in our garden as well. There were no nests in the 20 foot young tree and the property was abandoned and now owned by the bank. So I ran over and cut it down. It was big enough to start cracking the foundation. Big mistake, I should have worn a disguise. The crows who live in the tree above the one I cut took saw this as vandalism (well it technically was). For 2 weeks they would poop on my car non-stop. Only my car. They knew the PT Cruiser was mine, they shat all over that car. They specifically aimed for the door handle on the driver's side. I have never seen such vengeful birds and such nasty bird crap. It was discussing. They'd carpet bomb it all day, every day, for 2 weeks. I would have about 14 bird crap splatters on the car on any given day. They finally stopped after about 2 weeks. I should have had a neighbor do it or worn a disguise.
- ajtaylor 12y ago
  Looks like the crows' intelligence can go both ways! I suspect that your disguise would not have fooled them though. I've watched some amazing feats of Crow problem solving (thanks Sir David Attenborough!) so they probably would have just watched which house you went into and carpet bombed ALL the cars in the driveway.
TeMPOraL 12y ago
You know what? After spending hours reading comments here, then watching videos and a talk about crows, it's decided. Screw drones. I don't want a quadcopter. I want to befriend a few crows and see if I can convince some to do cool stuff.
- sounds 12y ago
  As someone who has worked a LOT with drones of all form factors (quad copters, propeller drones, battery and dead dinosaur-fueled), when drones can do this, drones will be cool: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eakKfY5aHmY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eakKfY5aHmY Context: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon#Ecology_and_behavior http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon#Ecology_and_be...
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    I remember that video. It was featured in a TED talk I very like [0]. Murmuration is one of the most amazing things I ever saw on YouTube. Thanks for reminding me of it. [0] - http://www.ted.com/talks/don_tapscott_four_principles_for_the_open_world_1?language=en http://www.ted.com/talks/don_tapscott_four_principles_for_th...

506 points by th0br0 12y ago

I had a gift this morning, from a pigeon, onto my shoulder whilst waiting for the train to pull into the platform for work. Supposed to be lucky - not sure for me or the pigeon though!

madaxe_again 12y ago

This is cool, but isn't that surprising, if you think about the behaviours of other species, and that corvids as a whole are highly intelligent and use tools in a fashion akin to primates. I mean, primates give gifts to each other and humans, and my cat loves nothing more than to leave the most succulent bits of viscera of whatever her prey was for me on Persian rugs, for me to enjoy, by which I mean tread on while heading to the shower in the morning.

