Are Cities Making Animals Smarter?
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
The crow went from car to car, searching for bugs. Finding one, he would jump using both front legs, grab the bug with his beak and pull it off the grill, jump back to the ground and eat. Periodically he would take a break to drink cold water from the air conditioner drippings that cars leave when parked.
Crows and other birds have probably been using vehicles as bug food scoops for decades. But I'd never heard of it or seen it before.
But things are changing. Human are now picking dogs to be a companion, not for protection. They are letting their dogs inside the house. They are playing with them. Human also select smarter dogs like German Shepherd because they are easy to train.
The trend is new. I mean we are only a few hundred years into urbanization and genetics is a slow process. But selection is real and humans are very selective. This will keep the most intelligent race/dogs and breed even smarter dogs.
I know for a fact that my german is more skillful than my parents'. That's because living in an apartment requires extra skills. As human select animals that are more adapted, we'll have dogs who are savvy about doors, bells, cars, refrigerator, toilets, etc...
I don't think it's fair to say wolves are smarter than dogs. They specialize at different things, that's for sure.
In general I disagree with your post.
If you imagine a dog living in a stone age village versus a dog living in a town today, it doesn't seem to follow that the latter is going to be smarter because human technology is more advanced. A stone age dog might recognize a knock on the hut of a door and the modern dog might recognize an alarm going off. Seems like the same thing to me.
If you want smart dogs the answer is eugenics. Breed the smartest ones. This is tried and true and it's how breeds like border collies or german shepherds got so smart: they were bred for obedience, intelligence, and ability to perform their jobs. More pets and fewer working dogs (which is definitely the trend) is going to result in friendlier, cuter, but less intelligent dogs (compared to working breeds anyway).
Second case are crows - they will pick up walnuts, wait for cars and throw in front of them, hoping car wheels will smash them. After that, they'll pick up eatable parts.
It doesn't go in to much detail tough... https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/kungstradgarden-metro-st...
That distinction may be different from smarter or more intelligent. I think it's complicated.
However, the article is talking about a specific claim that they would also be more intelligent. This is a far harder hypothesis to predict the truth of (and to test). But, to the extent that "intelligent" is well defined it is still a reasonable hypothesis to have. In fact, I think that, by far, the least likely scenario is that they are equally as intelligent as their rural counterparts, as that would mean that environment has no effect on their intelligence. While this is probably true of some animals, It would be very surprising to me if it held for the more cognitive ones. The question then becomes how big of an effect is it, and in what direction.
Of course, when we drill into what "intellegence" means, we will probably find that it is a multi-dimensional notion, and refine the discussion to more/less intelligent in certain dimensions.
EDIT: it is also conceivable that an animal that grew up in environment A, then moved to environmnet B could be better suited for environment B than the one that had lived in B for its whole life.