Latest news with #animalintelligence
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Are animals smart? From dolphin language to toolmaking crows, lots of species have obvious intelligence
Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you'd like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@ Are animals smart? – Deron It's a fascinating question that intrigues millions of pet owners, animal lovers, veterinarians and scientists all over the world: Just how smart are animals? Scientists once believed a brain with billions of neurons was a requirement for intelligence. After all, that's why you're able to think – neurons are the nerve cells in the brain that connect and transmit messages to each other. For the record, the human brain has about 86 billion neurons. For comparison, dogs and cats have less than one billion. Yet the more that scientists like me study animal emotion and cognition – the ability to learn through experiences and thinking – the more we find that humans are not very special at all. Many nonhuman species can do these things too. Right now, there's no agreement on how to decide whether a particular animal species is intelligent. But most scientists who study animal cognition have observed that many animals are able to solve problems, use tools, recall important information about their environment and recognize themselves in the mirror. Memory is a marker of intelligence. Of all animals, humans possess the most accurate and sophisticated memory. But elephants can recognize as many as 30 traveling companions at a time. They also learn to migrate away from drought-prone areas, based on memories of earlier droughts. That kind of recall – known as episodic memory – is the ability to remember an event, including when and where it occurred. Until recently, scientists thought only humans had it. But now researchers have learned that some birds, cats, rats, monkeys and dolphins have it too. Animals may not remember every experience – neither do people – but they do recall things critical to their survival. For example, birds know where they stored food. Monkeys know the presence of a predator. Scientists once thought tool use was an exclusively human ability, but that's not so. Chimpanzees use sticks to catch termites and stones to crack nuts open. Crows can even manufacture tools. By bending a wire, they can make a hook to retrieve a food reward that's otherwise out of reach. Researchers presented eight captive brown bears with this food challenge: Three objects – a large log, a small log and a box – were placed in an outdoor enclosure. A food reward was suspended above them. Six of the eight bears were able to move the logs and box into positions that enabled them to fetch the reward. Essentially, they used the three objects as tools. Language is another measure of intelligence. People, of course, have enormously sophisticated communication skills. But dolphins have complex dialects in the form of crackles, squeaks and whistles. Many researchers say the noises are a language. Chimpanzees and gorillas have used sign language to express emotions and ask for things from people. Self-awareness – the ability to recognize yourself as an individual – signals intelligence. Babies don't recognize themselves in the mirror until they are about a year and a half old. Up until then, they probably think the mirror image they see is another baby. Many other species, including dolphins, ravens and elephants, recognize themselves in the mirror. Researchers put a red dye mark on chimpanzees under anesthesia; once awake, the chimps saw their reflection in a mirror. Instead of touching the red mark on their reflection in the glass, they touched the red mark on themselves, indicating self-recognition. Just because animals can't do certain things, it doesn't mean they're unintelligent. After all, humans can't fly like a bird or swim like a fish. Nor is there a need for us to have the incredible sense of smell a dog has. We'd be sniffing hundreds of different smells from miles away – the scents from perfumes and pollution, gardens and garbage. From an evolutionary standpoint, that wouldn't help us much. Plus, we'd get sick of it very quickly. But all animals, including humans, have developed a wide range of capabilities so they can succeed in the environment they live in. Put simply, we're all using our brains. Now that's intelligent. Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you'd like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@ Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live. And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you're wondering, too. We won't be able to answer every question, but we will do our best. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Leticia Fanucchi, Oklahoma State University Read more: African elephants address one another with name-like calls − similar to humans Bees can learn, remember, think and make decisions – here's a look at how they navigate the world Can great apes read your mind? Leticia Fanucchi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The Independent
23-05-2025
- Science
- The Independent
Scientists discover crows can plan ahead and understand other minds in groundbreaking new study