canjobear 12y ago
I think it is very surprising even given findings about corvid intelligence. I know of studies showing crows can count, but that kind of intelligence does not at all imply that a creature will spontaneously give gifts in exchange for food. This requires either some kind of ethics including reciprocity, or it requires that the crows reason that giving gifts will make someone more likely to give more food. The latter reasoning requires that the crows are able to model the behavior of an intelligent agent under hypothetical circumstances. Bird brains are very different from mammal brains; they don't have a neocortex. So it's very interesting that they have developed similar gift-giving behavior to mammals and primates.
- gadders 12y ago
  I think a lot of our intelligence research is mammal-biassed. When we think of intelligent animals we think primates, dolphins, dogs and maybe pigs. We ignore birds and octopus.
  - pidg 12y ago
    Side-note: octopuses enjoy a position as the only invertebrate protected by animal testing laws in the UK (as of 1993): http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1993/2103/made http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1993/2103/made
  - marincounty 12y ago
    I have a weird feeling most animals think a lot; it's not just instinct, or Behaviorism. I also have a weird feeling as humans we attribute too much of our actions to thinking, and not enough to instinct and Behaviorism? I still have huge issues with strict Behaviorists though. My Psychiatrist practices subtle reinforcement techniques, and they never worked, but I just can't tell him; he's a nice guy. I think he needs to validate his fees, in order to keep his own sanity? Can I prove it--no! I just never bought those philosophy/psychology instructors who really tried to teach me animals don't think. The older I get the more humans look like apes. I think my decline in testosterone is playing a part in the way I look at the world? The mystery of it all is fading--sadly--in humans and humanity. But the animal world is more fascinating than ever! I am happily waiting for the first mammal to speak it's mind! I wish I could be around when it happens.
    - MollyR 12y ago
      I've thought about this as well. A lot of the things I do don't really seem to be thought or thinking but instinct, with rationalization later. Lately I've been wondering if people think or animals actually "think". Perhaps everything we do extends from some kind of simple instinct in the case of insects to an extremely advanced form of instinct humans, primates, corvids, etc.
    - Oyeboten 12y ago
      I have never seen anything to suggest that the 'inner world' of a member of some other Species, would be any smaller than or less varied and interesting, than my own. Humans tend to be occupied in neurosis, and subterfuge, more than anything else. While other species are largely occupied with 'Nous'...and thus, would be far more elegant in their mental process and decision making and overall ontological 'poise', than people generally are.
- Lewton 12y ago
  Crow flies with thing in its beak. Sees food, drops thing, grabs food. Comes back later, sees more food! Assumes food came from dropping thing (See "Superstition in the pigeon" [0]). Meme spreads among the crows. No ethics or deep reasoning required. Random rewards lead to irrational behavior. [0] http://psychclassics.asu.edu/Skinner/Pigeon/ http://psychclassics.asu.edu/Skinner/Pigeon/
  - dragontamer 12y ago
    The final example though, where a Crow returns the camera-lens cap to the family requires some pretty advanced thinking. We know that Crows recognize human faces and expressions, and communicate these facts amongst each other. Crows / Ravens are the only creature aside from Humans who perform meta-tool use. They can use tools to grab tools to accomplish a goal. In many ways, they're smarter than (non-human) primates, and are probably the 2nd smartest animals on earth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Caledonian_crow#Meta-tool_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Caledonian_crow#Meta-tool_... Birds in general are pretty smart (see Pidgeons, Parrots, etc. etc.) However crows / ravens are on a completely different intelligence level. Crows break nuts by dropping them on the asphalt... timing their drops during red lights so that traffic doesn't hit them. Besides, gift-giving is seen in far dumber animals than crows. Dogs, Cats, Penguins... they don't have the intelligence of Crows but they understand gifts and social situations.
    - Lewton 12y ago
      It sounds like there's a pretty big amount of crows that got in on the "drop gifts for food" program. And a camera lens is well within the range of what a crow would usually be interested in. It doesn't sound unlikely to me that it would just pick it up as any other thing and gift it. Crows are awesome though, I'm not trying to put down their intelligence, haha. I just wanted to point out that neither deeper reasoning nor ethics is required to explain this phenomenon. One of the researchers in the article said that he had never experienced the gift giving, even though he also fed crows often. That to me makes it more sensible to believe that it's just a meme that developed by chance
- protonfish 12y ago
  Reciprocity is possibly the simplest form of cooperation. All that would be required is the ability to distinguish between individuals and this type of social behavior could appear through simple Pavlovian conditioning.
svankmajer 12y ago
Good heavens. My cats sometimes do things like that, but I always thought that it was all about passing down hunting wisdom and not much about gifts or gratitude.

mxfh 12y ago

There already exists an automated exploit for this behavior: Joshua Klein's Crow Machine: https://www.josh.is/crow-machine/ https://www.josh.is/crow-machine/ see also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=470840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=470840

im3w1l 12y ago
I think there is a big difference between gift and payment. Your article is on skinnerian conditioning to train crows to pay for peanuts. In this article the crows got peanuts whether they gave gifts or not. They just decided to give gifts. No training occured.
- jmilloy 12y ago
  Clearly, they're the same crows.
- autechr3 12y ago
  Perhaps in the mind of the crows, they are giving gifts as a reward. In effect, training the human (in the article).
  - MollyR 12y ago
    That is mind-blowing, and makes me want to reevaluate the concept of gift giving.
    - qb45 12y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_8hPcnGeCI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_8hPcnGeCI
    - blacksmith_tb 12y ago
      There's a famous quote attributed to the Inuit that Marcel Mauss mentions in The Gift: "Gifts make slaves like whips make dogs." Both halves of that statement are provocative.

