I had a pet magpie as a child and in the short time we had it it was clear it was such an intelligent creature.
Its nest had fallen from a tree in a storm - we found it a day or so later in a not great state. But within a day of feeding it was hand tame and happily came to live in the house. By the end of the summer though it learnt the skills it needed and flew off.
While it lived with us it quickly learnt the places we were happy for it to be in the house, where its 'bed' was and when we would feed it. It continually picked up small toys to play with and would delight in dropping things off the table for us to fetch and return for it.
In some ways I was so sad when it left, and as a child regretted not clipping its wings - but I'm pleased we didn't and was hopeful it went off to lead a normal magpie life ;)
I have seen a jackdaw play a combination of hide and seek and tag with a 3 year old child.
The child was chasing it, and the jackdaw used hedges and toys to hide behind, and whenever the tiny human came close, the jackdaw would run to the next thing and hide.
When the child got bored, the jackdaw would run back to the child to get it to chase again.
It was clear that they were both enjoying the game, and the parents didn't even realise that this had happened because they were meters away fumbling with a grill.
When I was a child we also nurtured a jackdaw back to health, his name was Klaus and he learned to talk, he understood the concept of "Hello" and would use it correctly when you entered the house, and if he wanted you to leave him alone or we got stuck in a "Hello" greeting-loop, he would say "Go away".
As a kid I once rescued a humming bird that got tangled in a spiders web. I walked around with it for a few minutes and carefully cleaned the web off. Then suddenly after realizing it was ok. The bird was all too happy to fly off.
It must have been fun to have a bird stick around like that.
It really was - they were properly part of the family for a few months - and it used to go out and play in the garden and come back in the house when it was ready to rest or hungry - at first we locked it in a cage at night but soon we didn't, and it was very happy.
But for ages it couldn't feed itself and relied on me dropping cat food into its open beak with tweezers - I'm pretty sure it did this longer than it would in the wild. Then one day when it was playing in the garden it learnt how to catch worms and insects, and then the next day it started drinking from puddles and then the next day it just flew away.
It might have returned, but to be honest even then it would have been hard to recognise amongst other magpies - but it never tried to come in the house again, even though we left the doors open.
For a few years after (and even now to be honest) I sometimes shout 'Marilyn' when I see magpies - hoping it will recognise me ;) (we chose 'Marilyn' as I'd recently read it was historically a mans name, so I thought it was good to choose something gender neutral)
I have a similar story of taking in an orphaned baby deer as a kid. It was like one of our pet dogs. Our pet dogs even kind of adopted the deer as part of their pack. I think we only had it for ~6 months although it felt like a long time.
Thanks for sparking that memory, I hadn't thought of that in ages.
Researchers trained ravens to exchange some tokens for food. Presented with a choice of 15 different objects, majority of the birds picked the food tokens and stashed them for up to 17 hours until an opportunity for exchange came again.
The author believes this passes as the pinnacle of a 4 year old's planning abilities.
I'm kind of used to New Scientist misreporting my own and others research. If someone has a link to the original study I'd be interested in taking a look.
Overall, is it really useful to compare Ravens and human children for their long term planning ability? Human children are still under the care of their parents. There's no real pressure on them to store food tokens...
Thanks for the links. If the first link is what they're referring too, then it's a pretty dumb headline.
That article is a non-peer reviewed perspective on some recent research. To provide background they make a throw away comment about some work done in 2007 [1] and say it's kind of similar to what you see in 4 year old children (in another study).
The original researchers don't seem to have made that statement, or attempted to support it. So... par for the course for New Scientist I guess...
General intelligence evolving independently in another distantly related species implies there is a degree of evolutionary convergence towards this trait given the right selective stimulus. This has implications for the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence and might allow us to rule out the possibility that 'general intelligence' is an astronomically unlikely event - one of the main candidates for a 'Great Filter'.
Dawkins mentions this, or maybe indirectly acknowledges it, in The Selfish Gene. Organisms that can pass their ability to adapt on to fast acting nervous centers or even better: large brains, eventually gain a huge advantage.
The Great Filter on the other hand, relies on assuming
the steps from evolved intelligence (now) to solar system colonization/FTL travel are not only possible, but just a matter of a few millennia or so. Which is a huge assumption.
Serious question (I don't know that I know any atheists): do atheists not eat ham and turkey, and give their kids presents on Christmas? I would have thought this was more cultural than religious in the USA.
Winter solstice is December 21. It makes sense to have gatherings around equinoxes and solstices since they are turning points in the year.
That being said, most atheists come from religious regions or families. They consider those holidays their heritage and celebrate them. Christmas is seen equally to, let's say, Halloween. Nobody cares about Samhain but they care about candies. Nobody cares about the birthday of Jesus but they care about receiving their family and giving them gifts.
This is reminiscent of the Bicameral mind concept presented in Westworld. The ability to have a sense of time and plan for it and meet a goal is essential to sentience.
I'll believe that when a raven starts tenaciously suggesting we go for ice cream any time we are even discussing the possibility of being anywhere close to the ice cream shop.
Its nest had fallen from a tree in a storm - we found it a day or so later in a not great state. But within a day of feeding it was hand tame and happily came to live in the house. By the end of the summer though it learnt the skills it needed and flew off.
While it lived with us it quickly learnt the places we were happy for it to be in the house, where its 'bed' was and when we would feed it. It continually picked up small toys to play with and would delight in dropping things off the table for us to fetch and return for it.
In some ways I was so sad when it left, and as a child regretted not clipping its wings - but I'm pleased we didn't and was hopeful it went off to lead a normal magpie life ;)