Birds with more complex vocal skills are better problem-solvers | Hacker News Reader

Birds with more complex vocal skills are better problem-solvers

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59 pointslota-putty11 comments

I've spent many an hour watching my favourite brainiac birds, kea [0] interact, their vocalizations aren't as complex as, say, a tūī or a minah, but they also use facial expressions (for want of a better phrase) intensively when communicating. And their capacity for knowledge transfer is top tier. Once one kea figures out a new way to get food, then soon all their buddies will know the technique too.

Which is cool, but sucks if their new technique is used to get _your_ food.

One year there was a group of kea who would effectively mug solo hikers who'd set up camp. They'd break into your tent and/or backpack by undoing the zips, and would use decoy kea to distract you while doing so (a group of parrots pulling out your tent pegs or removing your bootlaces is very distracting indeed.)

And at a popular photo stop [1], they have their routine for fleecing tourists down pat - a couple of kea will cavort charmingly to get your attention, and when you start taking photos, their accomplices will then try to access your bag, or even your car if you left the door open...

[0]: https://nzbirdsonline.org.nz/species/kea

[1]: https://nzbushadventures.blogspot.com/2022/05/otira-viaduct-...

"Up to 80% of the Superb Lyrebird’s song consists of mimicry, and it’s not unusual for an individual male lyrebird to have mastered the calls of 20-25 species of bird." https://wildambience.com/wildlife-sounds/superb-lyrebird/

The R2D2 bird

Yup, That Death Starling should be in the sequels

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30uQJcJNU3g

There's lyrebird around my friend's parents house that imitates a chainsaw.

This video is of Nova, a lyrebird at the Adelaide Zoo. There's kookaburra, magpie, whipbird, and various other imitations in there, and she likes to throw in a camera shutter click every now and then as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgTyEneo8hA

I am not sure what to think, it could be that birds that are better problem-solvers are better at vocal mimicry. The study is for some reason focusing on vocal skills and problem-solving, both of which are part of executive functions. I am unsure that something which has complex language skills would necessarily be good at problem-solving, or vice versa. Mice are great at problem-solving, but they don't have much in the way of vocal abilities. Both language control and problem-solving are related to cognitive flexibility, in some respects. That is, I think that the emergence of cognitive flexibility helps birds (and other species) with vocal mimicry and problem-solving. For example, I don't chatgpt has any cognitive flexibility based on its language and problem-solving skills.

Mice do have pretty complex multisyllabic vocalizations, it's just that the majority fall outside of our auditory range. It's the same for rabbits. They've even found that mice sing in different contexts (some courtship related, some not) https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnbeh.2015.0007...

In humans at least we know that if an individual doesn't pick up a language as a child they will not be fully able to as an adult, and will have cognitive disabilities as a result. A modern example we had to read about in my neuroscience undergraduate program was Genie. When rescued from an abusive upbringing she was able to learn some nonverbal communication over the span of months, but missing that critical development period in childhood had lifelong impacts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_(feral_child)

That's fair, and interesting. I don't think it takes away from the fact that cognitive flexibility is still the overarching emergent property that enables this.

I’ve always wonder how our own IQ & problem solving skills is linked to the language we speak/think (and the numbering system we use).

Similarly, if someone can “speak/think” in Lisp - they will be able to solve a lot of problems that someone who can only “speak/think” in Bash cannot.

Needs more mockingbirds...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN3V4bBpTQs

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