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'Birdbrain' Is a Misnomer. Crows Make Decisions Faster Than We Can

39 points gumby 2 hours ago 25 comments

bitwize 1 hour ago | parent

I know more than one person who believe that certain birds, especially crows, ravens, and cardinals, are reincarnated loved ones bringing a message.

I don't share this belief, but the more we find out about avian intelligence, the less surprised we should be that people actually think this.

SoftTalker 1 hour ago | parent

Given the tiny size of avian brains compare to mammals, particulary humans, it's hard to ascribe a lot of intelligence to them. But for what they can do, they seem quite well optimized.

misnome 58 minutes ago | parent

And that’s why Elephants are generally considered more intelligent than humans!

fsiefken 54 minutes ago | parent

Brain size is not a decisive factor in estimating intelligence and corvid brains pack twice the neurons per volume compared to humans. The factor is: effective "Information Processing Capacity" (IPC), which is high for body size and rivals great apes on specific executive tasks.

Extreme miniaturization eliminates travel distance, giving near-zero latency and high metabolic efficiency despite 1/5th the neurons of a chimp.

leftbit 50 minutes ago | parent

Bird brains are wired differently, neuron density is higher... so using size to compare brains is not enough.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bird-brains-have-...

0xBA5ED 1 hour ago | parent

The title doesn't make sense because "bridbrain" doesn't imply slow decision making.

tapland 1 hour ago | parent

Yeah it implies.. what I see when I look at some of the !@#$ my pigeons and budgies do.

dlcarrier 57 minutes ago | parent

Those birds are geniuses, compared to chickens.

davrosthedalek 43 minutes ago | parent

Do they do that slowly or quickly?

echelon 36 minutes ago | parent

As a native speaker, "birdbrain" means stupid.

The term implies something that feels like "dodo" or imbecile.

Corvids and parrots and raptors are remarkably smart, yet not every bird species is. Some are incredibly stupid.

There's also the anecdote (maybe just in the American South?) of a chicken running around with its head cut off.

Also think of the "Always Sunny" meme where they call Dee a "bird" all the time [1]. It's meant to mean stupid, amongst other things.

[1] https://youtu.be/60D7SN06A8M

GauntletWizard 17 minutes ago | parent

Mike the headless chicken was extensively documented, if an incredible fluke. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_the_Headless_Chicken

whatever1 1 hour ago | parent

They have to be faster than us. They casually fly at 40mph.

amelius 58 minutes ago | parent

It's faster probably because their neural network is less deep :)

dlcarrier 56 minutes ago | parent

Humans think fast and slow, but birds only think fast.

functionmouse 56 minutes ago | parent

Yeah, well... My SHARP pocket calculator turns on faster than my PC does.

inglor_cz 44 minutes ago | parent

Some of the traditional folk tale stereotypes seem to be correlated quite well to what we now know about bird cognition.

Hens/chickens are usually synonymous with "not very bright". Crows and ravens are usually depicted as smart and cunning.

alpineman 31 minutes ago | parent

Chickens actually have a very advanced social intelligence though

AnthonBerg 4 minutes ago | parent

Ah!, thanks! [lightbulb]

Went to find something to read on the matter. This paper is fun!: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-016-1064-4

newobj 42 minutes ago | parent

"eat like a bird" is also a misnomer. birds are so misunderstood

Animats 36 minutes ago | parent

Intelligence has evolved on Earth at least three times - mammals, corvids, and octopuses. All the mammals have roughly the same brain architecture. But the corvids are not on the same evolutionary branch, and have a different neuron design and a different brain architecture. "Such behavioral flexibility might seem unexpected because a layered cerebral cortex, the highest integration center in the mammalian brain, is not existant in birds."[1] So there's more than one way to do intelligence. Useful to know for AI purposes.

Octopuses have a much more distributed system than mammals, suggesting a quite different approach is possible.

[1] https://niederlab.org/Nieder%20(2017)%20COBS.pdf

randomImmigrant 27 minutes ago | parent

Birdbrain should mean the opposite of what it does, for this reason, but for many others. Birds can sense the Earth's magnetic field and use it for navigation, a process that's about the one bona fide quantum biological paradigm.

Their body clocks are also significantly more sophisticated and decentralized than ours.

And in the end, the physical intelligence of flight itself demands a brain that's gotta be incredibly spatially and temporally aware.

I wish our brains had some of the skills and efficiencies of birds.

gumby 8 minutes ago | parent

> Birds can sense the Earth's magnetic field and use it for navigation, a process that's about the one bona fide quantum biological paradigm… I wish our brains had some of the skills and efficiencies of birds.

You can harness your somatic infrastructure to gain some senses, like magnetic field sensitivity. Some people implant small permanent magnets in a fingertip to sense magnetic field, and claim it makes the world more interesting.

Unfortunately such an implant is not itself permanent (you'd want to coat it with something safe that doesn't trigger the immune system like gold or PTFE). Also though you want to be careful around other magnets I imagine!

But you could probably wear a magnetic sensor that used something attached to your skin that you could learn to "read" intuitively. The problems are dermatalogical sensitivity from the adhesive and the inability to wear it 24/7 to make the erading really feel like a new sense. But who knows?

EmX_3000 17 minutes ago | parent

I hate popular science articles like this. Ummmmm listen sweetie, you're just ignorant and Ima police you a bit here... sit down for some really wild SCIENCEism!

Ugh.