The Magic of Bird Brains | Hacker News Reader

The Magic of Bird Brains

newyorker.com

129 pointschapulin38 comments

Not a lot about bird brains in general, instead discussion of some informal experimentation with urban crows.

I volunteer at a raptor conservation centre and have been impressed by the behaviours of the different birds, and the degree of mentation that is going on (or not). The smartest birds I met there were Caracaras [0] which could be trained to do various tricks, including carrying objects from one place to another, and could solve simple puzzles. Perhaps surprisingly, given their reputation for being wise, owls were some of the least intelligent, partly because their skulls have so much space occupied by their eyes compared with diurnal birds.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caracara_(genus)

Any reading recs for actual info on bird brains?

Olkowicz, et al. (2016) Birds have primate-like numbers of neurons in the forebrain

https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1517131113

Sorry, nothing specific. A while ago I read 'Bird Sense' by Tim Birkhead but this is about their sensory systems rather than their intelligence as such, and is a bit discursive. There are a couple of useful starting points on Wikipedia, such as [0] and [1].

In general, birds are sometimes surprisingly different to mammals. Their eyes are quite different. For example, raptor vision has a much higher acuity and framerate than ours, and many birds do different things with their left and right eyes. Their respiration is also different (including lungs that have 'in' and 'out' pipes), which allows something like a falcon to eat the moment it has finished hunting, unlike say a cheetah, which has to get its breath back before eating after a successful chase.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avian_brain

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_intelligence

Jennifer Ackerman's "The Bird Way"

Instagram. There's a bottomless supply of videos showing birds being clever

awesome comment! Thank you, KineticLensman! (and nickname is also super cool)

Thank you! Nickname is a play on where I used to work and one of my hobbies.

There's a great book about caracaras from a few years ago called "A Most Remarkable Creature: The Hidden Life and Epic Journey of the World's Smartest Birds of Prey" by Jonathan Meiburg. I highly recommend it! (And a trivia note, the author is perhaps better known as a musician, most notably in the bands Shearwater and Loma.)

Book (no wiki link, but this seems OK): https://www.npr.org/2021/03/31/982631076/-a-most-remarkable-...

Author: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Meiburg

Didn't think I'd see caracaras mentioned when I opened up hacker news this morning, thanks!

Second this book recommendation. He is a very engaging author (and his music is amazing too).

As an aside: owls being wise is a cultural belief. In India, owls are considered unintelligent, and calling someone an owl is akin to calling them a fool. Interesting how these perceptions are diametrically opposite!

In Finnish, owl translates as pöllö, which in modern day everyday spoken language also means dumb/silly/crazy. I can't quickly find any evidence of any old owl symbology that wouldn't just be imported from a different culture. Most of the surrounding countries considered owls to be birds of death, accidents and misfortune. So yeah, I'd say Finland agrees with India on this.

Out in California, living near massive crow populations is a plus, because they terrorize the hell out of the hawks would otherwise mercilessly pick off your backyard chickens. It's truly impressive stuff, watching the crows coordinate comms and attacks from massive distances over a single hawk in the area.

It does mean more rats though.

Does the solution mean more cats?

But then your chickens are in danger again.

I have two cats and there are at least 5 "working" feral cats from around the neighborhood that come through my yard all of the time. None of them, even the largest, have ever posed a single threat (or even interest) in my fully grown chickens.

Chicks, on the other hand... but that's why chicks aren't free ranging.

Yeah I've never seen a domestic cat go for an adult chicken. They've always coexisted peacefully in my experience. They are symbiotic to some degree. Chickens can attract mice by virtue of how messy they are (throwing feed everywhere). Cats eat mice. Ecosystem balanced.

Also, an adult (egg-laying) chicken will weigh close to what a cat weighs. Cats have a plentitude of much easier prey.

Chicks would be fair game, but most people are raising chicks in an incubator setting. (Chickens are not great mothers, and you'll have a lot of attrition even in the absence of predators.)

