Min Bannister
Possessed dog
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- Sep 5, 2003
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That's just too adorable.
Young Ravens Could Have Cognitive Skills That Rival Adult Great Apes, Research Finds
It's safe to say if there was a Mensa for animals, corvids would be crowing about it. They can plan like us, make tools like us, and might even be consciously judging us for all we know. We get it, they're super smart.
Just to rub it in, there's now evidence that their cognitive development might even be a little quicker than ours. Hand-raised common ravens (Corvus corax) have all their mental skills by just four months of age, all without watching a single episode of Sesame Street.
Researchers from the Max Planck Institutes for Ornithology and Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany ran eight ravens in their care through a modified version of the Primate Cognition Test Battery (PCTB) every four months since hatching.
This series of tests doesn't just examine 'thinking' skills to do with spatial relationships, object permanence, causality, and tool use – it deals with social abilities, communication, and theory of mind.
They compared the birds' results with data gathered previously on primates, including results on chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus), as well as parrots.
They found by just four months of age, the ravens already had the social and other cognitive skills expected of an adult raven. This is in spite of having a brain that wasn't yet fully grown.
Since these skills are comparable with those of a great apes', it means ravens that are barely able to fly can already solve problems that would make an orangutan scratch its head in deep thought.
They are one smart bird. When I was a kid a friend trained one to talk and it talked - mimicked quite a few words.Newly published research results suggest young ravens exhibit cognitive skills rivaling those of adult great apes.
FULL STORY:
https://www.sciencealert.com/young-...at-rival-cognitive-skills-of-adult-great-apes
See Also:
Young Ravens Rival Adult Chimps in a Big Test of General Intelligence
https://www.scientificamerican.com/...chimps-in-a-big-test-of-general-intelligence/
FULL STORY: https://apnews.com/article/business-science-environment-and-nature-7844af19c7975f12c2a98cc5bd83fb60Crafty cockatoos master dumpster diving and teach each other
A few years ago, a Sydney scientist noticed a sulfur-crested cockatoo opening his trash bin. ... ornithologist Richard Major was impressed by the ingenuity. ...
Major teamed up with researchers in Germany to study how many cockatoos learned this trick. In early 2018, they found from a survey of residents that birds in three Sydney suburbs had mastered the novel foraging technique. By the end of 2019, birds were lifting bins in 44 suburbs.
“From three suburbs to 44 in two years is a pretty rapid spread,” said Major, who is based at the Australian Museum.
The researchers’ next question was whether the cockatoos had each figured out how to do this alone — or whether they copied the strategy from experienced birds. And their research published Thursday in the journal Science concluded the birds mostly learned by watching their peers. ...
Newly published research describes the emergence, spread and ramifications of novel effective foraging behavior (the ability to open trash bins) among cockatoos in the Sydney metropolitan area.
FULL STORY: https://apnews.com/article/business-science-environment-and-nature-7844af19c7975f12c2a98cc5bd83fb60