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The Intelligence of Crows -Another Discovery
#1
This is a fascinating article about the intelligence of Crows, particularly with a certain skill previously thought to be only within human abilities.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/artic...ely-human/

This, is the skill of "recursion". (no, I hadn't heard of that before either!) It is an ability to embed structures inside other similar structures.

Such as this for example:  { ( ) }

This is an important part of language and sentence structure.

Crows are better at this than trained Monkeys, and Crows produce the same results as Human children.

Apparently, this is a new finding and rather a revelation.

But when I thought about it, and thought about the intricate and well engineered nests Crows (and all birds) have to build, I can imagine they would need to use that skill. And most likely other skills we have yet to discover that they know, such as principles of engineering.
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#2
I have never heard the word recursion either.  If only I could think of a way to use it in a sentence.

It figures that crows can do it. If we can do something, it often turns out that crows can do it too.
Crows are way more intelligent than we recognize. I think a lot of animals are. We just don't know how to measure their intelligence.

You are right about nest building. It is very complex. Birds must have many skills to create nests. 
I doubt that most humans could produce a nest. 
I am not sure all humans can do recursion. 
I wonder what other skills crows have that we have not yet recognized.
[Image: IMG_9091.JPG]
Catherine

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#3
I also hadn't heard of recursion. One lives and learns!

You both mentioned "nesting" in a literal sense. But nesting is also a term used in computer coding (e.g. html coding). It means putting a pair of marks within a different pair. Here's a simple example, where b start and b end are nested inside p start and p end. (p is for paragraph and b is for bold). One tiny error and the whole code doesn't work properly:


[Image: Bold-and-Emphasize-tags.png]
Why do I mention this? Because the skills involved in nesting entail a logical mind and attention to detail, not just fitting something within something else. This is precisely what crows display.

Tobi, thank you for this thread. I may well add a link to the article on my website.

Crows are amazing creatures.
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#4
I think I have heard the term nesting. I just didn't make the connection.
Crows are definitely smarter than we used to think. Nothing they do should surprise us.
If they have logical minds, with attention to detail, there are a lot of things they can do.
I bet they could learn to use computers if there was a bird friendly model.
[Image: IMG_9091.JPG]
Catherine

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