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Comment by canjobear | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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/

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_...

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.

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

That's not what the researcher said. He made no claim to having fed them often (and consistently, which is mentioned as helpful to induce the behavior).

But crow gifts are not guaranteed. "I can't say they always will (give presents)," Marzluff admits, having never received any gifts personally, "but I have seen an awful lot of things crows have brought people.

> The final example though, where a Crow returns the camera-lens cap to the family requires some pretty advanced thinking.

I think the article (and probably the podcast? haven't listened yet) make too big a deal of this. We don't know that the crows realized that the lens cap belonged to those people. Perhaps they just saw it as another neat thing to gift. Perhaps they smelled the family on it, and just returned it to a place that smelled similarly.

Perhaps they smelled the family on it, and just returned it to a place that smelled similarly.

Can you do that?

Most people never try. Feynman found he could, to some extend.

https://books.google.de/books?id=Z7g-BAAAQBAJ&pg=PA105&lpg=P...

That story makes me suspect that Feynman was also a genius at flirting.

> Can you do that?

Maybe not, but then, humans have a pretty poor sense of smell compared to lots of other animals.

I can't, but I have no idea what that's supposed to prove. That animals have abilities I don't? I can't fly, either, or swim in the arctic ocean and catch fish with my mouth.

Do birds have a sense of smell?

Apparently, yes: http://www.audubon.org/news/do-birds-have-sense-smell

It's a relatively weak sense of smell for most (with exceptions for birds such as turkey vultures that can smell carrion for miles), but yes.

For many birds though, it's nowhere as good as their hearing or eyesight.

What amazes me is crows manage to do all this with their beaks. Imagine if they had limbs and hands like monkeys? It would be Rise of the Planet of the Ape Crows.

But weren't the crows being fed even before they started giving the gifts?

Kind of a weird crow cargo cult. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult#Pacific_cults_of_Wor...

Man looks up to the sky in distress. Man prays to the Sun. Tomorrow problem is solved. Assumes Sun fixed problem. Meme spreads among men.

Addendum: Other man says this is random. Sun believer says don't insult my problem solver. Other man persists. Sun believer kills him.

I think I may have worked at that company. Was the sun believer called Phil?

Twist: It was Sun Microsystems

Meme spreads among the crows.

So, to be clear, you're positing an alternative theory wherein one or more crows learn a behaviour, and teach that behaviour to other crows, who learn this complex concept and repeat the feat while they, too, pass it on.

And you think that's no big deal? :)

Animals learn from other animals by observing them? I don't think that's groundbreaking news.

It doesn't have to actively teach the other crows for them to catch on

About the "Superstition in the pigeon" link:

Kind of painfull that you link to Skinner's (pretty much) only ill-done research; See J.E.R. Staddon for a nice refutation of 'the superstition in the pigeon' experiment.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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