Three prisoners in the gulag get to talking about why they are there.
"I am here because I always got to work five minutes late, and they charged me with sabotage," says the first.
"I am here because I kept getting to work five minutes early, and they charged me with spying," says the second.
"I am here because I got to work on time every day," says the third, "and they charged me with owning a western watch."

Arch neme was good

Stolen

F

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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?