Re:Crows have been shown to understand the concept of zero
by inglor_cz on Tuesday August 10, 2021 @03:25PM
(#28133065)
The thing about animal intelligence is that it is probably significantly different from ours. In studying it, we must avoid antromorphization of animals.
Mammals are somewhat close to us, but we have diverged from birds over a hundred million years ago and we still struggle to understand how a tiny and smooth brain such as corvids have can produce such an observably intelligent behavior.
Re:Crows have been shown to understand the concept of zero
by firebaze on Tuesday August 10, 2021 @04:28PM
(#28133985)
Mammals are close to us in the dimensions of reproduction and biological ancestry; also, there are countless mammals which are (way) less intelligent than corvids.
Corvids may have small brains in terms of volume, but not measured by the number of neurons in the areas that count[1].
Maybe animal intelligence is not so different to ours, but our measure is.
Re:Crows have been shown to understand the concept of zero
by xcambar on Tuesday August 10, 2021 @04:49PM
(#28134309)
For something radically different, I'd suggest you look at octopuses. They're as different from human as can be.
Surely BBC or NPR has a decent documentary on the topic.
Re:Crows have been shown to understand the concept of zero
by cscurmudgeon on Tuesday August 10, 2021 @01:35PM
(#28131765)
Yep, given the huge replication crisis for human cognitive science and pyschology, I am not sure how reliable these studies are.
It goes both ways, in the past we had Clever Hans[1]. People believed Hans could perform simple math, when his cleverness was actually watching his owners expression for small changes. So any observed intelligence ends up under suspicion of them acting on information gained from a much simpler side channel.
[1]https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans