A neat experience suggests that crows are even better than we thought

New research shows that crows can recreate tools of memory, a capacity that is then considered impossible for them birds.

Crows are super smart – we already knew that. In addition to understanding causation and analogies, they can remember human faces, plan ahead and hide their food from others. But crows are also known for their amazing tool-building skills, which they use to build sticks, hooks and beards from plant material. A new study published today in Scientific Reports suggests that this ability, at least in New Caledonian crows (a particularly clever species of corvid), is more sophisticated than we thought, and that these birds can build memory tools

In human societies, cultural evolution and the construction of tools are an iterative process in which social traditions improve over time due to the 39, teaching, language and imitation. But among neo-Caledonian crows, it's not clear whether their tool-making skills are the result of an imitation or ability acquired through the transmission of traditions cultural. A common assumption is that tool designs are actually transmitted culturally, and that this is done through a process known as the "mental model".

"According to the hypothesis of correspondence of the mental models generations, if an individual used or observed the products of the manufacture of tools (such as the tools of his parents), formed a mental model of this type of tool design (a mental representation of all or part of the properties of the tool), and then reproduced this model in their own making, "explain the authors in the new study.

Researchers Russell Gray of the University of Auckland, New Zealand, Sarah Jelbert of the University of Cambridge, along with colleagues from several other institutions, conducted an experiment that now provides the first evidence to support this claim.

Researchers formed eight crows to deposit pieces of paper in a dispenser automatic, what birds have done to receive food rewards. The crows then learned that only cards of a specific size, either large pieces of 40 x 60 mm, or small pieces of 15 x 25 mm, were rewarded. Once the crows were trained to recognize the sizes of paper tools that resulted in a food reward, the scientists took all the pieces of paper and replaced them with a single large sheet of paper that would not come back not in the dispenser. Incredibly, the birds tore up the big map to create pieces that matched the paper size that they used previously to earn rewards. Researchers have called it "manufacturing by subtraction".

Importantly, the birds did not have visual access to any of the previous pieces of paper. The experience suggests that the birds were holding a mental image of the desired tool in their minds, which they used to build the new tool. It also means that some species of birds may have the ability to improve tools over time (which is not proven in the study, but suggested as a possibility), which that they could do by recreating and then adjusting other models that they saw and memorized. This is an important consideration because the ability to modify elements of memory is usually associated with tool cultures, such as humans and some non-human primates.

Edward A. Wasserman, Experimental Psychologist and Brain Specialist at the University of Iowa He added that the study was an important addition to our understanding of avian intelligence, and that the conclusions were "clear and convincing". That said, he was not surprised by the results.

"The main limitation to our appreciation of avian intelligence is the lack of creativity in our own experimental methods," Wasserman told Gizmodo. "Birds look more and more naughty as we conduct more ambitious and diligent experiments."

Wasserman also pointed out that crows are not the only intelligent birds.

"Pigeons, parrots and jays have all demonstrated remarkable abilities to learn and remember a multitude of difficult tasks," he said. "This evidence came from both naturalistic observations and controlled laboratory experiments.The fact that the last common ancestor of birds and mammals lived 300 million years ago raises a profound question: the ancestral species were they equally intelligent or did the intelligence evolve independently? This will be a difficult question to answer. "

In the meantime, let's be sure to admire the intelligence of our beautiful feathered friends, and finally recognize that being called a "bird brain" is actually a compliment.

[Scientific Reports]