No cat is going to hunt and kill a chicken.

Cats are unable or unwilling to tackle larger rats, including the ones outside my apartment. They're much better mousers than ratters.

Depends on the cat and the size of the rats. I have had cats that would deposit dead rats along with their regular offering of mouse heads on my door mat, and one cat that hunted rabbits nearly her size. (As the rabbits kept invading my fenced vegetable garden I was okay with their predation)

I've seen Blue Jays do something similar, it started off as a single male jay dive bombing the hawk with 2-3 more Jays showing up in a few minutes. It occurred to me that the birds must have a "flee" call that's distinct from a "help" call because while they seemed to want to scare away the hawk I've seen them simply flee when a cat's around.

I've had the same experience. Crows work with scrub jays to get rid of hawks and housecats for the benefit of other animals.

The quote at the end from Eiseley is more interesting than it sounds: https://www.101bananas.com/library2/eiseley1.html It's about a crow being terrified to nearly fly into Eiseley's head on an extremely foggy day (where you couldn't see the ground), and Eiseley speculating that the crow inferred that Eiseley, uniquely among humans, had somehow learned to walk in the sky, and was scared of him ever after.

That was marvellous. Thank you for sharing.

I raise geese. Had no idea, before I started, how interesting and varied their behaviors are.

They are very intelligent, it seems like a lot of their brainpower goes toward their social interactions.

Of course, individually they have distinct personalities, they have a group dynamic, and they also make specific friendships (apart from their mating partners).

Also their relationship with me and other people that care for them — they know and behave differently according to who’s around.

I’m documenting my observations on one breed called the cotton patch goose [1]. At some point I’ll put together a more comprehensive report.

1. https://hedgerider.substack.com/p/the-cotton-patch-goose

Jennifer Ackerman's The Genius of Birds is a great read on this subject.

https://www.jenniferackermanauthor.com/genius-ofbirds

May I suggest the book "Mind of the Raven" by Bernd Heinrich. Excellently written and extremely interesting. He has spent a life time studying animal behavior in particular Corvidae.

"Bernd Heinrich is a biologist and author of numerous books on the natural world. He lives in Richmond, VT, and in a cabin in the forests of western Maine."

https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Raven-Investigations-Adventures-...

New Zealand Kea are notoriously smart - they can work together to solve problems, and even seem to have something akin to laughter:

https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/90639503/kea-are-smarter...

https://archive.ph/w8s6e

Disappointing to see the various crow garbage vending machines not pan out. I wonder of it's actually impossible or if it's just been poorly executed.

> Mollaret seemed to think that, because crows are smart, their behavior should be predictable and programmable—even if his own behavior wasn’t. He was treating ecology like a subset of mechanics, as though the crows themselves could be turned into cogs in a machine.

In particular it's hard to get a crow to do tedious, boring chores for some almonds or whatever when they know there's relatively fresh pizza in a dumpster 2 blocks down the street.

> In particular it's hard to get a crow to do tedious, boring chores for some almonds or whatever when they know there's relatively fresh pizza in a dumpster 2 blocks down the street.

I have the same problem with my parrot. He’s too smart and unlike dogs has zero desire to please. If he doesn’t like the trick you’re teaching him, or it’s taking too long, he’ll just fly to the nearest food bowl and help himself. He even knows where the treats are and will get them himself if you’re taking too long.

On the other hand, he actively prefers treats in foraging boxes. He’ll fly to his treat bag, get your attention, then fly to a foraging puzzle and indicate “yo put that shit in here”. They love foraging.

That sounds about right. You wouldn't happen have a Green Cheek Conure, would you?

Sun/Jenday Conure mix

I have a cinnamon green cheek, exact same behaviors. Loves to forge, knows where all his treats are so we have to hide them. Goes nuts when he sees a walnut like a little dog. They're "cheeky" little guys :)

My first thought was that if they are smart enough to trade for food, they're also smart enough not to.

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