sebthomas 12y ago

Thought it read 'get lifts from birds' - disappointed.

profinger 12y ago

Anyone else experiencing difficulties with the bbc site?

rickdale 12y ago

On one of David Attenborough's recent shows, he said that crows can store up 30,000 pieces of food in various locations in the ground. They not only know where each piece of food is, but they know which ones are perishable and to get the food before it spoils. Pretty remarkable if you ask me.

maxerickson 12y ago
More here: http://www.pbs.org/lifeofbirds/brain/ http://www.pbs.org/lifeofbirds/brain/ The particular bird matching that number, Clark's Nutcracker, looks well studied. This paper discusses them caching 30,000 seeds, but not in 30,000 separate locations, it concludes that they locate at least 1,000 locations by memory: http://www.auburn.edu/academic/classes/biol/7560/folkerts/hutchinsnutcracker.pdf http://www.auburn.edu/academic/classes/biol/7560/folkerts/hu... (that author seems to have done much field work studying the bird) Another paper estimates that they might cache 90,000 seeds.
- Luc 12y ago
  The paper you linked to mentions them caching seeds in all manner of different locations. I wonder if they have some form of algorithm unknown to us to determine a good location, rather than choosing randomly. That would aid a lot in 'remembering' locations of the caches.
  - maxerickson 12y ago
    From the reading I did they basically don't spend any time looking in spots where there is not a cache. Which at least suggests they are using memory.
  - rickdale 12y ago
    On that same program the showed an experiment with 2 crows in side by side cages. When the crows could see each other, they put the food in the soil without making any noise. When they blocked the view of the other bird they put the food into the rocks, which makes quite a bit of noise. So theres more going into where they hide their food then first glance.

sdfjkl 12y ago

Crows are incredibly smart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY8-gP3Sw_8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY8-gP3Sw_8

tomswartz07 12y ago

There's an old 4Chan thread where a user starts 'World War Crow' by favoring a certain group of crows over another. Allegedly, after some time, the two groups of crows have an all out battle over which group gets french fries. http://usvsth3m.com/post/69700674556/has-an-anonymous-4chan-user-really-started-world-war http://usvsth3m.com/post/69700674556/has-an-anonymous-4chan-...

silveira 12y ago
True or not, this story is amazing.
- klipt 12y ago
  Reminds me of http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=59 http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=59
api 12y ago
Maybe some group of aliens distributed oil and other valuable minerals unevenly across the Earth, and now they're watching and laughing and running betting pools.
comrade1 12y ago
What!? That's not the end though. There was a second part where the crow factions fight. I hope someone saved it!
- fheisler 12y ago
  http://i.imgur.com/o30vTqq.png http://i.imgur.com/o30vTqq.png
Zuider 12y ago
Yeah, you have to be careful to share the goods evenly among corvids. If you favor one individual, it can be exiled, or even attacked and killed by the others. A crow that is good at getting your attention rises in status if you make sure that there is enough to go around for the group.

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thekevan 12y ago

I was disappointed that this article didn't include a definite scientific opinion on whether the crows saw this as an exchange for food, or if for some reason they bring objects to a feeding area.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
crows leave gifts for one another. This may be some variant of that, triggered by the food?

shutupalready 12y ago

> Lisa logged on to her computer and pulled up their bird-cam. There was the crow she suspected. "You can see it bringing it into the yard. Walks it to the birdbath and actually spends time rinsing this lens cap." Why wouldn't they put this video in the BBC article?

kbenson 12y ago
They may not have kept it. The camera system may keep a certain amount of prior footage that is automatically flushed at a certain age, or that the users clean out when it gets large. This is recounting a story from a few weeks ago.

deleted 12y ago

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discardorama 12y ago

A lot of people refuse to believe that animals (or birds) can show any kind of advanced thinking. "Oh, the crow was probably carrying something in its beak; it saw the peanut, and dropped the thing in its beak" is their explanation. I'm sorry, but animals are far more perceptive than they're given credit for. Also, how do you explain this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5NuBk5_Izc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5NuBk5_Izc

