https://twitter.com/GOGcom/status/1040223900741906433

sledding is not actually unusual behavure for crows, they are one of the most intelegent species of animal on earth

top 10 haunting photos taken moments before disaster

what's really cool about birds is that they split from mammals over 300 million years ago, before the evolution of the prefrontal cortex that mammals have. In mammals that's the part used for things like personality, problem-solving, and self-awareness itself

so when a smart bird (e.g. many corvids) solves a problem, it's using brain architecture that's completely alien to ours

given that they are intelligent, it'd be interesting to know what exactly the differences are beyond the surface-level ones, if their neural architecture for problem-solving is more optimized than ours for example, but of course neuroscience isn't near that point yet

then again squirrels are pretty clever and good at problem-solving too and they're also rather small, so it could be just a matter of niche-ing into dumping energy into the brain and problem-solving

Crows are cool.

they are my favorate birb

well corvids in general

I think if it was more of an architectural level we would see more smart birds. There are alot of different mammals with intelligence comparable to 3 year olds. As far as I'm awear it is only the Corvid family that stand out.

being smart requires a lot of energy, which is why most animals aren't, especially not herbivores who can neither afford nor need that extra problem-solving

but all mammals have the same basic architecture, in that they *have* a preforntal cortex

birds don't, yet some CAN do high level stuff

there is another explanation: our understanding of brains has a potential flaw

Some sea slugs can do some pretty advanced stuff for sea slugs.

Brains the more complex they are require more energy to run

I do know that the behaviour you see in crows is learned from watching others where as a slug will teach it's self. I think it is more related to evolution of the specific species than architecture.

you can do some tests though, a lobotomy for example damages/destroys the prefrontal cortex, in rats as well as humans

while there's obviously more to it (prefrontal cortex sending back and forth with older parts of the brain while e.g. handling memories) the basic gist of it is that if you remove prefrontal cortex, you get a "drooling zombie" incapable of overruling baser instincts, incapable of advanced problem-solving, etc.

architecture is evolved

and birds and mammals are groups of species so far apart entire regions of the brain have had the time to evolve

So they aren't still working on the reptile brain?

so their not.

the reptile brain doesn't have a prefrontal cortex, that part does not exist

Yeah I knew that. But I didn't know birds had evolved past that.

and we are entirely sure the prefrontal cortex does not have sub components that we might find replicated in other advance problem solving species?

obviously we will find components that allow advanced problem solving

in birds

since some are demonstrably capable of such problem solving, the part must be there, wherever it is

but it's NOT the prefrontal cortex, because they haven't evolved that, and we split from birds before it existed

it's like comparing bats and insects, both fly but by completely different means, they evolved flight in parallel

A bet it works almost exactly the same. Evolutionary convergence. Like the squid eye and the human eye.

Yeah, like is said, I don't think it's to do with the architecture of the bird brain coz we'd see more smart birds like yes see many smart mammals. Something special about Corvids.