Many of us as children may have wondered what's going on inside the mind of an animal – what are they thinking and feeling? Most animal researchers study science because of their fascination with animals, but for a long time scientific norms made it impossible to even raise the question of animal consciousness without losing scientific credibility. Fortunately, those days have ended, thanks in large part to pioneering work by scientists such as Donald Griffin, who argued from the 1980s to his death in 2003 that animal minds should be a topic for scientific study. We are philosophers who study consciousness, and in our recent research we worked with other scientists to explore what the world might be like from the point of view of corvids, the family of birds that includes ravens, crows, jays and magpies. 'Birdbrain' used to be a common insult but corvids have such surprising intelligence that they are sometimes described by scientists and journalists as 'feathered apes'. But we wanted to go beyond intelligence. To do this we examined five dimensions of their experience by combing through studies on their behaviour, cognition, brains, emotions and consciousness. Corvids' eyes have incredibly sharp resolution that allows them to navigate while flying at high speeds and to find potential sources of food. Their hearing is excellent, perhaps unsurprising for songbirds, allowing them to even distinguish reliable from unreliable group members by assessing and remembering their alert calls. They also have a good sense of smell, which they use to help them find nuts and other food they have hidden. Unfortunately, we do not know how their smell compares to a lot of other animals, because there are not enough studies on corvids' sense of smell yet. Emotional lives Corvids show cognitive biases, similar to humans. They have negative moods and show signs of pessimism after observing similar states in others. But they also show positive moods after successfully using tools – just like humans. And they can also show neophobia – wariness of new objects. Even if you come with treats to give them, corvids are reluctant to fly close to someone they haven't met before, but are confident with humans they know well – another common human trait. It is common for people to only attribute emotional lives to mammals, but corvids show that we should study the emotions of birds in more detail. Integrated experiences We humans have one stream of consciousness. But birds lack a corpus callosum, the structure that connects the two brain hemispheres in us and other mammals. Their brain halves show a lot of division of labour, such as using their different eyes to focus on different tasks. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that their experience is split into two selves – it could suggest a kind of partial unity different from our own. Perhaps their consciousness is more like split-brain human patients who have had their corpus callosum cut to reduce the effects of seizures. When two pictures are presented in their respective left and right visual fields, these people will draw what they see on the left side with their left hand, whereas they will verbally describe what is on the right, giving the appearance of two selves in one body. Corvids show remarkable abilities in their sense of self across time. Because they often hide food (scientists call this caching), they can remember not just where they hid food, but also what kind of food it was and how long ago they hid it – which is relevant for more perishable foods such as insects, compared to longer-lasting nuts. Here their memory far outstrips our own or, for that matter, most other animals when it comes to hiding objects, with some corvids caching and remembering over a thousand food items in a month for later consumption. No human would be able to remember that many hiding spots. Corvids can even plan, collecting and storing a tool such as a spoon for future use. A rich sense of self They not only recognise themselves in mirrors, but also understand other minds. Research has shown corvids go back to remove cached food and hide it elsewhere if they know they have been observed – but only if they have stolen from others in the past. Male jays will watch the feeding behaviour of a female they want to court, so they can bring their preferred food. Even more solitary corvids, such as ravens, seem to have well-developed social skills, which scientists used to think were largely restricted to mammals. In all of this, there is still a great deal of uncertainty. Learning about the minds of other animals requires a great deal of inference from sparse and often ambiguous data. But we believe that there is scientific evidence for rich conscious experiences in corvids. For most species, it is a lack of research, not a lack of capacity, that keeps us silent on what their subjective experiences are like. This research also has implications for corvid welfare. Understanding what the world is like for an animal means understanding what feels good and bad for them. Their good memories may mean they suffer longer from a negative experience, neophobia will mean novel objects should be introduced slowly, their social abilities mean they should be housed in groups. Giving them tools could allow them enriching experiences. All this should be taken into account when deciding how to care for these birds when kept in cavity, and how to minimise welfare risks in other interactions with them.
