Re:Who's the Smartest Corvid?
by bmurphy1976 on Wednesday June 10, 2026 @10:57PM
(#48485735)
Where do parrots fall in this grouping? They're not corvids. There must have been a pre-corvid ancestor.
Re:Who's the Smartest Corvid?
by speed_spread on Thursday June 11, 2026 @07:30AM
(#48488931)
Parrots aren't evil, they're just assholes.
Octopuses are probably more alien than others.
My point here is that if intelligence developed more than once, it didn't come from some one-time random event or divine intervention. It looks like once there are connected neurons, it evolves via continuous improvement.
In some environments, that evolution hits limits. Flying birds are limited in brain mass or they can't get airborne. Which may be why corvids don't rule the world.
Oh yes absolutely. Intelligence certainly developed more than once. Bird brain is no slur.
Before your comment I would have said it emerged twice, but then I had not considered octopuses, they are wicked smart and so unlike other intelligent animals we know.
Re:Who's the Smartest Corvid?
by forlorn_mammoth on Thursday June 11, 2026 @10:14AM
(#48490666)
I appreciate the linked article. I wonder if the the list should be expanded to 'at least three times', and I start to think about intelligence in plants.
See also recent work on honeybees, popularized here https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/bumblebees-can-sol...
honeybees are not social insects, but maybe social insects should be added to the list?
Social insects. The original object oriented programming paradigm.
Intelligence seems to have evolved three times on this planet - mammals, corvids, and octopuses. Octopuses have a distributed system rather than one central brain. They all have neurons, but the higher level architecture differs drastically.
Knowing that several different architectures can work is important for AI. There's apparently more than one way to do it.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S23521...