Varcht 12y ago
I blame this on the "DreamWorks Effect", animators have done such a good job giving animals human traits and emotions that millinials+ really can't help but be animists.
- tbrake 12y ago
  I used to have a similar theory but personification of animals has been a part of human storytelling since the beginning of time. I'm just unsure if modern CGI is any more compelling in forming lasting notions of animism than, say, Bambi was.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    Seems like a reversal of cause and effect. We don't see human traits in animals because our stories have them, our stories have them because we often see human traits in animals.
  - Varcht 12y ago
    Even with all the down votes I wouldn't write it off. These generations spent huge amounts of time watching real looking animals behave as humans while their brains were still developing.
  - lotsofmangos 12y ago
    By the way, I think that you and Varcht may be misusing the term 'animism' here. Belief systems like Shinto are animist, where you think things like rivers and trees and rocks and the different winds are conscious and have souls.

codeduck 12y ago

I had a pet crow when I was about 6 years old - he was a fledgeling who'd left his nest on the hottest day of the year and was dehydrated. My brother and I were squirting eachother with water and he cawed at us until we squirted him. He decided this was the best thing ever, and basically adopted us from then onwards. He was the terror of the local cats and dogs, but left our two siamese alone because he knew they were part of the family. He'd regularly steal visitor's keys, and hide them in the bush alongside our house purely so he could watch my dad or mum have to hunt for them. He'd play in the sprinkler, and knew the sound of my dad's motorcycle - when he heard my dad coming home in the evenings he would fly down the street and perch on my dad's shoulder for the ride home. Crows are awesome.

drobati 12y ago
I've always heard that crows are incredibly smart. Great story. :)
- wozniacki 12y ago
  Crows are incredibly smart. They are known to memorize curbside garbage pick up routes of city vehicles and the specific days for each neighborhood, within a city. They are also quick to adapt, given a change in schedule and only visit those specific neighborhoods only on those specific days, from miles away. Here's a video of crow performing a multi-step tool action test - a test of intelligence - for the first time, without guidance and solving it in the first attempt. [1] Crow Intelligence - Multi-Step Tool Action Test https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY8-gP3Sw_8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY8-gP3Sw_8
  - balabaster 12y ago
    This one's my favourite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUiGEDnf5e4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUiGEDnf5e4 Crow keeps undoing the guys shoe laces so he can steal the frying pan while the guy's doing his shoe laces up. Classic.
    - 12y ago

Udo 12y ago

Whenever someone asserts that mammalian-equivalent intelligence is incredibly unlikely to arise twice, I like to point towards very intelligent and social birds, like crows - who are capable of performing advanced mental feats without a neocortex.

metaphorm 12y ago
nature rarely does anything just once. if it can happen once it can almost certainly happen more than once, and almost certainly does happen more than once.
- Udo 12y ago
  In case it wasn't clear from my comment: that was my point. I agree with you.
Balgair 12y ago
Avian neuroscience is actually pretty cool. Our neocortex is made up of 6 layers of cell bodies, with interconnections and projections to other parts of the brain and body. The avian brain, however, is not divided into layers, but is more like the brainstem, in the sense that it's a lot of nuclei and bulbous areas called the nidopallium and mesopallium. The songbirds are well studied, if you want to do some research, as we the vocalizations are easier to measure and mess with. Mind that crows, though very smart for birds, as still nowhere near us humans or our close friends, the dog or pig. It still seems that the neocortex and many other factors have beaten the corvid brain to civilization and are, at least in this environment, better suited for higher intelligence. Good starter articles on corvid intelligence are: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1626540/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1626540/ http://academic.reed.edu/biology/professors/srenn/pages/teaching/web_2010/ndr_site/mechanism.html http://academic.reed.edu/biology/professors/srenn/pages/teac...
bshanks 12y ago
Tangentially, there is recent discussion of the idea that the neocortex is homologous to structures that do exist in the avian forebrain, eg that mammalian neocortex vs avian forebrain is almost the same processing units, wired with almost the same way connectivity, but just with a slightly different spatial organization: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098221201322X http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982212... Harvey J. Karten. Neocortical Evolution: Neuronal Circuits Arise Independently of Lamination. Some evidence is that some genes which correlate with cortical layers in mammals show up in these other places in avians.

hackaflocka 12y ago

Hoaxes involving children and/or their magical gifts: http://tempr.org/54ef57337b951.html http://tempr.org/54ef57337b951.html

MollyR 12y ago
thanks for this, its a good reminder to be skeptical.
ForHackernews 12y ago
None of those seem relevant or even related to this story, except inasmuch as they involve a child.
adamnemecek 12y ago
a.) there are no gifts involved in the stories you posted b.) it seems like the bbc witnessed the gift-giving
hackaflocka 12y ago
Hoaxes involving the BBC found from 30 seconds of Googling: http://tempr.org/54ef79520a0bc.html http://tempr.org/54ef79520a0bc.html
Crito 12y ago
On the other hand: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taung_Child http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taung_Child

sprkyco 12y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5_DuZ8WuMM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5_DuZ8WuMM Saw this video a while back and was really quite amazed the process adopted to crack walnuts. After watching that video I definitely had a higher level of "respect" for animals and their intellect.

minikites 12y ago

Crows are real smart. On an episode of Roderick on the Line, John Roderick recalled a story he read where a researcher was trying to round up crows for tests. He went into a parking lot and tossed a net, capturing some. The next day, he went to a different parking lot across town and the crows immediately flew away when he pulled in, because they recognized him. He went back to the same second parking lot in a different vehicle and was able to capture some, but then that vehicle didn't work. He started wearing masks and trying all sorts of tricks, but as far as he could tell, the crows were communicating through town.

ham 12y ago
Regularly, I'd walk in a park near my workplace to work out problems and I began too often to play games and tricks with the magpies (another type of Corvid like the crow). I'd do things like throwing twigs on either side of them to see how they would react (no magpies ever injured!). After a while I'm certain the magpies had a particular warning call any one would call out when I arrived in the park that would set them all of making that cawking sound until I left. After a while I needed to avoid the park for a bit and I think I was forgiven when I slowly started integrating myself in by leaving bits of food like nuts. I was amazed too at how observant they were, keeping a different distance if they noticed I had am umbrella or something in my hand or if I was walking funny. The magpie is the only bird to pass the mirror test: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_magpie#Intelligence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_magpie#Intelligence

pakled_engineer 12y ago

David Suzuki did an interesting show about crows but of course due to annoying geoIP copyright can't find an American version to link. http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/m/episodes/a-murder-of-crows http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/m/episodes/a-murder-of-crow... There's signs up at some Indian public markets forbidding vendors taking payment from monkeys as they watched humans exchange cash for fruit and became pickpockets. No gifts though except a huge tip when handing over piles of notes for one bunch of bananas.

nkurz 12y ago

Here's a more scientific look at the behavior: John Marzluff & Tony Angell: Gifts of the Crow (2012) Video: https://archive.org/details/scm-67314-johnmarzlufftonyangellgiftsoft https://archive.org/details/scm-67314-johnmarzlufftonyangell... Book: http://books.simonandschuster.com/Gifts-of-the-Crow/John-Marzluff/9781439198742 http://books.simonandschuster.com/Gifts-of-the-Crow/John-Mar...

yoshizar 12y ago

Konrad Lorez, one of the founders of the field of animal behavior and a Nobel laurete, did a lot of his research on jackdaws, which are a close relative of the crow. His book King Solomon's Ring is a really enjoyable read into his insights about their intelligence and social life.

codyb 12y ago
For anyone interested in psychology in general, his text "On Aggression" is an amazingly well developed read on the habits of aggression starting with fish, then birds, then eventually mammals (concluding of course with humans). The final explanation of why a loving father of four can firebomb a city filled with innocent people blew my mind as a younger man and shaped my worldview. I think I'll add King Solomon's Ring to my amazon cart now. Cheers for reminding me of him.

bane 12y ago

When I was quite young I lived in a low-end apartment complex, not quite "the projects" but home to lots of new immigrants working multiple jobs, lots of latchkey kids, that sort of thing. From time to time birds would fly into the building and those that survived usually needed some place to recuperate a bit. I became well known in the neighborhood as "the bird boy" for my seemingly miraculous ability to nurse stunned birds back to health...several of the other kids in the neighborhood tried it as well, but they ended up killing all their birds. For a while I had a pet robin, too young to fly. He had fallen from his nest and was abandoned after that. I took him in and fed and raised him till eventually turning him over to a local animal sanctuary. While I had him, for all that time, I had a friend on my shoulder or head pretty much wherever I went. He knew who my family was and who my friends were, and would stay away from people he didn't know. He knew where I kept his food and the process I had to go through the make it ready for him to eat. I don't recall ever being pooped on by him, not even once. He'd hold it till I put him in his house, or up on a branch while out playing with my friends. He never bit me, or did anything aggressive towards me. But he'd misbehave with other people he didn't know. One day, in a well meaning attempt to set him free, my mother dropped me off from school and then dropped my bird off in the woods. I came home and couldn't find him, my mother lied and said that he had flown away (which I knew was patently false). Finally, out of guilt, my mother fessed up and I ran out to the woods where she had dropped him off. He had waited patiently all day for me and vigorously hopped towards me when he saw me coming, chirping his head off in angry protest. He was shivering and starving and getting him back home, warm and fed was the guiltiest I ever felt. Not a crow, but definitely a cool experience with wild birds.

beefman 12y ago

Url should be simplified to http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31604026 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31604026

gandy 12y ago

Give and receive. This is some support for the idea that the law of reciprocity is ingrained fundamentally in us, even to lower form species like birds.

gandy 12y ago

Give and receive. This is support that the law of reciprocity might be ingrained in us--evident even in lower form species like birds.

marcusgarvey 12y ago

At what point do we start calling them "people"?

ChrisNorstrom 12y ago

I pissed off crows and they punished me for 2 weeks. My uncivilized hooligan former neighbors had a young tree in their yard which they purposely allowed to grow for years right in the foundation of our brick wall. It started casting a shadow in our garden as well. There were no nests in the 20 foot young tree and the property was abandoned and now owned by the bank. So I ran over and cut it down. It was big enough to start cracking the foundation. Big mistake, I should have worn a disguise. The crows who live in the tree above the one I cut took saw this as vandalism (well it technically was). For 2 weeks they would poop on my car non-stop. Only my car. They knew the PT Cruiser was mine, they shat all over that car. They specifically aimed for the door handle on the driver's side. I have never seen such vengeful birds and such nasty bird crap. It was discussing. They'd carpet bomb it all day, every day, for 2 weeks. I would have about 14 bird crap splatters on the car on any given day. They finally stopped after about 2 weeks. I should have had a neighbor do it or worn a disguise.

ajtaylor 12y ago
Looks like the crows' intelligence can go both ways! I suspect that your disguise would not have fooled them though. I've watched some amazing feats of Crow problem solving (thanks Sir David Attenborough!) so they probably would have just watched which house you went into and carpet bombed ALL the cars in the driveway.

TeMPOraL 12y ago

You know what? After spending hours reading comments here, then watching videos and a talk about crows, it's decided. Screw drones. I don't want a quadcopter. I want to befriend a few crows and see if I can convince some to do cool stuff.

sounds 12y ago
As someone who has worked a LOT with drones of all form factors (quad copters, propeller drones, battery and dead dinosaur-fueled), when drones can do this, drones will be cool: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eakKfY5aHmY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eakKfY5aHmY Context: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon#Ecology_and_behavior http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon#Ecology_and_be...
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  I remember that video. It was featured in a TED talk I very like [0]. Murmuration is one of the most amazing things I ever saw on YouTube. Thanks for reminding me of it. [0] - http://www.ted.com/talks/don_tapscott_four_principles_for_the_open_world_1?language=en http://www.ted.com/talks/don_tapscott_four_principles_for_th...